Two Projects, One Idea: Young Huh Designs for Flexibility

Interior designer Young Huh is known for interiors that feel layered, expressive, and deeply personal. In two recent projects along the Hudson River, she brought that sensibility to spaces that needed to do more than one job. At her own Hudson Valley home, a former bar became a richly detailed office and guest room with Resource Furniture’s Circe desk wall bed. At her Riverside Drive project, the Adam Tavolo helped shape a client’s serene workspace into an equally welcoming place for overnight guests. Together, the projects show two distinct design approaches to the same practical need.

Hudson Valley: An Office with a Second Life

At Young’s home in Hyde Park, the room began with an entirely different identity. Once an old gentlemen’s bar, the tucked-away first-floor space became her private office and, when needed, a guest bedroom.

The dual purpose was part of the plan from the beginning.

The Circe Desk combines a generous work surface with a concealed bed, allowing the room to move easily between work and rest without requiring two separate zones or a permanent guest bed. For Huh, that functionality gave her the freedom to approach the rest of the room as a fully realized interior rather than a space defined by its practical requirements.

“I really designed it for myself as an office space,” she says.

That personal perspective comes through in the room’s layered mix of references. Huh paired the clean lines of the Resource Furniture system with hand-painted wallpaper, a plaster ceiling medallion, and an antique Italian mirror, elements that bring history, ornament, and a sense of discovery to the space.

“I wanted to have that mix of traditional and modern,” she explains. “I thought that juxtaposition of the antiques and the handcraft looked really great with the Resource Furniture.”

Rather than allowing the wall bed to recede quietly into the architecture, Huh made it part of the composition. A confident red-and-white palette gives the Circe Desk presence, with the red echoed in Italian fixtures in the adjoining bathroom.

“I wanted it to kind of stand out and be a design element,” Huh says. The result feels energetic but controlled: a functional centerpiece that holds its own among the room’s more decorative elements.

It is also a reminder that multifunctional furniture does not have to dictate an aesthetic. The right solution can be integrated into a traditional room as naturally as a contemporary one.

And while the space was conceived first and foremost as Young’s office, its second function has proven unexpectedly popular.

“I never actually thought it would be such a popular guest room,” she says. “I’ve been kicked out of there all summer.”

The Circe Desk currently spends plenty of time in bed mode, thanks to a steady stream of family and guests. Young describes the room as one everyone gravitates toward, a “surprising, charming space” that is private, comfortable, and almost hidden away behind the dining room.

In other words, the secondary function has become every bit as useful as the primary one. That is good design doing exactly what it should: adapting as life changes around it.

Riverside Drive: A Working Hideout That Welcomes Guests

For a client on Riverside Drive, Young encountered a nearly identical functional brief with a completely different visual result.

The Riverside Drive homeowner wanted their office to feel like a retreat: a quiet place to work, framed by expansive views of the Hudson River. It also needed to welcome overnight guests without compromising the room’s primary purpose as a workspace.

Young and her team turned to the Adam Tavolo as a solution, which combines a horizontal wall bed with lift-up work surface. By day, the room functions as a dedicated workspace. When guests arrive, it transitions easily into a comfortable bedroom, giving the space more capability without asking it to feel like two rooms at once.

For Young, presenting transforming solutions from Resource Furniture has become a natural response to this kind of design challenge.

“We will show clients the solution, and it’s often a winner,” she says.

Here, the aesthetic and color palette is notably quieter than in Young’s own Hudson Valley office. The client wanted the room to feel streamlined, so Young enveloped the walls, ceiling, and furniture in the same warm tone. Instead of calling attention to each individual element, the palette allows the entire room to read as one calm, cohesive environment.

The effect, Huh says, is “cozy, warm” and effortless.

That sense of ease matters. The room is not designed to feel like an office waiting to become a bedroom, or a bedroom temporarily accommodating a desk. In its everyday state, it functions as the homeowner’s working hideout, framed by expansive views of the Hudson River. When guests arrive, it simply takes on another role.

Once again, a room designed around practical flexibility became a favorite.

Designing Beyond a Single Function

For Young, Resource Furniture’s appeal lies not only in what the pieces can do, but in how naturally they do it.

“The function is so easy,” she says. “So easy to go from desk to bed or sofa to bed.”

That ease is central to successful multifunctional design. A room may technically serve two purposes, but if moving between them feels cumbersome, one function will inevitably win out. Transforming furniture works best when the change feels intuitive enough to become part of everyday life.

Young has seen that response with clients beyond these two projects. She recalls a client who used another Resource Furniture transforming system in an office and guest room and liked it enough to request the same solution for a second home.

It is a telling endorsement. The goal is not transformation for transformation’s sake. It is to create rooms that ask less of the people living in them.

Both the Hudson Valley and Riverside Drive projects demonstrate how differently that idea can be expressed. One is bold, collected, and deeply personal, pairing a red Circe Desk with florals, antiques, and architectural detail. The other is tonal and serene, allowing the Adam Tavolo to sit quietly within a cocoon-like room overlooking the river.

Neither sacrifices character for practicality. Instead, functionality gives each room more range. An office remains an office until a guest arrives. A bed appears when it is useful and makes room for daily life when it is not.

Because better living does not always require another room. Sometimes, it simply requires the room you already have to do more.