June, 2007 Cover Story

Noted educator, interior designer, lecturer, author, columnist and radio talk show host
launches her Home Decorating Club’s “Green University”

NATALIE WEINSTEIN Creates a New Look for Long Island

STORY BY MAUREEN TRAXLER
Cover photo credit: Christine Conniff Sheahan

For Natalie Weinstein, president of Natalie Weinstein Design Associates, empowering her clients to a better life through good home design became a passion that needed to be shared. So in 2001, after a lifetime of interest in home decorating and nearly three decades in the business of interior design, Weinstein founded the Home Decorating Club. Today, over 15,000 Long Island homeowners who are club members have access to Weinstein’s recommended sources with preferential treatment like discounts and perks, and enjoy a club newsletter, opportunities for consultation, workshops and free seminars.

This past September, Weinstein launched her Home Decorating Club’s Green University and held the Club’s first Green Summit and Source Expo, “Amazing Secrets for a Greener Home.” Her students attended educational talks, met “green” experts, previewed products and learned how to save money while Going Green. Each participant received a free binder—chock full of “green ideas.” Weinstein says that her Green Summit “was a charge to say everyone can make a difference.”

It is not out of character for Weinstein to wrap her instruction in a university-style package.

“All of my career has been about being an educator,” Weinstein said in a recent interview with Networking® magazine. She taught music to children, before receiving a degree from Queens College and taking a position as a public school elementary teacher. When she decided to become serious about home decorating, she attended the Willsey Institute for Art and Interior Design, and upon graduation was invited to teach Course 1. She went on at Willsey to become a master teacher and eventually executive director of the School.

Green University Summit

At the first Green University event, local businesses shared their expertise on making Long Island homes more energy efficient and transferring each individual’s own spirit and energy into better living.

Weinstein says participants learned about green architecture and building, window tinting, filtration systems, and solar panels. Michael Garrone Painting Company talked about the use of low VOC (volatile organic compound) paints. Owens Brothers Landscape Design spoke about planting shade trees to provide shelter from the sun in the summertime and evergreens to protect the home in winter, while lowering the homeowner’s dependency on fossil fuels and keeping costs down. Representatives of the Lighting Gallery recommended energy efficient bulbs and the use of dimmers. Peter Weiss discussed feng shui, using good energy in a home to create balance, order, good health and good relationships. Other businesses represented at the Green Summit included E&M Hardwood Flooring, Accent Flooring and Insulation Systems, Anthony J. Musso Architects, Hudson River Mills, Liquacoat Inc, RMA General Contracting Corp., Sunstream USA and TriCounty Window Tinting. Wells Fargo Mortgage Corp. offered special consideration on mortgages to people who wished to “build green.” Weinstein’s Green University is already looking forward to a second event with a continuation of “green ideas” and materials.

In addition, Weinstein announces, “We are exploring a collaboration with the U.S. Green Building Council,” which has formulated the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards for energy efficiency and sustainability. She says she is in the talking stages of an effort to “lend our talents and resources to create a zero-energy home on Long Island.”

Home Decorating Club

Through her experiences with clients and interaction with people during workshops and at speaking engagements, Weinstein realized that people have a thirst for information and want to improve their surroundings. “People always aspire to the next level,” she notes, “and there are just not enough people to guide them.” That, she adds, was “the essence or kernel of how the Home Decorating Club started.”

Weinstein’s genuine desire to help people by sharing her knowledge and skills, combined with the marketing and advertising talents of her friend and colleague Jack Adler, a multi-talented expert in photography, graphic design, printing and advertising, resulted in the Home Decorating Club.

“The club was Adler’s concept,” notes Weinstein, “drawing me out of the ivory tower of interior designers specific to their own clients and into the big, real world of everybody who owns a home on Long Island.” During the first year, Weinstein’s task was to use her good reputation with her sources to fundraise for seed money. Today, members avail themselves of information at little or no cost, supported by advertising dollars from Weinstein’s valued sources.

The goal isn’t for club members to hire her as their designer, but for her to give them the assistance they need to do the designing on their own. Weinstein has participated in over 600 consultations for club members, one of their perks, at which they often video or audio tape her for future reference.

