The Independent caught up with interior designer Tara Benet to get her tips for bringing the holiday spirit to luxury interiors. Benet, whose background as a painter gives her interiors a dreamy, modernist quality, recommends bright red accents as a simple and effective way of instilling a space with holiday cheer, whether that means a red pillowcase on a throw or some art books with vivid red covers. By creating neutral interiors with hits of color, Benet designs homes that can be easily transitioned between seasonal schemes while capturing and reflecting natural light to make even the smallest room feel large.

As a painter and illustrator, interior designer Tara Benet has a natural affinity for handmade rugs, often recommending custom pieces to her clients. “I’m a maker myself,” Benet told Area, going on to say that being a painter “has fueled my passion for handmade materials.” Benet, whose aesthetic can be described as having a “clean white” look, uses handmade rugs to bring warmth and texture to the opulent interiors she designs. When she isn’t helping clients design their own bespoke rugs, Benet sources antique and traditionally made rugs to use as anchors. After all, as Benet reminds us, “every room is defined by a rug.”

As New York City’s celebrity residents explore ever-further-flung boroughs, Williamsburg has caught the fashion bug. Tara Benet Design staged a home at 539 Lorimer in the trendy neighborhood, not far from where former Disney star Dylan Sprouse and his supermodel girlfriend Barbara Palvin recently moved in together. Tara Benet’s take on Williamsburg chic brings a touch of classic Manhattan prewar style to the outer borough, accentuating the light-flooded home’s white oak herringbone floors with retro low-slung cabinetry and bringing subtle pops of color to the space with throw pillows and wall art.

Tara Benet Design caught Kate Hudson’s eye when she and partner Danny Fujikawa toured a duplex at 106 Franklin Street staged by the firm. The actress and entrepreneur known for her easy style was the perfect match for Tara Benet Design’s elegant staging, which makes the most of the home’s open chef’s kitchen and expansive great room with tasteful items informed by Benet’s painterly eye. The bar stools and exposed-filament bulbs accentuate the kitchen’s rustic charm, while the neutral sectional on the home’s private patio complements the exposed red brick and green ivy that make the outdoor space pop.

Renowned interior designer Tara Benet staged a model residence at 70 Charlton, bringing the spacious SoHo home to life with her keen eye for color and proportion. The home’s oversized windows and light-tone hardwood flooring gave Benet a bright and airy canvas on which to paint her vision of the perfect home, and she dotted the space with warm textures and tones like brass that catch the sunlight. Benet’s training as a painter finds expression in the subtle blue theme in the bedroom, found in a supple blanket and stylish art prints that pop from the neutral bed frame and rug. The entire home breathes with natural light and open space, a minimalist paradise with just the right amount of flourish.

Homes & Gardens asked interior designer Tara Benet about window seats, one of the latest design trends sweeping the home decor scene. “Window seats are an attractive way to integrate hidden storage,” said Benet, whose minimalist design philosophy primes her to see potential ways to declutter in every facet of a room. Benet believes that window seats are great for all kinds of spaces, though she emphasizes that the need for hidden storage is especially right “for certain spaces such as playrooms, where there is lots of clutter that needs to be stowed away.” Window seat cushions present an opportunity to add a pop of color and texture to a space, building depth via simple fabric choices.

Tara Benet Design has won Best of Houzz every year since 2015, and a glance over a few examples of the firm’s work makes it easy to understand why. Benet brings a painter’s eye to every room, combining a minimalist style with a love of texture and color that give her work a dreamlike quality. A Tara Benet-designed room feels light and airy, with shades of white and carefully placed mirrors catching and reflecting sunlight, making each space feel larger than its proportions. Benet works as both a residential interior designer and as the visual stylist for the luxury furniture brand B&B Italia, designing all of the showrooms in their North American locations.

Interior designer Tara Benet’s work is often featured on lists of ways to create the perfect modern home. The painter-turned-interior designer’s signature minimalist style serves as a jumping-off point for explorations of color and texture, and her choices are always grounded in a space’s available light and views. This is especially true when she is working in glass-box apartments in New York City highrises. Take, for example, the SoHo-style living room featured in this Decoist roundup, to which Benet brought a few pops of color and a variety of rich textures with just a few choice items.

HGTV asked interior designer Tara Benet to discuss her choices for a recent interior design project in a Manhattan highrise. The home, framed by sweeping New York City views that included Central Park, presented a few challenges—for example, having just a single ceiling socket for a chandelier. “We had to do sculptural, high-wattage floor lamps that would adequately light the space without subtracting from the minimal design,” said Benet. She complemented the serene minimalism of the space’s hardwood and marble claddings with sprays of color, fur throws, and chairs to create both a visual and textural contrast.

When interior designer Tara Benet was approached by a client who had recently purchased a fixer-upper apartment in a Madison Avenue prewar Bauhaus-style building, the former painter was excited. “My client and I were on the same page throughout the project,” Benet told HGTV. “We both really wanted a fresh, open space that was still rich in antiques and collectibles.” The resulting home featured heightened doors, a new open floor plan thanks to the removal of a couple of walls. A final touch was the addition of a range of furnishings, including a large Oushak vintage rug in soft blues that served as the home’s visual foundation, and a minimalist white pedestal table with armless chairs that evoke the mid century aesthetic.