Meet the Reigning Queen of Interior Design

Barbara Ostrom

MEET THE REIGNING QUEEN OF INTERIOR DESIGN

Barbara Ostrom Associates is nationally recognized for both residential and commercial projects.

She decorated three homes for the late President and Mrs. Richard Nixon, worked interior design magic on the set of “The Real Housewives of New York City” while graciously deflecting some just-for-the-cameras conflicts and designed a library to hold 10,000 books for a client who later revealed he only read on a Kindle.

But among acclaimed interior designer Barbara Ostrom’s most creative accomplishments are likely the rooms she’s decorated within more than 60 showhouses. From the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club Decorator Showhouse to the Saddle River Showhouse and the Hampton Holiday House to the Mansion in May Designer Showhouse - and more - she’s done them all, multiple times.

The late interior designer Mario Buatta, nicknamed “The Prince of Chintz,” dubbed Ostrom “The Queen of the Showhouse,” a gracious nod to the beauty and breadth of her work. “Curtain Up!: Thirty Years of Spectacular Showhouse Rooms,” a coffee table book of her work spanning 30 years, captures her process from crumbling room to showhouse stunner. In the book, which is available on Amazon, Buatta praised Ostrom’s imaginative, over-the-top style, as seen in a range of polished yet playful details. From antique bird cages to wildly colorful hand-painted ceilings, Ostrom’s signature is the unexpected, irreverent, irresistible touch that elevates and enlivens a room.

Although she doesn’t have a specific showhouse room she prefers to decorate, she does like to do a room that’s seen early on a showhouse tour. “I’ve done home theaters, libraries, kitchens, basements, you name it, but the rooms toward the front of the house and the stand-alone spaces like greenhouses and pool houses are especially exciting. Every showhouse offers the opportunity to fully unleash my creativity,” she says.

After a showhouse hiatus brought on by the pandemic, Ostrom did just that last December, creating a stunning vignette for Holiday House NYC. She partnered with Waterford Crystal to design a Christmas tablescape featuring a mix of antique furnishings and contemporary touches. A Christmas tree bedecked with bright red ribbons and Waterford crystal ornaments reflected her love of color and classical elements.

Like the lives of other royals, Ostrom’s life seemed destined almost from the start. At the age of 18, on a trip to the Frick Museum in New York City with her grandmother, she wandered into the wrong lecture and, happily, discovered the world of interior design. She knew then and there what she wanted to do with her life. Her father, however, had other ideas, including “Radcliffe (College, Cambridge, Mass.), a Harvard-educated husband, a house in Greenwich,” she recalls. Undeterred, she applied to and put herself through the New York School of Interior Design.

At the end of her first year, she landed a summer job (by winning a contest) with a well-known New York City decorator whose clients included Greek shipping magnates and Texas oil tycoons. “Little did I know, she couldn’t keep an assistant for more than two weeks,” Ostrom laughs. Still, she rose to the challenge and that summer “we flew by private jet to visit a client in Greece and, from there, traveled to Paris. She wouldn’t tell me which client we were there to see but, as it turned out, it was the Duke and Duchess of Windsor!” Ostrom continued to work there for eight years, juggling her undergraduate studies and subsequent coursework for a master’s degree from Pratt with “the most incredible design projects.”

From there, she joined an architectural design firm and spent 10 years traveling all over Europe and the United States working on interior design projects for hotels, stores, and other commercial spaces. “Unfortunately, I didn’t see my husband very much. When he gave me an ultimatum - stay married to my job or stay married to him - I gave six months’ notice and we moved to New Jersey,” she says.

Not surprisingly, Ostrom hardly missed a beat. “I started giving programs at Newcomers Clubs in the area and began getting some small jobs, then larger ones. By 1987, she’d opened a design studio on the mezzanine level of the Sheraton Crossroads in Mahwah, a space she continues to operate, along with satellite offices in New York City and the Hamptons. Over the years, her client list expanded to include a host of luminaries, including New Jersey Senator Gerald Cardinale, New Jersey Governor James Florio, Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, and former New York Giant Michael Strahan.

As her client list grew, so did invitations to participate in showhouses, including one especially fortuitous Kips Bay Showhouse in New York City .“It was my first showhouse and Tricia Nixon walked through and loved the room, so she asked if I would consider decorating her parents’ townhouse on East 65th Street,” she recalls. So began a long friendship that spanned more than 15 years and included two subsequent residences, the late President and Mrs. Richard Nixon’s Saddle River home and, later, a townhouse at Bear’s Nest in Park Ridge.

Even her dad, who couldn’t have imagined that his young daughter would be one day asked to decorate the home of the 37th President of the United States, came around. “He was a huge fan,” she smiles.

This summery family room in the Hamptons was once "plain Jane." Ostrom added all of the latticework and painted it a bright sunshine yellow, since it is on the north side of the house. Now it feels bathed in sunlight.