“You get down to earth quickly. You see the value of what you’re doing and that is the critical piece to all this. I wouldn’t have felt this way if we never started the club.”

“We’ve done workshops and events at stores, hotels and catering halls focusing on topics specific to club members’ needs,” she adds. Because the Home Decorating Club is a separate entity from her business, members are able to have access to Weinstein’s extensive “library” of sources and receive discounts from local businesses. She also reaches out to young people. Back in 2001, she signed on to become involved in the first Suffolk County Community College Home Show, and most recently, she gave a presentation on “Business Principles and Practices” to the college’s design students.

“Every year, the Home Decorating Club makes more sense to me as a way to become more visible and help businesses on Long Island grow and prosper,” notes Weinstein.

The pathway to a passion

The only child of Depression-era parents, Weinstein says she “grew up fast.” She recalls living in a four-room apartment in Brooklyn when, at age five, she accompanied her aunt on a shopping tour and helped her decorate her first apartment. Encouraged to seek a “career with security,” she became a school teacher, eventually marrying an accountant and moving to Merrick as a newlywed. After a few years, Weinstein’s husband left accounting to follow his dream to build houses. He partnered with a builder and together they put up three models in Huntington. That’s when she got her husband’s unexpected call, “Come decorate them.”

Although she liked decorating, Weinstein wasn’t sure she would be successful if she branched out to a new career. So she signed up at the Willsey Institute, and became a star pupil. She credits her husband not for getting her to go back to school, but for assessing the level of what she was doing.

“I never wanted to be a housewife/decorator,” she recalls. “I always wanted to have my own company.” In 1973, she founded Natalie Weinstein Design Associates, and in 1985, moved her company to its current location at the former vaudeville theatre (circa early 1900s) in St. James.

“The creative aspect makes interior design an ever-changing canvas,” says Weinstein. “It’s a sense of empowerment, feeling good about our surroundings,” she points out, just as negative surroundings make us feel badly—all of which affect who we are and how we present ourselves to others.

Going beyond design and decorating, Weinstein’s talents include writing, speaking and motivating people, and she is known for the inspirational themes of her lectures and workshops. Her “Long Island Focus” feature in HOUSE® magazine highlights Long Island’s historic sites and her love for Long Island. She appears at Home and Garden Shows, and her often-published design work has appeared in Nite Life and Distinction magazines and Newsday, The New York Times, and the Palm Beach Life. Her “Designs by Natalie” column appears weekly in print and online for the Long Island Press, and she writes a home decorating column in Our Town.

About 10 years ago, Weinstein tested the waters as a radio show host when she appeared as a guest on the “Ed Fox Money Show” (WLIE). She and a representative of Century 21 were asked to speak about getting the most money out of the sale of a home while saving the most money when purchasing a home. She was not only invited back for a “second round,” but was also cajoled into hosting her own show, the “Home Show,” on Talk 540 WLIE, Thursdays at 7 pm.

Weinstein is the author of The 100 Most Often Asked Interior Design Questions, a beautifully illustrated design handbook, based on questions she’s been asked at numerous workshops and seminars. “People love it,” she says, because it’s a quick guide to a wide array of how-to’s, like measuring wallpaper and hanging lights, and incorporates a bit of art history.

Weinstein says that although she usually works with adults, “a home’s design affects the children, too.” Her first children’s book, Katrina’s New Room, teaches children about pride of place and responsibility for it. The book speaks to childhood home memories and gives a template for children to design their own rooms. Weinstein has a second book, currently in the hands of Scholastic Publishers, about a boy who has a problem with clutter, forgets his homework, is messy at school and misses the bus. In the book, he learns the secret system to focus and organization that helps him develop a better attitude and the ability to handle school and life.

Weinstein’s interests also led her to found and lead the Arts and Antiques Association of St. James, become a member of the St. James Chamber of Commerce, and support Long Island’s heritage sites and landmarks, working closely with the Suffolk County Department of Parks.

“There’s something that really ignites my spirit and makes me feel good when I’m transforming someone’s home into a place that makes them feel good,” Weinstein remarks with the ardor and sensitivity she brings to her craft. “There’s nothing like it. It’s just a great high.”