Brownstoner’s Top 10 Insiders of 2025

Each week Brownstoner columnist Cara Greenberg provides an inspirational look at interior design and renovation in homes across the borough, from prewar apartments to brownstones. Each Insider column, which has appeared on Brownstoner since 2011, offers a tour of a finished project with details on layout decisions, finishes, and decoration.

Below, click through to find the 10 most popular Insider columns of 2025 and see if your favorite made the list.

10. The Insider: All-Out Reno of Park Slope Townhouse Questions the Usual ‘Rules’

The dilapidated row house, recently purchased by a couple with young kids, cried out for a massive renovation. “It needed everything. The works!” said architect Kim Letven of Gowanus-based NV/design.architecture (NV/da). There were some structural issues, as well as mechanicals in need of complete replacement. NV/da began with joist repair, leveling floors, a new roof, new skylights, new HVAC, a sprinkler system, all new plumbing, repointing…the list goes on.

9. The Insider: Holistic Update Makes the Most of Narrow Cobble Hill Brownstone

At just 15 feet wide, narrowness was one challenge in the renovation of this four-story mid-19th century Italianate brownstone in the Cobble Hill Historic District, but it wasn’t the only one. Decades of patchwork renovations and general deterioration didn’t help. And, as in almost all homes of that era, storage was woefully inadequate for a modern family.

“Initially, the house didn’t look in bad shape, but it had had hodgepodge, builder-grade renovations,” said architect Annie Scheel, a founding partner in the versatile 12-year-old firm Coughlin Scheel Architects, with offices near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “Someone had added a bathroom, stuck in air conditioning, without thinking about the design.”

8. The Insider: Full-on Interior Update Polishes Park Slope Neo-Tudor Gem

You would think, with an historic, century-old Neo-Tudor gem of a house, that its owners over the years would respect its architectural integrity inside and out. In fact, the three-story, one-family building had been to hell and back, from use as a doctor’s office to a bed and breakfast, each time incurring changes to its exterior facade, including replacement of original windows and the insertion of multiple new entrances.

A 1990s renovation restored the exterior to its original appearance, but at the same time stripped the interior of any remaining original detail. “They did a really wild post-modern renovation, completely out of style and not at all functional,” said architect Brendan Coburn of The Brooklyn Studio, recently hired by the latest owners, a couple with a young daughter, to put things back to rights.

7. The Insider: Top-to-Bottom Reno, New Decor Warms and Opens Up Cobble Hill Townhouse

The renovation of a landmarked five-story brownstone began prosaically enough, with the need to address long-term structural decline of the rear wall. It wound up a top-to-bottom, no-holds-barred transformation, including a new three-story wood and glass window system on the rear facade, the conversion of low-ceilinged attic space to a skylit home office with kitchenette and roof terrace, the meticulous restoration of lacy plasterwork and other historic detail, and an all-new color palette and furnishings scheme masterminded by the homeowner, an interior designer.

Built in 1850 in the Anglo-Italianate style, the house is of an unusual type that’s a rarely noted feature of the neighborhood’s architectural legacy. “It’s part of a mansion house building, three row houses built to look compositionally like one large row house,” said architect Jesse Fearins, a partner in The Brooklyn Studio, who, along with Brendan Coburn, the founding partner, Jasper Crace, the project manager, and other members of the firm’s 30-person team, carried out the comprehensive project.

6. The Insider: Bed Stuy Garden Floor Reno Makes Aging in Place Stylish and Social

Barry Bordelon and Jordan Slocum, the design team known as the Brownstone Boys, were working corporate jobs in 2018 when they impulsively bought a Bed Stuy brownstone, decided to renovate it themselves, and meticulously documented the process in nearly 100 installments for this very website. Since then, they’ve become nothing less than a phenomenon.

One recent undertaking was a garden floor makeover for a friend and neighbor who had lived in her brownstone since the 1980s “and never touched it,” Slocum said. “It was falling apart.” The negatives were obvious. “It was very ’70s in there,” as Bordelon put it. “The kitchen had dark wood cabinetry and laminate countertops that were subway-seat orange, and the bathroom was another disaster.”

