March 7, 2025“We’d been looking for our family home for a really long time,” says Rory Byrne, a voice actor. She and her husband, Mike, cofounder of an advertising agency, had lived in two Manhattan condos with their son and daughter. Neither place, she says, felt quite cozy enough.
Then, in 2023, the couple found a West Village duplex with wonderful light — some of it bouncing off the Hudson River. The rooms, however, were very oddly shaped, which made it difficultc to create comfortable furniture groupings. Byrne believed the place could be made homey, but to do that, she says, “we needed a designer with a strong point of view.”
Enter JennA Chused, an interior designer with a gentle manner and a powerful aesthetic sense. Chused’s own Brooklyn house, a brownstone in Fort Greene, attracted a lot of attention when it was first published, in Architectural Digest in 2022, in part because she chose a high-gloss burgundy finish for her kitchen cabinets. “That’s not a color you see very often,” she says.
Of course, there is more to the kitchen than cabinets: cream-colored walls, white-marble countertops and patinated-brass fixtures. Still, the red is an attention-getter. “Half of my clients come to me because they saw my kitchen,” Chused says.
The other half may come for the eclectic mix of furnishings that she not only chooses for her clients but also sells at her store, Antik, on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and on 1stDibs.
When she first saw Chused’s house, Byrne says, “there wasn’t a single fixture or piece of art I recognized.” That was important to her. “I didn’t want people walking in and saying, ‘I have the same sconces.’ ”
But before they could think about furniture and fixtures, Chused had to perform a bit of surgery on the apartment. There was its unusual angular layout to deal with, plus the need to distinguish one space from another.
The front door, for example, opened directly into a combined kitchen/dining area without so much as a place to hang a hat. The living room was dominated by a utilitarian stairway and a brick fireplace that didn’t relate to the rest of the decor.
Chused thought that built-ins, if properly deployed, could help differentiate the spaces and, if well designed, pull focus from the apartment’s obtuse angles.
The bullet-shaped storage unit that now separates the front door from the dining area illustrates this approach. On the entry side, it contains coat closets and drawers — enough for all the family’s outerwear, Byrne says. On the dining side, it creates a feeling of enclosure and hides the awkward angle where the two rooms meet.
A rug from Chused’s own line further defines the dining area. Surrounding a Roman & Williams–designed table are vintage dining chairs, plus a small sofa for extra seating, all bought on 1stDibs. Pendants from Apparatus mimic Chinese tea canister below. The room looks carefully composed, yet casual enough for everyday use.
Chused was similarly inventive in the kitchen, where she expanded a marble island with a wooden “apron” to make it more functional. A strip of brass between the marble and oak is a smart detail, as is the curved corner that makes the island less an interruption than an invitation. The client already owned the BDDW stools.
Next to the dining room, a newly created home office is anchored by a massive Charles Dudouyt desk, bought from Davidowski through 1stDibs. Accessories include a Tommy Parzinger lamp, a 17th-century Italian mirror and a desk chair from La Contessa Arreda. Thanks to its colorful rug, again by Chused, the space maintains the domestic atmosphere of the apartment even as it feels like a real workplace.
Past the office is the living room, where Chused’s architectural interventions were similarly ingenious. She designed a new, clean-lined fireplace surround of travertine and covered the wall around it in the same oak used elsewhere in the apartment.
To the left of the fireplace, Chused installed a shallow, barely noticeable oak cabinet to conceal the TV, which rises out of its hiding place at the touch of a button. To the right of the fireplace, she used more of the same wood to create a curving window seat, turning a formerly dead corner into a comfortable nook.
Chused chose an L-shaped sectional sofa from BDDW to establish the room as a gathering place. The sofa’s exposed metal legs commune with a sleek new stair rail designed by Chused.
A pair of mid-century bucket chairs in a rust-colored shearling and a coffee table from Egg Collective complete the seating area. The repetition of certain forms — especially the circles of the bucket chairs, the ceramic sconces above the fireplace and the “parasol” lampshade over the window seat — helps tie the room together.
The other side of the room, behind the sofa, is dominated by a vintage console purchased on 1stDibs. On the wall above this, a BDDW puzzle painting is flanked by a pair of Paul Matter sconces named Goddess, which resemble devotional objects and are perfectly balanced whether hung with their LED light sources on the top or the bottom.
There’s one other important room downstairs. “I told Jenna I wanted a whimsical, kooky powder room,” says Byrne, who figured it’s okay to take chances in a tiny space. Chused responded by buying a vintage dresser on 1stDibs and having a travertine vanity top made to fit it. The gray-scale botanical wallpaper is from Superflower. The sconces from Visual Comfort add a playful touch, thanks to fringed shades from Anna Hayman Designs.
Upstairs, Chused worked with the couple and their teenaged children to give each a distinctive environment. In the primary bedroom, the designer wanted to keep the colors soft, but she went all out on textures, selecting new parchment-covered nightstands from DeMuro Das and placing a nubby bouclé blanket over the custom bed, which is upholstered in a Maharam linen-cotton blend. On the nightstand is a French mid-century travertine table lamp.
She took a different tack in one teenager’s room. Here, walls, floor and ceiling are drenched in saturated colors. A contemporary bed is overlooked by an Op art painting on plexiglass by Letitia Quesenberry. Next to the bed, a nightstand, from Lemon via 1stDibs, supports a feathered steel table lamp by Mark Malecki. Thc overall effect is of a sophisticated cave for decompressing during time away from college.
Step Inside Jenna Chused’s Own Brooklyn Home
Chused, who grew up in North Carolina, worked in fashion before spending 13 years building the home-furnishings company DwellStudio, where she was second in command. In 2013, it was sold to Wayfair, and she opened her own design firm, Chused & Co., two years later.
Now, she says, “I’m doing exactly what I like to do, which is to shop for vintage and antique pieces and to design spaces.” Her client couldn’t be happier. “Home can be a sanctuary,” says Byrne. “And this one really feels like that to me.”
