Serving 6 communities in New York
Interior Design Firm Serving New York
Full-service, founder-led interior design from Fifth and Park Avenue prewar apartments to Brooklyn brownstones and the Tudors of Westchester.
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Est. 1996 · ASID & IIDA Members · WBENC Woman-Owned · 500+ Clients · 3M+ Sq Ft Designed
In New York the plan is the design. Square footage is finite; how well it works is not.
Interior Design in New York
New York asks for three different kinds of design at once. On Fifth and Park, the prewar co-ops — Candela, Emery Roth, the 1920s buildings with herringbone floors, plaster crown, high ceilings and a kitchen originally sized for staff — plus the penthouses and terraces above them. Across the river, Brooklyn brownstones in Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, with their parlor floors, pier mirrors, marble mantels and garden levels that were never meant to be the main living space, alongside converted loft and condo buildings in DUMBO. North of the city, Westchester: Scarsdale's Tudors and estate houses, Bronxville's village houses and prewar co-ops. Same clients, often enough. Very different buildings.
INSABELLADESIGN has been designing interiors since 1996 — full service, ASID and IIDA members, WBENC-certified and woman-owned, based in Little Silver, New Jersey, and working across New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Florida. More than three million square feet designed and over 500 clients across residential and commercial work. Beth Insabella Walsh leads every project, which in New York means she is the one walking the site with the contractor and the one reading the shop drawings before the cabinetmaker cuts.
The constraints here are real and they are largely procedural. Co-op and condo boards approve drawings before work begins. Alteration agreements govern contractors, insurance, engineer sign-off, wet-over-dry restrictions, sound attenuation and floor covering percentages. Many buildings restrict renovation to a summer window and limit work to weekday daytime hours, with freight elevator time booked in advance. Landmark districts add another layer on facades and, in some cases, on windows. We treat all of it as design input. A plan that ignores the alteration agreement is not a plan; it is a delay.
What We Design Across New York
Residential work spans apartment, townhouse and house. In Manhattan that means gut renovations and combinations, kitchens engineered into tight footprints, primary baths in honed marble, custom millwork that turns awkward wall runs into libraries, bars, banquettes and real closets, and lighting plans drawn around ceiling heights and plaster. In Brooklyn it means respecting the parlor-floor proportions while making the garden level function, restoring or reinterpreting mantels and moldings, and solving stair, storage and kitchen placement in a house nineteen or twenty feet wide. In Westchester it is whole-home renovation on a larger canvas — mudrooms, butler's pantries, paneled studies, primary suites. Furnishings, window treatments, rugs, textiles and art are part of the same scope, and we manage the install.
Commercially we design offices and executive suites, professional and financial space, medical and dental practices, hospitality, showrooms, and multifamily lobbies and amenity floors. Those projects bring code, ADA, landlord work letters, building standards and a hard occupancy date. In both categories, the discipline is the same: plan the space, draw the millwork, specify the finishes properly, coordinate the trades, and protect the schedule. We are an interior design firm and do not do home staging — this is permanent work for people who intend to live or operate in the space.
Communities We Serve in New York
- Bronxville, NY — old-money Westchester village
- Brooklyn, NY — brownstone borough
- Larchmont, NY — Westchester village on Long Island Sound
- Manhattan, NY — top-of-market island borough
- Pelham, NY — historic Westchester village pair
- Scarsdale, NY — Westchester County estate suburb
Why New York Chooses INSABELLADESIGN
- Nearly 30 years of award-winning residential & commercial design (est. 1996)
- ASID & IIDA professional members · WBENC-certified, woman-owned firm
- Full service: detailed space planning and design documentation, custom kitchens & baths, millwork, furnishing, install
- Every project led personally by founder Beth Insabella Walsh
- Trusted by the architects, builders, and trades our clients rely on
- Sourced materials, custom fabrication, and finishes held to an exacting standard
New York Interior Design — FAQs
How do co-op and condo board approvals affect the schedule?
Significantly, and predictably enough to plan around. A typical Manhattan co-op requires a full drawing set submitted for board and building-engineer review, an executed alteration agreement, contractor licensing and insurance certificates naming the building, and often an architect or engineer of record for DOB filings. Review can take weeks. Many buildings also confine renovation to a summer window and to weekday daytime hours, with freight elevator slots reserved ahead of time. We prepare the submission package early, design within the building's restrictions on plumbing relocation, floor construction and sound attenuation, and phase procurement so long-lead millwork and stone are in production while approvals run.
Do you work in Brooklyn as well as Manhattan?
Yes. Brownstones in Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, and condo and loft conversions in DUMBO and along the waterfront. A brownstone is a different problem from an apartment: four floors, one stair, a narrow footprint, and original detail worth keeping — mantels, plaster ceiling medallions, shutters, wide-plank floors. The work usually turns on where the kitchen goes, how the garden level connects to the yard, and how much storage can be built in without crowding the rooms. Buildings inside a historic district carry additional exterior review, and we coordinate that with your architect and expediter.
You're a New Jersey firm. Why hire you for a New York project?
Because we have been working across state lines since 1996 and the process is built for it. Beth is on site for the walkthrough, field measure, demolition review, millwork templating, stone selection and install, and the project runs between visits on drawings, shop-drawing review and standing calls with the architect, contractor and trades. We coordinate with New York contractors, cabinetmakers, stone fabricators, expediters and engineers as each project requires. The practical advantage is continuity: a great many clients in this market keep more than one home — an apartment in the city, a house in Westchester or Connecticut, something in Florida — and having one firm across all of them is far simpler than managing three.
Can you take on just a kitchen or a primary bath?
Yes. Single-room projects are common in New York because building rules and life often make a full gut impractical. A kitchen still gets the whole method: measured plan, appliance and ventilation coordination, custom cabinetry drawings, stone selection at the slab, tile and hardware specification, lighting and electrical, and shop-drawing review before fabrication. The same applies to a bath, a library, or a wall of built-ins. Scope narrows; standards do not. If the project later grows into the rest of the apartment, the earlier work still fits the whole.