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In this episode, Nate Berkus explores what it really means to design a life that supports you—not through perfection, but through presence, beauty, and the power of environment. Drawing from decades of work and his own personal journey, Nate reflects on how our surroundings quietly shape our habits, emotions, and sense of self. He shares how moving through profound loss changed the way he understands home, meaning, and the moments that matter most. Through deeply human stories—including a transformative Oprah makeover—Nate reveals how small, intentional changes and genuine listening can create spaces that support healing, authenticity, and connection.
Exciting News!!! Coming in March, 2026, my new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life is now available for pre-orders!
Key Takeaways:
- The influence of environment and design on personal growth and habits.
- The parable of the two wolves and its relevance to personal choices and mindset.
- The significance of “the moments in between” in fostering genuine connections.
- The impact of parenting on awareness and presence in daily life.
- The importance of meaningful design that reflects personal stories and aspirations.
- The relationship between emotional well-being and physical spaces.
- The transformative power of small, intentional changes in one’s environment.
- The role of gratitude in overcoming past hardships and shaping identity.
- The necessity of human connection and understanding in design and life.
- The balance between personal taste and collaboration in shared living spaces.
NATE BERKUS is one of the world’s most influential interior designers, known for his elevated yet accessible approach to interiors. His thirty-year-and-counting career has included innumerable television shows and home collections, along with designing award-winning interiors. Consistently named to the AD100 and Elle Decor A-List, Nate lives in New York with his husband, Jeremiah Brent, and their children, Poppy and Oskar. He is the author of FOUNDATIONS: Timeless Design That Feels Personal
Connect with Nate Berkus: Website | Instagram
If you enjoyed this conversation with Nate Berkus, check out these other episodes:
Failure as Fertilizer: Learning to Bloom Again with Debbie Millman
Creative Thinking and Action Through Designs with Sarah Stein Greenberg
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Episode Transcript:
Eric Zimmer 00:01:07 Willpower gets a lot of credit, but environment does most of the work. In this conversation, designer Nate Berkus makes the case that our environment is never neutral. It’s either helping us become who we’re trying to be or quietly pulling us back into default mode. And I think that’s one of the most overlooked truths about change. We put so much focus on discipline and self-control when the space around us, our environment is a really big factor in determining whether a new habit has any chance of sticking. If your surroundings keep cuing the old behavior, it’s an unfair fight. We talk about how small shifts light layout, and what you see when you walk in the door can change how you feel in your own life. And we talk about his new book, Foundations and why the goal isn’t a perfect home. It’s a home that feels personal and supportive. I’m Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Nate. Welcome to the show.
Nate Berkus 00:02:05 Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:07 We’re going to be discussing your book called Foundations: Timeless Design. That feels personal. But before we get into that, we’ll start like we always do with the parable.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:16 And in the parable, there’s a grandparent just talking with their grandchild. And they say, in life, there’s two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Nate Berkus 00:02:49 Well, it’s such a beautiful thing to consider. You know what I’ve learned over the course of 30 years, being intimately involved with people in. Obviously in the capacity of changing their homes and crafting these spaces within which they can make their own memories and live their lives, is that, I think, what we choose to focus on as human beings, whether we choose to ignore the fact that we’re all the same fundamentally, which is a long held belief that I have, or we lead with ego and allow sort of the lowest vibrational parts of how we move through the world to win in certain situations.
Nate Berkus 00:03:31 I guess what I’m trying to say is, I think that grace goes a long way in this world. No matter what you do, no matter what industry you’re in, no matter what you’re trying to sell or talk about, and nothing, including AI, will ever take the place of true human connection. And when we connect with another person, be it a stranger or someone we’ve known extremely well for decades, I think that that’s when we focus on on feeding not only the other person, but feeding ourselves. And those are the moments my husband and I call them, the moments in between. It’s not the grandiose gestures, it’s not the expensive vacations to far flung destinations. It’s those moments where we’re actually allowing ourselves to really see and really hear the other person and connect on a soul level. So I would say that when I hear that we have a choice every almost in every interaction we have with another human being, whether we’re feeding the good wolf or the bad one.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:33 Yep. I love what you said about Grace there.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:36 You know, there’s no situation that grace can’t improve.
Nate Berkus 00:04:39 No, none.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:40 There’s no way that when you bring some kindness, that it’s not a good thing. I wanted to ask you about those moments in between, because I picked that up in another interview you had done. And, you know, your career, for people who don’t know, you were a designer? Very young. You were successful young. Oprah found you when you were young. You’ve had a very long, very successful career. You’ve clearly been a person who is driven to achieve but within your own lane, with a great deal of integrity. And those moments in between, I think, and this has been a long running semi obsession on this show, is this idea of, yep, we want to do better, we want to strive, we want these things. And yet, how do we appreciate these moments in between? Let’s just talk about today. How do you sort of set down a very demanding, very good career so that you can focus on the moments in between?
Nate Berkus 00:05:37 Well, I think that for me, there’s two things within that question.
Nate Berkus 00:05:42 The first is I just want to clarify, I was very young when I rose to sort of fame and fortune and, and was on the Oprah show and all of that. But I wasn’t too young. I wasn’t 22. I was, you know, in my late 20s. And so I don’t think any of us are fully formed. I’m certainly not fully formed, but I was formed enough to not have any of that throw me. My priorities were always in a decent place. That’s an important distinction for me. And then the second thing that I would say to you is that it wasn’t until I had children that I think I really understood on a deep level what those moments in between met. I mean, obviously, I had been in significant relationships and I have a large family with lots of siblings. But, you know, I feel like I was going about a thousand miles an hour before I started and had the incredible opportunity to view the world through my children’s eyes and through their experience. And that was what cracked me open, probably more than anything in terms of really knowing that if I didn’t have that focus, if I responded to that email while one of my kids was explaining how their afternoon was in school, like that was me failing fundamentally as a person.
