Top interior designers demand high fees, and they enjoy the kind of fame and influence we associate with entertainers. For them, matters of taste and style are innate characteristics. Guided by a clear conceptual direction, they approach a room armed with aspects of various disciplines — including architecture, environmental psychology and decoration — and they apply a refined eye to the use of color, texture, lighting, and furnishings. The result is an otherwise uninspired space transformed into a functional work of art.
Using prestige, stylistic vision and availability as my main criteria, I’ve sketched out a top 10 list of interior designers for hire. In doing so, I’ve excluded some big-name designers — Frank Gehry and Stanley Tigerman come to mind — who dabble with interiors but work primarily as architects.
10. John Saladino
Clients: Michael Jaharis, Susan Harris, Paul Witt.
Educated at both Notre Dame and the Yale School of Art and Architecture, Missouri-born John Saladino is known as the “the designer’s designer.” His work was praised by none other than Van Day Truex, longtime Director of Design for Tiffany & Co. and a man widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s most definitive tastemakers. In 1972, Saladino founded the full-service design firm Saladino Group Inc., whose work includes private residences, palaces, residential towers, and gardens.
Renowned for his eye for color, Saladino’s work is built around three primary concepts: manipulation of scale, nuanced and elusive color, and layered lighting. In his own words he seeks to create “environments of an alternate reality, with compelling emotional force.”
9. Sills Huniford Associates
Clients: The Rockefellers, Tina Turner, Vera Wang, St. Regis Hotels, the AEFFE Fashion Group.
Founded in Manhattan in 1984, Stephen Sills’ and James Huniford’s firm has designed townhouses, apartments, lofts, country homes, and commercial spaces for a lengthy client list. Their work earns consistent praise in both industry and lifestyle publications, and roughly half the pieces they provide for each project come directly from their own line of furnishings
Guided by a style defined as “eclectic and edited,” Sills and Huniford utilize an endless variety of influences from the past four centuries. They’re known for using unexpected and uncommon materials, including limed oak, leather and parchment, with an eye toward modern, contemporary living. In their own words, their work “always comes back to the elements of atmosphere and point of view.”
8. Sheila Bridges
Clients: Bill Clinton, Diddy, Peter Norton, Tom Clancy.
Both CNN and Time magazine have lauded Manhattan-based Sheila Bridges as “America’s Best Interior Designer.” In 1994, following an education at both Brown University and Parsons School of Design, she founded Sheila Bridges Design Inc. She has appeared on numerous television shows, such as The Today Show and Oprah, and has enjoyed flattering profiles in countless publications.
Bridges sews through her interiors a seamless blend of luxury and function, creating opulent and intelligent designs that maintain their comfort and livability. While fond of bringing “the outdoors inside” by using raw materials and earthy colors, her varied styles and influences give her the artistic flexibility to be classical or modern, minimalist or extravagant.
An Irish “total designer,” two Colombian visionaries and more…
7. Barbara Barry
Clients: Michael Ovitz, Darren Star, Victoria Principle.
A graduate of San Francisco’s Academy of Art College, Barry founded Barbara Barry Inc, in Los Angeles in 1985, guided by the belief that “design should surround and nurture.” Her award-winning work includes both residential and commercial interiors, as well as signature product collections for high-end companies such as HBF.
Striving for a “unique blend of sophistication and livability,” Barry’s cool, alluring interiors radiate an unmistakably laid-back, West Coast feel. The results of her suave eye for color, texture and light are lush and cinematic, leading to comparisons between her work and that of a Hollywood set designer.
6. Clodagh
Clients: Robert Redford, Mo Vaughn, Sylvia Rhone.
Irish-Born Clodagh, who began her own clothing design business while in her teens, incorporates the four elements and all five human senses to achieve “total design.” Along with residential interiors, she has designed numerous spas, resorts and restaurants, and works with companies to develop brand identity.
A pioneer of applying Feng Shui principles to multiple aspects of the design process, Clodagh views herself as something of a travel guide, applying what her clients want today as well as offering a vision of how it might evolve in the future. Her approach is environmentally conscious, and she’s known for her innovative use of materials like stone, concrete and hand-woven fabrics.
