“It’s just a series of happy accidents,” says Jeremiah Brent, about an interior design career in which he has set up a coast-to-coast US practice, featured as a host and an expert in six television shows, won an Emmy for the TV series Queer Eye, published a book and become a fixture on the world’s most distinguished decorator lists.
Brent, 41, is enlisted by clients who have as much taste as they do wealth — people such as Oprah Winfrey, in addition to those who own ski lodges in Vermont, mansions in Beverly Hills and Brentwood, country piles outside London and apartments in Mumbai. He describes his style as “wabi-sabi contemporary”, a fitting label when you consider the subdued and rustic elegance of his spaces. Beautiful things, it is clear, should also be comfortable — sofas that beckon you to flop and rugs so soft you want to walk on them barefoot. Fireplaces are ginormous, made for congregating around, and kitchen islands stretch wide enough to hold children, dinner parties and more. “I used to dream about having children sitting at an island, and now my kids are here, every morning and every evening,” he says. “There’s a dance party here every day.”
The kitchen island is clad in Calacatta marble, from ABC StonePaolo Abate
In the living room the 1960s coffee table is by Diego Giacometti, the brother of the sculptor AlbertoKelly Marshall
The living room wall sconce is by Vico Magistretti for Artemide, while the patinated bronze triangle, Plate 21, is by the sculptor Ricky SwallowKelly Marshall
Brent is speaking on Zoom from his New York apartment, his eyelashes so long they seem to skim the bottom of his baker-boy hat. Behind him is the apartment he shares with his husband, Nate Berkus, 54, also an interior designer, their two children, Poppy, 11, and Oskar, 8, plus their cat, Olive, and dog, Sophia. Over 15 years the couple have lived in 10 homes, bouncing between coasts, moving most recently from a West Village brownstone to the light-bathed apartment on 5th Avenue (they also have a beach house in Montauk and a farmhouse in Portugal).
It’s actually the second time they’ve bought the property, this time also snapping up the flat below in search of more space. With a Calacatta marble island and arched windows reminiscent of a greenhouse, the kitchen is a showstopper. Elsewhere, prewar plasterwork is the stuff of estate agent dreams, while the hall is covered with reclaimed tiles from Spain, found on 1stDibs. Indeed, every item has an origin story and every piece of furniture a name attached. “For me, vintage has always been the beginning of any design process, the idea that you can bring things into your home that are rich with story but with that sense of craftsmanship,” he explains. “It gives soul to a space.”
Brent’s stint on Queer Eye has made him a household name in interior design. The hugely popular Netflix makeover show overhauls people’s lives, from how they dress and what they eat to the sofa they sit on. Brent joined in 2024 for the final two seasons, and last year was part of the team who won an Emmy for outstanding structured reality programme. “Design has always been about connection and story, getting to know people,” he says of the cult show.
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From top: the Queer Eye crew, from left, Jonathan Van Ness, Tan France, Antoni Porowski, Brent and Karamo Brown; and Brent with his husband, the interior designer Nate Berkus, last yearJenny Anderson/Netflix; Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for American Ballet Theatre
Born in Modesto, California, Brent was raised by a single mother who was a paralegal. “She was meticulous. We were raised to care about what we had because it took everything she had to bring it into that household,” he says. “She and I used to go and look at open houses on the weekend and I would sit there fantasising about the way I imagined people were living.”
At 19 he moved to LA and, sustained by ambition, slept in the back seat of his Jeep and on the sofas of friends. He took on styling and assisting roles in fashion and design, which would ultimately lead him to start his own practice in 2011, the same year he appeared as a stylist on the hit TV show The Rachel Zoe Project, a wildly popular reality series that documented the life of Zoe, a celebrity stylist. What he lacked in formal training he made up for with his people skills, and his ability to read a room and disarm an ego.
The custom cabinet is painted in Saint Sauvant Roman Clay by Portola Paints
The bedroom features travertine sidetables by the American architect Samuel Marx, and 1940s table lamps by Böhlmarks, a 1stDibs findKelly Marshall
Fast-forward to 2026 and he now employs more than 50 people, with sights set on opening offices abroad. Television design and client projects might bear little resemblance to each other, but “the intentionality with the way I approach it is exactly the same, because if you’re spending $40 on a pillow or $40,000 on a piece of furniture, they should hold the same importance.”
Brent met Berkus in 2012. With 13 years between them “all his friends and his parents thought I was a prostitute… and my mother told me that he was going to suck the life out of me”, Brent says, laughing. Two years later, in 2014, the pair got married, becoming the first same-sex couple to do so at the New York Public Library, one year before gay marriage was legalised nationwide. Rows of greenery lined the aisles and crystals were the centrepieces on tables. Oprah Winfrey and the actress Busy Phillips were guests, and the British singer Estelle performed her hit American Boy.
But happiness is rarely uncomplicated. Before Brent met his husband, Berkus lost his boyfriend Fernando Bengoechea in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. They were on holiday in Arugam Bay in Sri Lanka when it hit. “He is a part of us,” Brent says. “I’ve never felt less loved or less valued, less seen because of that story. If anything, I felt a great amount of responsibility to incorporate him into our lives. We’ve got photos of Fernando throughout the house. Oskar is actually named after him. That’s Fernando’s middle name and that was my idea.”
In many ways the couple’s careers have converged. From 2002 to 2011 Berkus was the interior designer on The Oprah Winfrey Show, overseeing almost 130 of the same kind of home makeovers Brent would go on to perform on Queer Eye. They have co-hosted three shows together — Nate & Jeremiah by Design, Nate & Jeremiah: Save My House and The Nate & Jeremiah Home Project (available to watch in the UK on Amazon Prime and Apple TV). That’s a lot of Nate and Jeremiah, “but we did it because we wanted to have a gay family on TV and we fought hard to get it on there”, Brent says.
“Half the time on Queer Eye, I learnt as much from people as they learnt from me,” he continues. How will he remember the experience? “One of the most remarkable things I’ve ever been a part of. I’m probably going to spend my entire life trying to describe it.”