Nate Berkus 00:07:02 You have to be really stupid to be a part of the Oprah show for as long as I was, and not pick up stuff that has nothing to do with design. Like, you got to be really myopic and like, yeah, and just plain dumb.
Eric Zimmer 00:07:15 Exactly.
Nate Berkus 00:07:15 Yeah. I mean, wow, what that building held. I’m sure it was just insane. But, you know, one of the things that one of many things that I still think about to this day is long before surrogacy was possible, long before gay marriage was even legal. I was sitting in the control room at Harpo in Chicago, and Doctor Angelou was the guest on Oprah’s show that day, and someone in the audience asked her how she felt she had been as a mother, not just as a poet and a writer and a cultural force, but as Ma. And she said, I don’t think I did very well. I have to be honest with you. I don’t think I did that great of a job. And the audience member said, well, what would you do differently? And she said she thought about if she got a little bit quiet for a minute and then her response, I’ll never forget.
Nate Berkus 00:08:12 Her response was, do your eyes light up when your child enters the room every time? And this 20 ish me that was sitting in the control room again, unmarried. The idea of having children was something I always wanted but never thought could happen. Really, that lodged itself into my being. And so my children now are ten and seven, and I am actually acutely aware of whether or not Jeremiah’s and my eyes light up when they enter the room every time. And I think that that, as the basis for the moments in between, kind of lays the groundwork for a different degree of presence and gratitude and attention.
Eric Zimmer 00:09:03 That’s such a really good orienting rule. I think rules like that can be really helpful because they’re so simple. Like, this is what I’m aiming at. You know, my sort of all purpose intention is to leave every situation or place better than it was when I walked in. Do I do it all the time? Of course not. Sure, but it’s a simple thing. You know, it’s a very simple question I can ask myself and I.
Eric Zimmer 00:09:26 And I love that one for your kids. I think that’s really awesome. I almost name my son Oscar. Oh, really? This was a long time ago. he’s Jordan, but Oscar was on the shortlist. I love that name.
Nate Berkus 00:09:38 He’s a good Oskar. We call him Okee for short. He’s named after my former partner who died in the Indian Ocean tsunami. His middle name was Oskar. And so, it’s funny because here in New York City, it’s very uncommon still. But if we’re in anywhere else, especially in Europe or anywhere, everyone’s like, yeah, of course his name is Oskar, spelled with a K.
Eric Zimmer 00:10:00 Yeah. It’s not common in the States really much at all.
Nate Berkus 00:10:04 No, it’s a strong name, though. It’s a really great name.
Eric Zimmer 00:10:06 I think it’s a great name, too. You were talking about gay marriage, children. Do I have it right that you were the first gay couple to be married at the New York Public Library?
Nate Berkus 00:10:16 Yeah, yeah. I didn’t think we could afford to get married at the New York Public Library.
Nate Berkus 00:10:20 And Jeremiah was like, we’re doing it. It’s great. I’m Carrie from sex and the city. This is awesome. But we met with them almost on a lark just to find out, you know, how much could it be to get married at the New York Public Library? And the woman who was running it at the time said, you realize if you do decide to have your wedding here, you’d be the first gay couple ever to get married in these halls. And that meant something to us because I don’t speak for Jeremiah often. He’s not stupid. So he has a lot to say about his own philosophies and everything. But I do know that both of us have felt an enormous responsibility, being on TV, being on television with our kids, showing people that all families don’t look the same. If I had to, like, lock into a core motivation for agreeing to do these cable shows over the years together, the four of us, I would say that that was really our our founding intention was to be out there in the middle of the country showing people that, you know, families like ours exist and all love doesn’t look the same. In fact, all love looks very, very different.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:30 One of my favorite writers and a friend of mine, Andrew Solomon, writes a lot about that, about, you know, how we don’t even have words for so many of the different configurations that our families take these.
Nate Berkus 00:11:41 Days, 100%. I’m a huge fan of Andrew Solomons as well. Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant writer.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:47 He is. I’ve got a book coming out in March and, you know, you know this. I went out and got book blurbs, and one of them from him was like, oh, you know, for me, for me, for him as a writer and as a person, you know, like, I just, I he’s just unbelievable. So I gotta stay with the New York Public Library for a second, though, because I love that place. Where do you get married? In that place.
Nate Berkus 00:12:10 Well, they’ve got this down to a science. Now, let me tell you, you have choices. But the most inconvenient choice, and arguably what we think is the most special, is right when you walk in the front door.
Eric Zimmer 00:12:20 Okay.
Nate Berkus 00:12:21 So the library is open to the public until 6:00, and at 6:00 everything changes. The the chairs go up, the decoration goes in, the stage or platform is built. And so that’s what we did. you know, people, our guests walked up those marble steps in between the lions.
Eric Zimmer 00:12:40 I was going to say, you’ve got some wedding pictures with Lyons.
Nate Berkus 00:12:43 Oh. Of course. Yeah, and like, there were candles on every step. It was evening. I mean, it was absolutely beautiful. And then the dinner and the ceremony was there in the Grand Hall, right when you walk in. And then there’s all these amazing rooms in the New York Public Library, incredible, incredibly significant architectural rooms. And in the basement, essentially, there’s a beautiful event space. That was where our guests moved through the hallway and down these second set of stairs and into this beautiful room with paneling and lit with candles and filled with crystals on every table that we gave away at the end of the evening.