5. Juan Montoya
Clients: Fernando Botero, Edgar Bronfman Jr.
Colombian-born Juan Montoya studied architecture in Bogota and design in New York City before opening his first studio there in 1978. Over the past 30 years, he has grown into one of the world’s most prolific and decorated designers. His brilliant work with color, texture, climate, and natural light has resulted in widely admired interiors of clarity and sophistication.
In the process of concept and design, Montoya regards himself as a tailor who “finds the best materials to clothe an interior in the most appealing and comfortable manner, down to the last detail.” His interests float freely across many styles and cultures, but a so-called “Montoya room” tends to obey his watchwords: light, lean and Scandinavian.
4. Samuel Botero
Clients: Julio Iglesias, Nina Hyde, Armando Orsini.
With a quarter-century of design under his belt, Colombian-born Samuel Botero has become one of the world’s leading interior designers. The Pratt Institute graduate began his career as a modernist, but is now considered a master of a wide variety of styles.
Botero is renowned for his innovative use of color and natural influences, yet in an industry with pretension to spare, he sees the disarming value in humor, in juxtaposing the mundane with the opulent, and in opening a client’s mind to avenues that seem to violate established codes. For example, not many interior designers have the vision and daring to design a magnificent three-story waterfall — indoors.
A world-renowned South African designer, a French “dreamer of houses” and the top interior designer in the world…
3. Geoffrey Bradfield
Clients: His list of clients is confidential, but he has worked on the Gertrude Vanderbilt-Whitney estate in Long Island and the late King Hussein’s mansion in Maryland.
The award-winning work of South African-born Geoffrey Bradfield can be found in residences, palaces, jets, yachts, and both commercial and government structures on no fewer than four continents. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s top designers, and appears frequently on CNN and HGTV. A huge presence in New York’s high society, Bradfield has also lectured at the Smithsonian and funds a named scholarship at the New York School of Interior Design.
Inspired by Africa, the Orient and Art Deco, and guided by an aim for “functional opulence,” his residential portfolio alone features interiors of jaw-dropping beauty. As a passionate, lifelong collector of contemporary art, he rarely creates an interior without at least one such piece. Geoffrey has a well-earned reputation for bravado: He put a massive 8 x 24 oil painting in the home of one client, and in a boy’s bedroom, he placed a suit of armor that serves as the only tie rack in the world with street credibility.
2. Thierry W. Despont
Clients: Calvin Klein, Bill Gates, the Getty Center, Polo Ralph Lauren, Harry Winston.
Educated in fine arts at Paris’ École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and in urban design at Harvard, French-born Thierry Despont is first and foremost an artist whose aesthetic approach to design often begins on a canvas. He and his staff of 40 architects and decorators have tackled the interiors of villas, manors, log cabins, cottages, and synagogues for a wide international clientele.
Despont regards himself as a “dreamer of houses,” a fitting description that comes through in the dreamlike grandeur and incredible opulence of his work. His clout was evident during the construction of Gates’ massive mansion: Bothered by one part of the home’s layout, Despont had it demolished.
1. Philippe Starck
Clients: Jean-Paul Gaultier, Hugo Boss, Alain Mikli, Placido Arango Jr .
French-born Philippe Starck is an artist who operates purely on a sense of emotion, and he ranks as the world’s most complete designer. His designs are famous worldwide for their variety, originality, stylistic stamp, and capacity to leave an impression — whether it’s good or bad. Educated in the New Design style at Ecole Nissim de Camondo in Paris, he first partnered with Pierre Cardin before going solo. In 1982, he rocketed to fame after designing the Elysee Palace in Paris for then President Francois Mitterrand.
Starck is a rebel renowned for eschewing everything from industry traditions to conventional materials in his designs, all while preserving functionality. In addition to cofounding the design-focused property development company Yoo, his vastly diversified resume includes an airport control tower, a waste recycling plant, restaurants, hotels, cafes, museums, a toothbrush, a presidential palace, home furnishings, a computer mouse, yachts, a lemon press, and a massive line of more than 50 consumer products for U.S. retailer Target entitled “Starck Reality.”
In the world of designable places and things, if Starck hasn’t designed one, it is only because he hasn’t designed one yet.
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