Jeffrey Bilhuber

Jeffrey Bilhuber’s design style reflects how we live our lives today. His uniquely American perspective breathes new life into traditionalism with a confirmed understanding of modern sensibilities. He mixes periods and design ideas with a confidence and instinctive style whose rules are self-evident: practicality and sheer beauty. Bilhuber is recognized for his fresh spin on classic design and universally acknowledged as a major style force.

From Manhattan projects large and small to easygoing country retreats; townhouses in London to signature hotels and engaging museum and gallery spaces—Bilhuber molds his creative aesthetic to complement the functional and visual needs of his clientele. Many of Bilhuber’s clients are themselves legendary style setters: Anna Wintour, Iman and David Bowie, Elsa Peretti, Bob Pittman, and Golden Globe winner Mariska Hargitay, to name a few. His hospitality projects, City Club Hotel and 70 Park Avenue Hotel, have been prominently featured in multiple leading design publications. Bilhuber’s work has been published in more than 100 design books, as well as every major national and international shelter magazine.

Bilhuber has been singled out not only for his design expertise but also for his ability to represent and articulate the best of American style. In an eight-page feature story in Vogue, the world-renowned authority on fashion and design Hamish Bowles likened him to a 21st-century Billy Baldwin. Bilhuber has become the spokesperson of choice for virtually all lifestyle media with his instinctive, enlightened, and academic approach to integrating time-honored traditions and 21st-century simplicity, making the whole process understandable and engaging for a modern-day audience. For these reasons, he has been a popular television guest on a wide variety of programs, including Charlie Rose, The View, Conan O’Brien, and HGTV.

His first book, Jeffrey Bilhuber’s Design Basics (Rizzoli, 2003), with a foreword by Anna Wintour and now in its fourth printing, continues to be a favorite among readers and design enthusiasts. In Defining Luxury: The Qualities of Life at Home (Rizzoli, 2008), he defines what luxury should be relative to 21st-century life. The book boasts over 200 color photos of projects from coast to coast; a true testament to his capacity to explore a variety of design vocabularies that respond to the specific and personal aesthetic ambitions of the individual. In September 2011, his widely anticipated third book, The Way Home: Reflections on American Beauty (Rizzoli), was released to enormous acclaim. In her Wall Street Journal review, “The Soul Man of Interiors,” Sarah Ruffin Costello states, “With the release of his latest book, Jeffrey Bilhuber seals his legacy as a design pioneer on par with phenoms like Albert Hadley who show everybody else how it’s done.”  Exploring the emotional allure and sentiments we have to the rooms, houses, and apartments that surround us, it examines 12 recently completed projects, and the stories of the families that inhabit them.

Bilhuber is happiest doing what he does best—creating environments for real people and families to inhabit. With each project, Bilhuber helps his clients achieve a style to suit their needs, taking their own taste and making it better. He frequents the grand antiquaries, modernist designers’ studios, and artists’ ateliers where these lifestyle needs are best met. Bilhuber’s unlikely combinations of plain with fancy and new with old make for dwellings as fascinating as they are functional.

“The future of design is seamlessly integrating a respect for the past with an optimistic view toward the future.” —Jeffrey Bilhuber