Nate Berkus 00:13:22 It was perfect. I mean, I can’t, you know, I still to this day, can’t believe we pulled it off in the way that we did, and we both sobbed the entire time. Everybody actually cried in the ceremony that just every single person. And Oprah at one point goes, oh, Lord, because it was just so heavy. Yeah. So emotional. I didn’t anticipate that, but that’s what it was.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:46 That’s beautiful. I would have had a hard time resisting the main reading room to do things in, because that room is just incredible.
Nate Berkus 00:13:52 Yeah. I don’t think they let us in there because. Yeah, because they could you could damage the books. And, you know, I think I think that’s why.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:59 So do you love libraries?
Nate Berkus 00:14:01 Sure. I love libraries, I love bookstores, I love books, and I love reading. So yeah, I’ve actually never thought about whether or not I love libraries, but when I’m traveling, I, I really do like I’m drawn to historic libraries and, and, and private libraries and things like that.
Nate Berkus 00:14:17 I think they’re really interesting. We just did an installation for this really adorable young couple uptown here in New York City. It’s their first apartment. She’s eight and a half months pregnant. And as I was putting their books away in their library, I even said this to them when they saw the apartment the first time that two days later, I was like, I’ve always liked you guys, but I like you even more knowing that you read about the history of Persia and like the subject matter in your library, is just so varied. And they laughed. They’re like, I know we’re a little bit schizophrenic in our interest. I was like, but it’s so great. You guys are 30 years old and you’re you’re reading about the fall of the Roman Empire, and then you’re reading, you know, Augustine Burrows like, this is awesome.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:59 Yeah, that is great. I walk into any room that’s got books, and I like if I go visit somebody’s house, I’m almost always like, I’m going to need just a couple minutes, right? Right.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:09 Because otherwise I’m going to be looking at it out the corner of my eye the whole time we’re talking, wondering what you read. Yeah. So let’s just let’s let’s get it over. Let’s get it over with.
Nate Berkus 00:15:18 It’s so funny. Yeah, it’s really funny. And then, you know, I read a tremendous amount of fiction. I prefer to read fiction. I like history, but I love fiction. Yeah. And I was with Jenna Hager the other day, and she has a book club read with Jenna. And she said to me, do you know how many titles you’ve picked for books that you put on your own social media that are actually read with Jenna. Books. And I was like, I promise you, I’m not even following copying, but we have the exact same taste. And she said, well, then here’s, you know, here’s a book you need to read. And she was right.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:50 Have you read any fiction recently that you love?
Nate Berkus 00:15:53 Buckeye.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:54 You have read that?
Nate Berkus 00:15:55 Yeah.
Nate Berkus 00:15:55 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:56 Yeah. I’m. I’m in Ohio, so I have to read Buckeye.
Nate Berkus 00:15:59 Oh, you have.
Eric Zimmer 00:16:00 To read it. It’s on my.
Nate Berkus 00:16:01 List. We should stop this podcast recording and you should read it right now. It’s phenomenal.
Eric Zimmer 00:16:05 I’ll get back to you with my review. So your book is called foundations, which is sort of an idea of returning to what matters most. You’ve mentioned in your life that your family, your husband, your kids are a real foundation. What are other foundations of your life? Not necessarily your work, but your life?
Nate Berkus 00:16:27 Friendships. I’ve really long held friendships that that are deeply important to me. Laughter I have that Jewish thing where we laugh at like the most inappropriate, most dire, horrifying circumstances. And that continues on. Connection. I mean, obviously human connection is a huge foundation for me. Beauty is an enormous foundation. I’m constantly in pursuit of beauty and quality. It sounds materialistic, but I don’t mean it to be at all.
Nate Berkus 00:16:56 It could be the way that fibers are woven together in a developing country. To make a basket is absolutely as interesting to me as touring a 17th century porcelain manufacturing, solar powered in Bavaria. I love when creativity and product intersect. I’m interested in all of those things I from fine jewelry to furniture to decoration and paintings and all of that. And that definitely is a foundation for me because I get really excited when I learn something new, which I do every day, or discover something new. Obviously we’ve we’ve touched on family, which is an enormous foundation, perhaps, for the pursuit of learning and exposure. Nothing is more exciting to me than discovering a place I’ve not been. Preferably with Jeremiah by my side or that. But I really love culture, and I love understanding culture historically and and in the present. Most people, I think, move through the world using food as their kind of barometer of what’s interesting. Like everyone talks about, the food is so great, and Argentina or the food, you know, I love the food in Thailand.
Nate Berkus 00:18:13 I don’t really care about that. I care about craft. Yeah. So, you know, I’m drawn to kind of what the food is served in or served on as opposed to what it actually is. I would say that those are probably the main things for me.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:44 Beauty is an interesting one because I think implied in beauty are two things. There’s the craft that you’re talking about, and craft has a knowledge and a history and a skill. But there’s also care embedded in beauty, right? Like, you don’t create something beautiful if you don’t care. Like it just doesn’t happen. And so I think beautiful things have that other element in them. And I think it’s taken me as a, as a younger person in my sort of like, I’m not going to be a materialist kind of person. You know, I’m a punk rocker, you know, that’s none of that stuff. But I’ve really grown to love that. Like, beauty is not just in a piece of art that we would classify as art.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:26 It’s in all kinds of things. And that putting some of those things around you is actually really a worthwhile endeavor. My book talks so much about how important in making any kind of change environment is. It’s it’s arguably the biggest factor. And what’s more salient than your environment, like where you live. And my, my partner Ginny cares a lot about making the place that we live nice. And I didn’t have a full appreciation until I lived in it. And I went, oh.
