November 23, 2025She may be the namesake head of a flourishing home design firm, but Andrea Goldman calls herself “an accidental designer.” She embarked upon her career by chance, without any formal training. The native of Green Bay, Wisconsin, began her professional life as a writer in Chicago in the early 1990s, working for a firm specializing in political PR. Within a few years, the job’s high-stakes drama and constant travel had left her burnt out. Solace came from pouring over shelter magazines and visiting open houses.
It didn’t occur to her that a passion for home renovation might offer an alternative career path. A few years later, however, as she was looking to buy her first apartment, she confessed her professional frustrations to the friendly young broker. He encouraged her to call his father, a prominent local developer, who gave her an entry-level position assisting buyers of his new-build homes to choose among custom offerings. Goldman brought such flair to the task that within a year she was promoted to helping develop and manage new projects.
She adored every aspect of the work, especially the construction process. And if all this doesn’t already seem like kismet, it was also at the company that she met the man who became her husband.
Seven years later, with three young children in tow, the couple moved to a custom-built modern manor, which they designed with Massey Associates Architects, in the North Shore suburb of Glencoe. With steep gables and a crisply fenestrated facade, it radiated curb appeal.
Equally fetching was its interior: an airy, light-filled open plan, which Goldman furnished in a spare yet inviting manner, layering the rooms with diverse materials, textures and fabulous finds. In the kitchen, classic mid-century modern molded-plastic Charles and Ray Eames chairs sit at an Eero Saarinen–inspired table; the primary suite sports David Iatesta‘s svelte contemporary spin on a classic four-poster; and the dining room combines a Sputnik-style chandelier with a warm, richly grained wooden table from local antiques dealer The Golden Triangle. Picture perfect, the house was published in a Chicago magazine.
Goldman had left her job to raise her brood, but now prospective clients came calling. “I was fortunate,” she says. “It was very word-of-mouth.” Having no assistants, she took only a couple of projects a year, always with a construction component.
“That’s what I most loved and where I felt I had the experience,” she says. Nearly 10 years later, she manages a studio with a staff of 12, handling large projects — new builds and major renovations — across the country and in Mexico.
Goldman notes that the recently completed Glencoe project profiled here is atypical for her studio, because of the limited scope of the renovation. She only took it on, she says, because the clients, a husband and wife, are “dear friends.”
When their four children were small, they purchased the mock Tudor spec house for its ample size and desirable location, despite its clunky, dark interior. Their preference was for the kind of bright, breezy home that is Goldman’s signature, but they wanted to wait until their offspring were grown and out of the house before undertaking a redo.
Goldman focused on an overhaul of the decor. In the foyer, she repainted the black walls and white wainscot a silvery gray, replaced the elaborate crystal chandelier with a far more casual hanging rope-wrapped lamp and softened the dark slate floor with a cream-colored wool rug. And at the center, she placed a round reclaimed-wood table that doubles as a festive showcase for the wife’s seasonal floral displays.
The adjacent dining room was seldom used. Long and narrow, it was “hard to furnish with a reasonably wide table,” Goldman says, “if you wanted to pull out chairs on both sides.” She finessed this deficiency with a banquette and a pair of square pedestal tables. The latter can be conjoined for formal entertaining or kept separate to serve as ideal card tables for the wife’s evenings of canasta. For seating, Goldman repurposed the curved-backed dining chairs from the breakfast nook.
That space, with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, was always appealing but underused. So, Goldman opened it to the adjoining patio and pool with a set of bifold glass doors. Now, the nook is central to the home’s circulation and a favorite hangout. She furnished it with plaid-upholstered thomas Hayes chairs, a monumental pedestal table and an overscale woven pendant lamp from Palecek.
Some families like nest-like dens, but this one was downright dismal, even with its enormous bay window. Dark putty-colored walls, a somber stone fireplace and a dreary antique dresser were among the design culprits.
Goldman brought sweetness and light to the space with the same silvery gray paint she used in the foyer. She dressed the window in pale gauzy curtains made of a Rogers & GoffiGOn fabric and replaced the mantelpiece with a clean-lined black-soapstone one of her own design. A crisply tailored pale gray sectional gives the room structure, while an antique Chinese cabinet from Pagoda Red, one of Goldman’s favorite Chicago antiques shops and a 1stDibs dealer, provides some soul.
Goldman personalized the formal living room by fitting its back wall with narrow shelves to display a changing selection of photos of the couple’s children. Placed beneath a contemporary chandelier, a pair of trim but cushy custom sofas encourage intimate, relaxed conversations, while ivory-fringed draperies in a Schumacher textile and a fluffy pastel Berber rug enhance the genial ambience.
Given all the bother of the remodel, Goldman observes that her friends might have more easily purchased a new dwelling better suited to their taste and needs. But they and their children, who still frequently visit, were too attached to the neighborhood (and the house, too, despite its many shortcomings). Theirs was a psychic bond to which she relates. And through her inspired transformation, the awkward and somber house has become the luminous and relaxed family home the couple long desired, one now specially tailored to their empty-nest lives.
