Decor Aid Featured Design New Jersey

When Claudia DiGiacomo reached out to New York City-based design consortium Decor Aid to redesign her home in Florham Park, the first room she wanted to tackle was the office. One room was separated from the rest of the busy household, giving her the flexibility to work from home and stay productive during the remainder of the redesign process.

“I loved the bones of the existing space,” says DiGiacomo, but at the same time it was far from her own aesthetic. “It was so dark and gloomy and didn’t speak to me … I wanted light, airy and more modern.”

The entire space had to be redesigned, according to the design team, starting with the dark, paneled walls. The team painted the walls and bookshelves a light, chalky pastel blue that brightened the room significantly and set the office apart from the rest of the house.

Was DiGiacomo hesitant to take such a bold move with the wooden walls? “Yes!” she remembers. “I really had to trust my designer that this would look great in the end.” There was talk of whether they should apply a varnish or a high-gloss finish, but “in the end, it was the right choice not to do that,” she says.

Since this was her dedicated home office, DiGiacomo was willing to be bolder with color choices to capture her “bright, fresh, preppy, and modern” sense of style, the designers say. Sticking to a strict palette of pinks, purples, and blues – and a repetition of motifs – ensures the bold but feminine scheme doesn’t overwhelm the senses. “If just one shade of blue was turned off, it would throw off the entire room, making it feel less individual.”

The fine details also transformed the home office into a really individual room, from the lively Lulu DK print on the wall to the Jonathan Adler lamp – a finishing touch that complements the modern atmosphere of the room. And then there’s the tiny side table in Benjamin Moore’s Melrose Pink. “It’s so cute and so pink,” says DiGiacomo. “It wouldn’t work in this color anywhere else in the house.”