Nate Berkus 00:19:57 To live with things that are nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:20:00 It’s thoughtful. It’s beautiful. Like, it’s not fancy. It’s not expensive.
Nate Berkus 00:20:05 It doesn’t need to be. That’s not the same thing. Exactly.
Eric Zimmer 00:20:07 Yeah, exactly.
Nate Berkus 00:20:08 Yeah. I am so on board with that. I mean, listen, I’ve spent 30 years in design. It’s the 30 year anniversary of my firm. I have had this incredible experience that very few people have of standing next to somebody, and their eyes are closed and their hand is in mine, and they open their eyes and they step into a new life, a new version of what their old life was overnight.
Nate Berkus 00:20:37 In an instant there. I’ve dreamt a bigger dream for them. That they could dream for themselves. And I’ve executed that in their home. And you can see and feel. People might have to take my word for this, but they can. You can feel the change in someone when it starts to sink in almost instantly. That this space belongs to me, that this space will be the backdrop, the set of everything that I hold dear, every memory I anticipate making good and bad. This will be the space that saves me. That is my soft place to land. And beauty has an enormous amount to do with that. But also so does organization. So does a sense of purpose. Good design. I’ve always felt really does represent the people who live there. And that’s not like a, you know, dove skin campaign tagline. Like, to me that means that our home should represent not only who we are, but also who we’ve been and perhaps even most importantly, who we aspire to be.
Nate Berkus 00:21:51 And when that is right, when someone has listened, whether it’s you just even listening to yourself, which is what my book is, is about. But when that comes together, it is so powerful to be surrounded by things that really do tell your story. Past, present and future. It’s like moving through the world. I’ve seen children do their homework better. When they have a designated area. Their backpack goes down the same hook and the table is right there, and the pens are in a pen cup or in a, you know, organizer or whatever it is. Children behave differently. I’ve seen people be excited to do their laundry because we’ve crafted this incredible, you know, space that might have a painting on the wall of a laundry room that belonged to their grandmother. The interiors that constantly rise up to greet us on every level. There’s no substitution for that, in my opinion.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:48 I agree with all of that. One of the things that I’m curious how you think about, because you really are focused on putting things in a room that matter to you.
Things that have a history, things as you’ve said, that tell a story of past, present and future. And one of the big challenges that we have as humans is we habituate, meaning, like at first time I see that painting, it means something. The second time, the third time, the 50th time. Oftentimes, I’m not seeing it anymore. How do you keep that alive for you in the rooms that you are? And how have you seen your clients who do a good job of that, maybe, versus the ones who just sort of end up taking it all for granted.
Nate Berkus 00:23:29 So design is an imperfect science. It’s a creative endeavor. There’s no one right way to decorate a room. That’d be a ridiculous thing to assert. I’m not always right. I wouldn’t, you know, I’ve made this my life. But it doesn’t mean that someone else’s opinion doesn’t or shouldn’t hold just as much or more value. On occasion, one change a series of small changes can redirect the energy in a room so quickly.
Nate Berkus 00:23:57 Even taking that painting that you’ve seen 50 times and moving it to the end of a hallway, even adding a new lampshade on the table beneath the painting completely shifts the way you view the room. When I’ve seen that, I’ve had the opportunity to see this so, so often when I’ve seen these homes shift just slightly, it refocuses how we view everything around it as well. So I think actually that is the science behind these like Weekend Warrior mini updates. I think that’s why people are carrying pillows out of home goods and throwing them in the trunk like it’s it’s that constant evolution. And, you know, my challenge as a designer has always been to install a home that feels layered and assembled over time, not instantaneous, even though we are doing it in one instant in most cases. So it’s been a real balancing act for me to make sure that I leave the spaces that we create with enough room for them to evolve as time goes on. Even our own home. Yeah, you know, our own homes.
Nate Berkus 00:25:10 It’s like it’s the big internal fallacy of almost every designer. You shoot your house for a magazine, and then the magazine comes out 4 or 5 months later, and by the time the magazine is out, the house looks nothing like what it did the day they photographed it. Like nothing. It’s happened to me 75 times.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:30 Because you just are in an evolving state of design and you don’t consider a room done.
Nate Berkus 00:25:36 It’s never done. It’s done enough. But it’s never done. Done. I know if my husband and I are sitting in our kitchen talking and his eye right, I just like, takes a little journey like you do with book titles. I know that we’re five minutes later, I’m going to get the drill out. We’re going to try the painting over there. I’m going to move this. And he’s I’m I’m the exact same way. If I sit in a space of my own long enough, I’ll think of something I can do to improve it. That’s the curse.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:05 Yeah. I’ve heard you say part of the reason you love reading fiction is just to shut that designing mind off for a little bit, because it just kind of does it 100%.
Nate Berkus 00:26:14 It doesn’t do it when I’m in other people’s homes unless I’ve been asked. It’s something that I’m able to turn off. I imagine it’s like, you know, a psychiatrist is not, you know, constantly evaluating their friends while they’re at, you know, the Cheesecake Factory. They’re just trying to navigate that menu. Like everyone else in the world. But I just think that it definitely in my own spaces. I’ll sit at my desk where I’m sitting now in my offices in New York, and I’ll and like, a pillow will annoy me and it’ll go in a closet and I’ll bring something else out. I just cannot, cannot shut that off.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:46 I’m not sure that good psychiatrists or psychologists would eat at the Cheesecake Factory, because they know that too much choice is problematic for the human psyche.
