Fresh Eyes For Your Home

Working with Joanna made renovating our kitchen and living room an exceptionally enjoyable and exciting experience. Her laid-back personality and keen sense of style added a delightful touch to our project, instilling confidence and ease throughout. Joanna is not just a decorator but a true collaborator who worked closely with us, ensuring we stayed on track and focused on achieving our desired end result. One of Joanna's standout qualities is her attentive listening, seamlessly blending our personal style preferences with her extensive expertise. Her organizational skills played a crucial role in guiding us through our own thought process, drawing out creativity we didn't even know we had. The professionalism exhibited by Joanna is truly unmatched. She follows through on her commitments, efficiently managing contractors and vendors while holding them accountable. We are genuinely looking forward to future collaborations with Joanna. Her unique approach, coupled with her reliability and creativity, makes her a standout professional in the field. If you're seeking a decorator who can make the process both enjoyable and seamless, Joanna is undoubtedly the one to choose.

Joanna Cohlan’s signature work and style are absolutely beautiful, smart, engaging, and innovative. We've experienced many professionals in the home improvement industry, but Joanna is one individual we have worked with who uniquely stands out. Joanna is a veteran designer with laser-like focus on not only gorgeous environmental design, but also the humanistic aspect of her servicing clients. She knows how to listen and gets to know who you are and what your aesthetics and taste are like. She is persistent, always comes with solutions and options, thinks outside the box, and is an absolutely patient, consummate professional. When we first met, I was immediately impressed with her communication style, and when we worked together, she forged a profound understanding of our needs for comfort and storage space, as well as a modern fresh look. Her ability to see our vision was outstanding. During our time and collaboration with her, Joanna displayed great talents in fabric selection, color palette, texture, wall unit design, and budgeting. She empowered my wife and me by helping us with a sofa that needed reupholstering. She extensively advised us on a very large, complicated, and expansive customized wall unit that saved us money and created more space. She is a genuine pleasure to work with. We could not have accomplished what we did without her expertise. We were able to realize our “pride of place” because of her. We recommend her for anyone renovating or redesigning any part of their home.

Joanna Cohlan is the absolute BEST at home decorating and design. She has amazing design sense and helped us redo our living room and dining room - rugs, furniture, and all lighting. She is professional and always has the client's budget in mind. She is easy-going and lots of fun too. I can't wait to work with her again.

Fresh Eyes For Your Home-Joanna Cohlan has helped us with a number of design projects in recent years. Joanna is enjoyable to work with and has made the process less overwhelming by narrowing the design choices. Joanna has great suggestions on color scheme, flooring, lighting, furniture selection and furniture layout. We are very happy with Joanna’s design suggestions and would recommend her services on any project.

We consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have found and engaged Joanna Cohlan (Fresh Eyes For Your Home) for the renovation of our new Manhattan apartment. She translated our vision of what we wanted into a reality and provided the creative solutions, contractors and guidance that has resulted in our beautiful new home. The theme she envisioned is a lovely Art Deco design which ties nicely into the style of our building. The scope of our project included some structural work, gut renovation of our kitchen, both bathrooms, new lighting, interior doors and hardware, refinished floors and a totally new color scheme. We just can't say enough regarding her enthusiasm, creative prowess, project management and attention to detail. Now that our apartment is completed, we plan on relying upon her to help renovate our house in New Jersey,

It was truly a pleasure to work with Joanna! She is creative, practical, resourceful and incredibly responsive and helpful! She has such a great eye and creative vision and she can come into a space and tell you exactly what it needs! She helped us to update our home and paid as much attention to the tiny details of a small accent piece as she did to the larger renovation portion! She incorporated pieces we already owned into her designs with new pieces allowing us to update our home while still being conscious of our budget! Most importantly, she helped us to enjoy and appreciate our home again!

My family and I just moved into my our home, which we designed top to bottom with Joanna Cohlan.While renovating a home can be stressful, working with Joanna was the best part. Here's why: 1) Joanna's incredible style—she takes cues from her clients and listens to their needs but infuses their choices with items that stand the test of time; 2) Her attention to detailcreates a cohesive and beautiful space. She helps you coordinate all aspects of a room—from couch fabrics to rugs to wall paint to flooring to art to even doorknobs and kitchen pulls and appliances (the list goes on) to help create a cohesive look that is impeccable; 3) Her deep knowledge of all aspects of home design-- from which size medicine cabinets, to which size kitchen-cabinet pulls, to the best place for the refrigerator within your kitchen, Joanna knows how to make your home functional and modern; 4) Her access to the best home, rug, furniture, appliance, closet, and kitchen designers in Westchester. Throughout her years as a designer she has created a network of home-design contacts that value her, her work, and her clients, allowing us to work with professionals that bent over backwards to ensure our satisfaction; 4) Her personality! Joanna is fun, bubbly, and warm, making her a joy to work with. Overall, working with Joanna was a dream that allowed us to build our dream home. I'm so grateful for the opportunity we had to benefit and learn from her.

