I can’t believe how many compliments we received when we posted a few photos from a recently completed a hallway redesign project. It took me by surprise! As interior designers who are frequently hired for hallways and lobby projects in NYC coop and condo buildings, our work is complex.

As New Yorkers, we got used to seeing restaurant letter grades pretty quickly. At first, it seemed weird (and upsetting when you discovered that your favorite restaurant got a C). Well, soon, you will see a letter grade posted in the lobby window of most residential buildings. This rating has nothing to do with cleanliness or hygiene, however. It is a rating of energy efficiency.

A big challenge in my line of work as a hallway and lobby interior designer in New York is the city’s ever-expanding safety code regulations. I’m proud of how my firm manages to find a balance between the aesthetic sensibilities of the spaces we create while we carefully follow every rule.

If you own a coop or condo in a vintage New York City building, you may be wondering how the value of your property is holding up in the face of the vast residential construction of the past few years.

This article is about an item you probably don’t think about very much: the lowly umbrella stand. According to the national weather service, five of the wettest years on record have occurred since 2001. So, if you suspect it rains more than ever before in NYC, you’re right!

Every January, many of the most popular interior design websites predict which trends are going be hot during the coming year. (Interestingly, many of them make the same predictions!).

As an NYC interior design firm, we think a lot about color, texture, fabric, finishes, traffic patterns, and lighting... and building codes.

I raised my two children in Manhattan during an era when the sight of a parent pushing a stroller was a rare occasion. As the city became cleaner and safer, however, new parents discovered the joys of raising children here as opposed to leaving for the suburbs as their parents likely did.

We choose to live in the greatest city in the world, but we do everything we can to avoid leaving our apartments. To the outside world, this doesn’t make sense. Why live here if you don’t want to go out and enjoy it?

If you live in a doorman building, you probably start thinking about your annual gift for the doorman a few weeks before the holidays are upon you. And while everyone loves a few extra bucks in their wallet, there are other ways you can make your doorman happy – and not just at the holidays.

As New York City changes, so do the wants and needs of its hundreds of thousands of apartment dwellers. In this blog, I introduce some of the current trends in apartment building lobby renovation and explain the thinking behind them. However, before I do that, let’s talk about what’s going on in residential architecture in the city today.

Interior designers get a lot of special requests lobbed at them from their clients, many of which they have to be gently talked out of. In my work as a specialist in lobby interior design, I probably get more crazy requests than the average interior designer. After all, I have an entire building full of condo/coop owners to deal with!

One of the most important roles of an interior designer is to be an expert on color. That’s because color influences mood more than most people realize. Each human motion can be impacted by color. If you’ve ever walked into a room and felt slightly unsettled, the colors used in that room could be one reason why.

When I was just getting started as a New York City interior designer, I was horrified to see the blank stares on the faces of my clients while I was waxing poetically about the perfect Schluter or the ideal flitch. It didn’t take me long to realize that if I wanted projects to run smoothly, my clients and I had to be on the same page right from the start.

Our core obsession, lobby interior design, is just one of several primary interior design services here at Sygrove Associates Design Group. In fact, we provide a quite wide variety of interior design services. In addition to our noted work in high-end apartment, condo and coop buildings, our capabilities include corporate offices and family homes, as well (see below).

In our office we work on two types of interior design projects, commercial and residential. In commercial interior design we are known for our work on condo and coop lobbies and hallways.