Nate Berkus 00:26:56 Maybe it’s a self-test.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:58 Exactly. They take him there to diagnose people. Exactly. It’s part of the diagnosis process, for sure. Your husband is also a designer, so I assume you guys don’t have the exact same taste. So how do these room adjustments play out?
Nate Berkus 00:27:12 We actually decided really early on in our relationship. We’ve been together 13 years. We decided really early on that that would not become a source of contention. We knew that we would fight about money. We knew that we’d fight about who ate the last. You name it in the fridge or whatever. But we chose again. You know, back to your parable. We chose to focus on how lucky we were that this was an endeavor that both of us love and are excited by so much. Because if you take the good of working with someone that you’re married to in the same profession, if you focus on that, the fact that we both love flea markets and we both love antique shows, and we both love exploring districts in foreign cities and countries and in our own cities and all of that, that’s really special. Like, that’s a really interesting way to connect. And he’s 13 years younger than I. And and so when we met, I would say that his point of view stylistically wasn’t as formed as mine was at the time.
Nate Berkus 00:28:28 And what’s happened in this really magical situation of our relationship is that I’ve changed and become more open to breaking rules and going against what I’ve always sort of held as to tenets of how I approach a space. And he has gained this sense of history and makers and historic references that I have shared with him. And so our first date, we had a pile of design books on the sofa, and we just went through all these different books of other people’s work and pointed out what was interesting to us and discussed it, and that really was a foundation of our relationship. So we don’t fight about that. And if someone says absolutely not like they don’t like an idea or a piece of furniture or whatever it is. The rule in our house is that you have to move on because I can sell anything to anybody and so can we. And so we can’t try and sell stuff to each other. That’s the that’s the rule.
Eric Zimmer 00:29:31 So there’s an absolutely not rule. And then there’s probably some version of who’s it most important to rule on this thing.
Nate Berkus 00:29:38 Yeah. I mean I stay out of the kitchen. I can’t cook. You know, I load the dishwasher 80 times a day. He stays out of the laundry room. He doesn’t care about my depth of drawers that I want. And I’m a Virgo, so I’m like, you know, horrible to live with. Anyway. On and on. So many levels. I like things exactly how I want them. You know, he stays out of the internal organization conversation. I don’t offer my opinion on appliances because I don’t know how to turn them on. So, you know. Yeah, it’s.
Eric Zimmer 00:30:07 You have your areas.
Nate Berkus 00:30:08 Yeah. Yeah, we have our we have our areas.
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In the book foundations, you say personal design is never instantaneous. Give yourself time. And I love that idea because it’s at the heart of my approach to change, which is little by little. Right? You get there over time. Talk to me about this idea of, you know, design not being instantaneous or any way you want to elaborate on the nature of things not being sudden.
Nate Berkus 00:31:26 I wrote this book primarily to get people to slow down. We’re inundated with imagery. We’re inundated with trend. Trend is driven by, obviously, the desire to get people to buy more stuff that they don’t need.
Nate Berkus 00:31:41 I’ve always been vehemently anti trend as it pertains to the home because it literally is just again, it’s to make us buy stuff we don’t want or need and to make us feel bad about what we didn’t buy the season before. You know, it’s just the whole thing. The idea of that in home has always really bothered me. I don’t care what the Pantone color of the year is, I don’t care what the Wool Bureau thinks. I just to me, it’s just such a personal journey. And I philosophically, what I’ve seen, especially throughout the course of my career is the accessibility has changed. Furniture is so much less expensive now. You can find it everywhere. It’s you know, when I was a kid, the only place you could buy inexpensive furniture was when it was marked up at a furniture store. And the hook was that they had their own financing. No payments till, you know, 20, 30 deferred to this. And but you were still paying $1,800 for a dining room table that was made in China and a piece of garbage.
Nate Berkus 00:32:45 So I wrote foundations to ask people if you want to really live well. From everything that I’ve learned in the last 30 years, you have to slow down. You have to shut the noise out. You have to start making decisions that are more meaningful, more thoughtful, more strategic. And here’s how to do it. And you know, I broke the book into sections of of areas of the home. So if you don’t have to digest everything that I have to say about every space. If you are just redecorating a bathroom or renovating your kitchen, you can look at that. But most importantly to me was the idea that if we do take a slower, more thoughtful approach before we begin the design process, what will happen and what will happen is, is that we’ll end up with homes that really do stand the test of time, that really do represent us in this space. Everything we were just talking about previously, that’s the greatest part of design.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:45 Yes. Slowing down, that is such a big thing and such a difficult thing to do these days. It’s partially why I still love reading things. You just like a book takes a while to get through. It intentionally slows me down.
Nate Berkus 00:34:00 Agreed.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:01 I’ve always loved reading, and I’ve always particularly fiction also, but I’ve grown to appreciate it even more in recent years because I’m like, I rush through so many other things, you know, work wise and and this is a place that, like, really forces us slowing down.
Nate Berkus 00:34:17 Absolutely. Design’s the same. I mean, you know, wanting to live better is a universal thing.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:47 So I’d like to turn to a chapter of your life that you’ve been very open about. That was a very difficult chapter for you, which had to do with losing your partner in a tsunami. Can you talk us through what happened, and maybe we can explore it from a couple of different angles?