5. The Insider: Pops of Stained-Glass Colors Brighten Park Slope Limestone

One of the delights of Brooklyn’s vintage housing stock is that, despite the general uniformity of the row house archetype, when you get down to the details, no two are ever quite alike.

When Long Island City-based architect Sarah Jacoby took on the renovation of a landmarked limestone for a young family, she found an unusual number of interior stained glass windows, some but not all around an original air shaft extending from a rooftop skylight down through the top two floors of the four-story building.

4. The Insider: Fresh Paint and Decor Renew Historic Clinton Hill Row House

If there’s something of a modern British feel to the Victorian row house Emma Montgomery spiffed up and decorated for a young family — and there is — that’s probably because the up-and-coming designer spent her teen years in the U.K. She went on to study interior design at Pratt, did stints at a couple of noted Manhattan firms, and founded Emma Montgomery Design in 2021. Firmly rooted now in Brooklyn, she has a burgeoning portfolio of projects in New York City, Philadelphia, the North Fork, and elsewhere.

The four-story brick townhouse by architects Amzi Hill and Son, who were responsible for many a Brooklyn row house in the second half of the 19th century, required only a light-touch reno to achieve what Montgomery’s clients wanted: a functional, family-friendly home, eclectic in style yet cohesive and pulled together. “We made a few strategic and thoughtful changes,” Montgomery said.

3. The Insider: Full Refresh, Inside and Out, Makes Bed Stuy Townhouse Glorious Again

Even a person who knows a thing or two about historic houses could be fooled by the appearance of this very late 19th century brownstone, so elegant it seems it must have been always thus. But the building’s facade was literally crumbling by the time Bushwick-based architect Jon Powell Architecture (JPA) was summoned to the rescue by new homeowners, a couple who live on the two upper floors and rent out the garden level.

“The facade had been painted, there were moisture issues, it had a Home Depot door in a plywood surround,” Powell recalled. More shockingly, he said, “It was an entirely different style of house. All those decorative elements are not original. The owners wanted to add more detail to the facade, and I felt like it was OK,” since the block is not landmarked and the neighboring houses are “all different styles,” said Powell, who happens to live nearby.

2. The Insider: Considered Color Palette Makes Renovated Bed Stuy Townhouse Shine

Homeowners who love color often seek out Sarah Jacoby’s prolific Long Island City-based architecture and design firm for its fearless use of vivid hues. The new owners of an early 20th century bow-front row house — empty nesters thinking ahead about welcoming a new generation — “came to us because of color, and because they knew I wouldn’t want to rip everything out,” Jacoby said.

Jacoby leaned into paint as a strategy, partly for reasons of economy. “It was a beautiful house with incredible detail, but it wasn’t in great shape, and it was quite dark,” she recalled. In many of the rooms, the wood trim and wainscoting had long since been painted over, as had the decorative plasterwork.

1. The Insider: Creative Bed Stuy Couple Conjures Eclectic, Art-Filled Home

Although they consulted with an architect friend, brought in a structural engineer where load-bearing walls were involved, and hired a general contractor, homeowners Anthony Nicolich and Rebecca Chaiklin took it upon themselves to spearhead the renovation and interior design of the late 19th century brownstone they purchased three years ago. The result: an intensely personal home, colorful and comfy, with a soulful, bohemian bent.

Guided by their own tastes and desires, Nicolich, who grew up in Park Slope and has a background in hotel and real estate development, among other pursuits, and Chaiklin, a New York native and documentary filmmaker, indulged eccentricities like having three living rooms and custom marble bathroom fixtures made in Turkey, including a 1,200-pound tub.

Related Stories

• The Insider: All-Out Carroll Gardens Reno Creates Home to Last Generations
• Brownstoner’s Top 10 Insiders of 2024
• Brownstoner’s Top 10 Insiders of 2023

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