The record of a home well made.
A complete design plan for your home, and a verified record of everything you have put into it.
Design is the best part of owning a home. Most people never get to it.
It is why a room at a five-star hotel can cost $3,000 a night, and why the great hospitality names are trusted to sell private residences. The difference is real, you feel it the moment you walk in, and it is almost never what fills a staged listing. What we recommend is chosen for how you live, real pieces from private brands, masters, and artists we have seen, touched, and validated, on a $100k budget and a $7M renovation alike.
The parts that make a home are the ones nobody plans for.
Millwork. Drapery. Lighting set for how a room is actually used. Built-ins that look integrated into the space. The few pieces you will still want in thirty years.
This is the genuinely good part of owning a home, and it is the part most owners never reach.
Design happens in layers, usually over years. A room now, the kitchen in three years, the drapery when the light finally starts to bother you. Almost nobody does a home in one pass. The plan is what makes those layers add up to something rather than accumulate.
And within it, order matters. In custom work the sequence is everything, and getting it wrong is rarely fixable and never returnable.
Without a plan, a home fills the way most homes fill at every price. Bought fast, bought online, or rented and staged with the labels taken off. We have seen it in $20M townhouses. It has never been a question of budget.
Fifteen years of renovations, custom work, and design-build across the tri-state area, and more than four thousand artists, masters, brands, and workrooms sourced and validated here and abroad. That is what the plan is drawn from.
A fee that does not move.
In Manhattan, design is usually priced against the project. Fees for a three-bedroom commonly run $40,000 to $100,000, often set as a share of the renovation budget, with furnishings billed at retail above that.
Ours is one number, fixed before we begin. It is the same on a $100,000 budget and a $7M renovation.
What we sell is judgment: the plan, the order, and what belongs in each room. You see retail and trade side by side on every piece, and every decision stays yours.
The Record
$7,500
Tri-state, by appointment. One visit. You prepare nothing.
We come to you once and measure the entire residence to scale. Everything of significance is verified in person. You get the complete plan for the home, and a private record of everything already in it.
- One onsite visit. You prepare nothing, and we are there once.
- Every room measured to scale, so what gets specified actually fits.
- The complete design plan across the residence, in the order it should happen.
- Budget allocated across furnishings, design, construction, and custom.
- Ranges for paint and every custom service.
- Retail and trade on every furnishing recommended, so you see both numbers.
- Everything of significance verified in person and set down in your own private account. A full year of recommendations and updates included, kept current as the home changes.
Priced for a residence of up to eight rooms. We count the rooms that get designed: living, dining, kitchen, entry, each bedroom, and any office, den, or media room. Bathrooms are counted with their bedroom. Larger residences are quoted by appointment.
The record is yours to keep.
The Brief
$2,500
Remote, anywhere. Built from what you send.
The same plan, without the visit. We work from your own documentation, so The Brief is owner-documented throughout, rather than verified in person. What it carries is the judgment: what to do, in what order, and what it should cost.
- The complete design plan across the residence, in the order it should happen.
- Budget allocated across furnishings, design, construction, and custom.
- A plan for the residence, room by room.
- Ranges for paint and every custom service.
- Retail and trade on every furnishing recommended.
- Your own private account, and a full year of recommendations, yours to keep.
Priced for a residence of up to four rooms, counted the same way. Larger residences are quoted by appointment.
Credits in full toward The Record. The record is yours to keep.
Already working with a designer, an architect, or a contractor? The Brief sits alongside them. It is an independent read on decisions you are being asked to approve, and a record of what was actually delivered.
Nothing is invoiced before we have seen the residence.
Every engagement begins with a short review. You tell us about the home, we confirm the scope and the price, and only then does an invoice go out. If it is larger than the standard residence we will tell you before you have paid anything, and if it is not right for us we will tell you that too.
A small practice. We take a limited number of residences at a time.
The record is yours, and it is private.
It is not published, not listed, and never shown to anyone unless you decide to show it. You choose what a buyer, an insurer, an accountant, or an estate attorney views, and when.
Established by
Prepared in residences at 220 Central Park South, 108 Leonard, 400 Fifth Avenue, and 30 Park Place. A selection only, and much stays private.