Given a great voice and a brilliant song, you can belt to the back of the house. That, in a nutshell, is Anthony Baratta’s approach to decorating: Start with perfectly harmonized colors and materials, then pull out the stops. “We’ll play some notes louder or faster,” says the New York-based designer, “but it’s always under control, always in the same key.” The result, he says, “has a lightheartedness to it. What do I want from a space? To delight.”

a blue and white upholstered chair sits by a fireplace and you can see a leather banquette in the background with antique china hung on the wall
Anthony Baratta employs trims and tapes “like the outlines in a coloring book,” he says. The seat back panel is lifted from the sofa’s indigo urn fabric and echoes the shape of the client’s plates and platters mounted in the kitchen beyond. Plaster sconces (Paul Ferrante) and crystal candelabras frame the fireplace and add to the room’s sense of fantasy.
Mark Roskams

His clients at the Apthorp, the historic Italian Renaissance apartment building in Manhattan, were more than open to Baratta’s virtuosity—as was their newly acquired space. With its overscale rooms and “weird, hybrid French-style architecture,” notes the designer, it presented quite the theatrical pied-à-terre for the recent transplants to Florida, who bought it as a means of maintaining a foothold in the city so they could keep up with Broadway shows. “We used a scale of furniture that’s meant for a space like this,” says Baratta. “Sofas are big, chairs are high. The drapes make the windows even more grand.”

a radiant office is dressed in a lee jofa tartan pattern recolored specifically for this room and the armchair upholstery is inspired by an early american weaving and the leather chair is antique english

And it also played well to the owners’ favorite decorating theme: historic Americana with an emphasis on textiles and folk art. “In American decorating, there are no real rules,” he says. Colors and patterns, too, can be “big.” In addition to delicious florals and glamorous geometrics, references to Colonial design traditions abound, from a matelasse-covered slipper chair in the primary bedroom to a library armchair in a wool ingrain. As for stripes, they assert themselves not only in the dramatic entry and bedroom wallpapers, but also more subtly via trims and woven tapes that emphasize the contours of furnishings and drapery and bring the composition of each room into sharp focus.

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a luxe bedroom with red and white striped walls and blue and white bedding
“Fantasy with a bit of a surrealistic quality,” is how Anthony Baratta describes his interiors. Here, a Victorian recamier brings a lively, animated presence to the foot of the bed. The chandelier, a Russian antique from the client’s mother, feels “princessy,” not pompous, among the cerise stripes (wall upholstery linen, Bennison) and ethereal blues. The pineapple-finial bed is Baratta’s own design.
Mark Roskams

It adds up to an interior that, like a showstopping tune, is as memorable as it is uplifting. Says the designer, “I want you to walk in the door and say, ‘Whoa.’ ”

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This feature originally appeared in the July/August 2021 issue of VERANDA. Interior design by Anthony Baratta; photography by Mark Roskams; written by Celia Barbour.