Nate Berkus 00:35:04 Yeah, it was obviously a probably the hardest time of my life. It was for me, a time of, like, great learning, great lessons. Really, really awful.
Nate Berkus 00:35:17 Yeah, on every level. But essentially, my boyfriend, we’d been together for a year and I were vacationing in Sri Lanka, and we were in a small fishing slash surfing village. staying in these sort of huts about 50m from the, the sea. And we woke up on Boxing Day and we were drowning inside the hut. It was about 9 a.m., I think, and I survived. Fernando did not. His body was never found. I still to this day, I’m not sure how I survived the force of that tsunami. I was taken inland over the entire town, passed cars and buildings and trucks and animals and babies and you name it, and then brought back out to sea and then pushed back in again over all the debris village Where we were. And I ended up in a still moment in between the the current changing direction, I was able to climb on top of a house, which I selected. It was fully submerged, but what wasn’t submerged was the roof. And I thought this might hold because it has a chimney, so it’s likely a little bit better built than everything around it.
Nate Berkus 00:36:30 And eventually I had to climb back into the water, into the bodies and the debris and and swim to the nearest shore. What I could guess was the shore at the time, because it was unrecognizable, and then was part of an effort of trying to help people reconnect with their families and their loved ones. While I was still actively searching for Fernando, I stayed in Sri Lanka, moved to the capital two days after the tsunami by car, first by military helicopter, to a hospital and then by car. And then when I finally decided to come back to the United States. I think part of me spiritually knew that he was gone. I don’t think I would have been able to leave the country if I believed that he was still alive. So it was a time where I noticed many things. I, I noticed my own ability to survive. I noticed what it means to be fully dependent on the kindness of others. I noticed what it meant to be in a foreign land and how those people, the Sri Lankan people, reacted and took care of all of the expats that were there on holiday.
Nate Berkus 00:37:48 I noticed how important it was to maintain your humanity, because I saw also lots of situations where people pushed to the front of the line to get on the helicopter, first in front of pregnant women who were gravely injured. There’s no button on this. You know, it’s something that I still navigate, not in ways I think people would think that I’m still affected by it, but in moments where I feel a real loss of control or real fear for my own personal safety or my kids or my husband’s safety, I am not great at navigating that still. It’s been 20 years, but that’s where it creeps up for me still.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:29 Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of the conversations around, around grief being a big part of it, but that’s an extraordinarily traumatic experience to go through. I mean, it must have been terrifying.
Nate Berkus 00:38:42 You know, I’m always grateful that I actually witnessed it and that I was in it and survived it myself and wasn’t back here in New York City or in Chicago at the time, and got a phone call that Fernando was killed.
Nate Berkus 00:38:55 I would have never understood the magnitude, the force of the world being turned upside down. That could take a spirit such as his away. I’m so grateful that that’s how it panned out for me, that I got to see it and experience it so that I would understand and be able to understand and work through the loss and the grief the way that I needed to. It was complete devastation in multiple countries. It was hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives on that day. I had a hard time believing in physics and things like that. After that, I remember coming back to Chicago and walking down this, this sidewalk, wondering why the buildings weren’t just like falling on me. You know, my sense of balance, my sense of trust, my sense of gravity, all of that was completely affected for a while. And, you know, I worked with a grief counselor who came to my home. My parents had organized this, and I would just go in with a pack of cigarettes and talk for hours about all of this, and it was unbelievably helpful to me.
Nate Berkus 00:40:05 My fear was that I would be weird forever. That was my fear that I wouldn’t be able to function in conversation, in business, in in any way, socially after I had experienced that. And Colin, who was the doctor that I was lucky enough to work with, said to me, you know, it’s not linear. It’s, you know, this experience, the grief and the trauma is not linear. It’s it’s going to ebb and flow. You’re not going to get five gold stars and move on to the next stage of this. This is going to be something that you’re going to have a new normal, and you’re going to have to figure out how to navigate that. My father, who passed away, there was a moment in my apartment in Chicago, and all these people were in that apartment every day. When I finally returned to to the States, and my dad was in conversation with a couple of other guys, family, friends and, and friends of mine. And I don’t remember what they were talking about, And I was sitting there listening to their conversation and I couldn’t contribute and I didn’t care.
Nate Berkus 00:41:11 And I couldn’t believe that they were so ingrained in whatever they were talking about. I just was like, hovering above the entire thing. And so I was sitting there trying to follow their conversation, innocuous conversation about nothing. And I stood up and I walked down the hallway, and I was standing in my closet, just standing there. And I turned around. My father was standing behind me, and he said to me, what’s wrong? And I said, I’m weird, dad. I can’t engage like I used to engage. My mind isn’t able to do it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I mean, I know what’s wrong with me, but I just. I just feel so strange. And he put his arms around me and he said, whoever you are now is okay because the alternative is unthinkable. Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:04 It’s beautiful. I think the the significant things that happen in our lives, they do change us. There’s no getting around that. And the work is often how do we integrate those things so that we end up becoming a better person because of them 100%.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:21 And I don’t think that’s automatic. Right. Because I think you can see people, and I’ve been fascinated by what causes some people to go through something like you did and emerge. ultimately not. I mean, not right away, but over time, a person who’s fairly healed, who’s more compassionate, who is able to take some things from that and, and put it into their lives. And, and then what causes some people to be broken by those things or be hardened by those things or become bitter or cynical? And I don’t think we know all the answers to why, but some of it certainly is what you did, which is to is to get some help. Yeah, things like that. Are there too big for a single individual to carry.