My husband and I recently worked with Joanna on a complete renovation of a 2100 square foot apartment involving everything from moving walls, selecting new floors, ceilings, lighting, bathrooms and a kitchen. Joanna was able to simplify the complexity of this project by organizing the cooperation of contractors and numerous suppliers to ensure that details were taken care of and potential problems avoided. We were particularly impressed by her concern that that things were designed to be comfortable, user friendly and at the same time aesthetically pleasing. This was as particularly important to us when deciding on lighting, bathroom fixtures and plumbing, electrical placement, space planning and utilization. Working with Joanna was a fun experience because of her excitement around using our art and furniture in an entirely different and new space having transitioned from a large home. We particularly valued her knowledge when it came to selecting lighting, cabinetry, new tile, flooring and countertops that worked with our eclectic taste. Joanna’s willingness to explore, our ideas helped to personalize choices to suit our lifestyle. The experience was like being on a joyful adventure with a guide who helped you to get to the best places, kept you safe when making choices and on time for deadlines. This was no small accomplishment in the year of Covid 2020. Marcia Grubel

I have had the pleasure working with Joanna on two separate projects. In 2016 she helped me with my Connecticut home including new fixtures and furnishing throughout. When I decided to move back to New York City (in 2020!), Joanna was my first phone call. Joanna excels at understanding my needs and applying her great sense of style to bring together existing pieces and features with new purchases. I rely on her great taste for suggestion on all my new purchases. Even better Joanna has helped me save money by passing through her designer discounts and pushing back on vendors when she felt estimates were too high. I literally have saved more money than I have spent! I highly recommend Joanna for all your design needs.

I hired Joanna to help me turn my dated, dark mid-2000s colonial with the typical Tuscan decor popular at the time into a bright and modern, yet warm and comfortable family home. It was a large project, since I was effectively starting over in virtually every room of a 6000 sq ft house, including a major kitchen reno. I was wary of working with an interior designer again, since all my previous experiences were disasters. On past projects, I'd found myself steered time and again to expensive custom made furniture, window treatments and decor that I ended up hating, but obviously couldn't return. I also would be presented with a bunch of choices, and when I'd ask them what they thought, they'd say I was the one who needed to decide - always leaving me wondering, "If I could do that, why did I hire you?" Joanna was different from day one. She immediately got my taste and style, worked quickly and thoroughly to narrow down real choices, and gave me firm opinions when I asked for them. The best part was, she understood my budget and desire to get things done quickly, and worked with me my way to choose from pieces that already existed no matter where they came from, even if my preference was to order from Wayfair (something I've found most decorators loathe to do). From lighting to furniture to countertops and paint colors, she was with me every step of the way, helping me make the right choices and showing me options I never would've thought of. She has amazing taste and a great eye for detail. She also went above and beyond, helping me to get things done and working with my contractor while I was overseas for two months, so that when we arrived back home everything looked beautiful and was ready for us to enjoy. After nine years in this house, I can finally look around and love everything about it, and have received many compliments from family and friends. I recommend Joanna wholeheartedly, and particularly if you've had negative experiences in the past, don't hesitate - I wish I'd found her sooner!

Joanna Cohlan (Fresh Eyes For Your Home) is by far the best designer I have ever worked with. I started using her services more than 20 years ago. She helped me with my kitchen and then she designed my entire office - over 1500 square feet. She bought all the furniture, supervised the contractors, selected the colors, etc. A couple of years ago she designed all 3 bathrooms in my residence when we gut renovated them. My personal master bath is so beautiful that it is the first room I show people when they visit my house. Joanna also designed the nursery for my grandson and my daughter’s room last year. Since I adore Joanna and trust her taste and work ethic, I brought her in to design 2 lobbies in a building in Manhattan I involved with. Besides having fabulous taste and a great eye, Joanna is easy to get along with. I have also recommended her to many friends and relatives.

After spending two years struggling with how to organize and design my living room, due to it's awkward shape and other design challenges, I decided to look for help. I am so fortunate to have found Joanna Cohlan!! She is talented, thoughtful, caring and brilliant! Joanna designed an incredible space around the unique needs of my family. She worked around some pieces that I already had (some which belonged to my parents and are therefore very special to me) and created a space which is beautiful, functional, cozy and sophisticated all in one! Beyond "just" having a beautiful new living room, I also found the entire process cathartic and transformative. Joanna gave great advice and guidance about which pieces I should keep and which to move out of the room. The entire experience was such a positive one- it exceeded my expectations- I called Joanna to ask for help with designing a room, but I gained so much more from the whole experience!! Thanks to Joanna, I now have a beautiful space to make new memories with my family! I highly recommend Joanna Cohlan! She is amazing!