Nate Berkus 00:43:01 I think there’s a lot, you know, that’s too big for a single individual to carry. I think, you know, pain is pretty universal as well. I think all pain is the same. You don’t have to live through a tsunami to feel like you don’t have the skills to move forward or figure out an answer about a situation you find yourself in.
Nate Berkus 00:43:23 You know someone’s health scare. Is anything more important? Is anything less important than you know to the person that’s going through it at the time? I don’t believe that it is. In fact, I remember coming home from Sri Lanka and standing at CVS wondering what happened to the lady in front of me in line and what might have happened to the lady behind me in line. Like, we just don’t know each other’s stories like that. That’s why the one you feed exists. Like we want to know each other’s stories. I believe that we really do. And I believe we we benefit from it. I think that I’m proud of myself for not letting it break me. I am. You know, I’ve got an enormous sense of accomplishment around that, and I trust myself differently. I don’t think I could go through something of that magnitude again and come out of it the same way that I was able to the first time. Yeah, I don’t think I have that in me. And I hope I’m never, you know, tested.
Nate Berkus 00:44:18 Yeah. But it has made me deeply empathetic. It has made me deeply connected to other people and the things that they go through. And it has also, you know, again, you know, reprioritize a lot for me in how I moved through the world. You know, we we spoke about Grace in the beginning of this interview. We we’ve touched on a lot of the sort of sentiments that connect you to the, the best parts of ourselves versus the demons are badly behaved. You know, which we all do. You always read about, like these women who go through breast cancer and they think they’re grateful that they went through it, and that before the tsunami was something I never understood. I was like, what could you have possibly gained from this experience that made you say out loud, or write down that I have gratitude for having had this. And after the tsunami, after some time had passed, I understood that so deeply. I understood exactly what they meant, and I understand exactly what I mean.
Nate Berkus 00:45:21 I would not be the same person I am today had I not experienced that. I’m still close to Fernando’s family. His brother’s extremely honest. He said to me once, I’m really mad it wasn’t you. I said, I get it. Yeah, I’m sure you are. I wouldn’t understand either. You know the city kid. Fernando was a surfer. He grew up in the jungle in Brazil. Like he should have survived. I shouldn’t have, you know. I wouldn’t have put my money on me. But I did. And I think even very early on, what I felt was this sense of obligation to his memory that I wouldn’t waste my life, that I wouldn’t, you know, just call it in, dial it in and not be present. I felt I owed him better than that, and I knew that that’s what he would have wanted for me. You know, I don’t always believe that we, you know, we assigned a lot of things to dead people that we think are, you know, going to serve us.
Nate Berkus 00:46:18 I assigned that to him pretty early on because he would have done the same. He would have gone through the grief. He would have he would have let himself be devastated and sad, but he would have pulled himself out of it as well. I really believed that.
Eric Zimmer 00:46:30 Yeah, yeah. That idea of being grateful for the bad things that happen. I mean, I was a homeless heroin addict at 24 and I, you know, I had hepatitis C and I was dying, and I had 50 years of jail time pending. And, you know, it was a pretty bad experience, albeit one I kind of put myself in. But nonetheless, I do think I’m grateful for that experience. I certainly can’t fathom who I would be without it. It’s a question that doesn’t even compute, right? Because it became such a part, and the healing from that and all that became such a part of who I was that to contemplate that I could be, that that couldn’t have happened doesn’t make sense to me, right?
Nate Berkus 00:47:09 I feel the same.
Nate Berkus 00:47:10 Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I feel exactly the same.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:13 Yeah. As we wrap up, take one thing from today and ask yourself, how will I practice this before the end of the day? For another gentle nudge, join good Wolf Reminders text list. It’s a short message or two each week, packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action. Nearly 5000 listeners are already loving it. Sign up free at oneyoufeed.net/sms. No noise, no spam, just steady encouragement to feed your good wolf.
We talked about this a little bit earlier on, but I’d like to I’d like to kind of come back to it for a moment, which is, you know, the intersection of our emotional well-being in the spaces that we live in. Share a little bit more about your belief in that, or what you’ve seen, or examples, anything you want to say there. But I want to hit that again.
Nate Berkus 00:48:05 I can’t change someone’s priority as a client’s priority. As I’ve worked with billionaires, I’ve worked with celebrities, I’ve worked with young couples, I’ve worked with people all over the country. I’ve worked with formerly homeless people. I’ve worked with. You name it. And, you know, if someone’s an asshole, they’re an asshole. Like.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:23 Their new couch isn’t going to fix that. Yeah, exactly.
Nate Berkus 00:48:26 I mean, like, come on. Like, let’s. You know, I’m not going to shift your paradigm if you’re, you know, vibrating at, like, the lowest frequency. But luckily, in my practice in my firm, I don’t have to work with you. Yeah. You know, that’s great. It’s also sometimes about listening. Can I share with you a story of one of the Oprah makeovers that stayed with me all these years?
Eric Zimmer 00:48:48 Please.
Nate Berkus 00:48:48 Yeah. So the producers and I got wind of a kid who had lost his twin brother to a car accident, and he was baking cookies with his mom and selling them in his community. And the name of the cookie company was the name of the brother who died. And they were on the local news, I think it was Baltimore.
Nate Berkus 00:49:10 They were on the local news and the Oprah producers got wind of the story. And, you know, this is exactly what a television producers dream is. And they were like, this is awesome. We’re going to go we’re going to build them a dream kitchen so that the mom and the surviving twin can bake their cookies in this incredible kitchen, and you’re going to design it, and it’s going to be so great. And I said, great. It sounds great. And so we all packed up and we flew to, to Baltimore and, and we did the pre-interview. And I had the pre-interview with the answers to the questions that were asked, the mom and the son. And we walk into their home and the crews all there. And I’m sitting. Talking with them. And the son is answering me verbatim what was written down as his response to the pre-interview. Every question I asked was verbatim, and I looked up and on their drywall, their white drywall ceiling were all the scuff marks of all the mikes that had been in that kitchen interviewing that kid and that mom.
Nate Berkus 00:50:15 And I said, can I have a just a moment, guys, I’ll be right back. And I went outside and I took my mobile and I called Chicago and I said, something’s wrong. I just feel it like the mom I don’t think can make it through the day. The son. His answers are so rehearsed. And he said them a thousand times. I’m not connecting with them. There were walls up, literally walls up, and their ceiling is all nicked up from all the sound equipment. So there had to be 50 crews in here. I don’t know how many times they’ve done this. And they said, well, what do you want to do? I said, I need to talk to them. I need to understand what this is really about. And so they said, okay, do your thing. We’ve never stood in your way. And I sat down with the kid, the son, and I said, what’s really going on? Tell me about this cookie company. Like, well, I’m doing it to honor my brother’s memory and my mom and I, and I said, no, but do you want to be doing this? And he looked at me and he goes, not really.
Nate Berkus 00:51:14 I said, well, what do you want to do? He said, you know, I feel like I have to do this because my mom’s so sad and she’s so sad all the time, and sometimes she even cries when we’re making the cookies. But I want to go to space camp, and I said, I got it. He was eight years old, I got it. And so I went back in, and then I sat down with the mother and I said, I want to talk to you about this because I can feel I’ve experienced loss and tragic loss and instant loss, and I can feel your sadness. I can feel how hard everything is for you. Even though you look beautiful and you have your makeup on and you know, and all this stuff and you’re ready for us to come today. You seem really sad. And she fell apart and she said, I can’t drive past the school. I can’t drive past the gas station where they used to beg me for candy bars. I can’t bear the idea of Thanksgiving coming up.
Nate Berkus 00:52:08 I can’t fathom the idea of Christmas and the anniversary of his death. Well, I take to my bed three weeks prior, and I. I can barely get out of bed, you know, for two weeks after I just all these dates, these dates, these dates keep coming at me. And I said, can I share something with you? You got to take the power out of the date. You’re allowed to feel sad whenever you want to feel sad. It doesn’t have to be on Christmas time. It doesn’t have to be on the anniversary of his death. It could be Tuesday that you can’t get out of bed, and that’s fine. But I’m worried here. I’m worried for your surviving kid. I don’t think he wants to make cookies anymore. I think he’s doing it for you. And she said, oh, well, what does he want to do? And I said, he wants to go to space camp. And she said, well, we can’t afford space camp. And I said, we can afford space camp, but do you want him to do that? And so I said, don’t worry, we’re going to give you a new oven.
Nate Berkus 00:53:09 Like, you know, we’re not taking it when you get a new kitchen. That’s that’s for sure happening. That’s why we’re here. But if we make the new kitchen and your son has grown out of this idea, even though it’s been on every news channel and all of this. Are you okay with that? Are you okay with just having a beautiful new kitchen? And she said absolutely. And I said, my wish for you is that this journey that you’re on, of the grief which no one can understand and no one should advise you on in all of this, is that you just let yourself let go a little bit of the calendar and how it’s attached to to how you’re moving through this. I’m really impressed that you’re letting him go to space camp. He’s going to be so excited. I think you should be the one to tell him. And we just had the most incredible experience. And in my final Oprah show, the producers brought back all of these guests and all these homeowners that I had had the great opportunity to impact.
Nate Berkus 00:54:05 And they were there. And she got on stage and she said to me, no one had ever stopped to listen to what I was really going through. And it became this news story that got away from us. And I knew he didn’t want to be in the kitchen with me every weekend baking cookies. I knew, but I didn’t know how to ask him, and I didn’t know how to to move through the situation. And you coming into our kitchen that day changed the trajectory for me of how I was able to grieve the loss of my son and face the holidays that I was so afraid to face, and also to be able to focus on what my surviving kid was going through. So thank you. That is where the power of intention for me has always lied. It’s never really been about the I know how to make a space beautiful. I know, I know, I’ve done it for 30 years. I could redo any space anywhere and make it better and leave it better than how I found it.
Nate Berkus 00:55:15 However, it’s the people that actually really have been the most impactful to me, not the architecture.
Eric Zimmer 00:55:23 That is a truly beautiful story and a truly beautiful way for us to wrap up. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing so many different things. I’ve really enjoyed this.
Nate Berkus 00:55:34 It’s my pleasure. I appreciate when you saw the booking. Nate Berkus, interior designer. Were you like, Let me think here.
Eric Zimmer 00:55:42 Well, I approve them all. But my producer, Nicole said, I think this one could be good. I think he’s good. I think this could be good. And when she feels strongly about something, I say, all right, let’s try it.
Nate Berkus 00:55:55 And then I appreciate you trying.
Eric Zimmer 00:55:57 Yeah. And then as I did prep, I was like, oh, I could this would be we got this, you know, we got this.
Nate Berkus 00:56:01 We got this. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really am very grateful.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:05 Thank you so much for listening to the show.
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