Daniela Araya Is a Color Therapist — Her Joyful Interiors Are About to Be Everywhere

For anyone who has had the immense pleasure of hiring Daniela Araya, they’ll tell you that her creative process is so much more than visuals — it’s rooted in her raw emotional reaction to a space, a person, and their story. So much so that she jokes she’s become a “color therapist” for many of her clients, which feels like an ideal moniker for the sought-after color consultant turned independent interior designer based in Hudson, New York. Editors at Apartment Therapy have watched as Araya has developed her craft over the last half-decade: She’s a longtime contributor who has helped readers understand complex color theory and the intersection of psychology and interior design. She’s also created a growing digital community on Instagram and via Substack, where she encourages people to experiment with design and discover the joy that only rich, bold hues can provide.

But what started as a passion project turned side hustle — Araya spent her early career in media marketing, including at CNN and Hearst — has blossomed into a full-time dream. Color consulting has remained steady for her: “Clients come to me with a fear; a color they love but won’t commit to; or a room that photographs well, but feels flat,” she says. But her growth as a full-service interior designer (a “one-woman team,” she says) has proved that her foundation in color theory and composition also helps her select furnishings, upholstery, and other details that transform each of her clients’ spaces into rooms that embrace “the entire rainbow.” Or, in her own words, to help anyone “land on a palette that’s true to them, and make decisions that last well beyond the after photos.”

Her love of interiors didn’t exactly begin with anything aesthetic, but rather childhood memories of time spent at her grandparents’ home: “I always come back to those memories, because while visually my grandparents’ house wasn’t the thing I want my space to look like right now, it really was about the feeling in there,” Araya explains. “When I’m working with somebody, I really like to dig into learning what makes them them. What lights them up? What’s one of the favorite spaces that [they’ve] ever been in? When I think about some of my favorite homes, it’s not usually places that visually sync with the aesthetic I align myself with — but more around the feeling it left me with.”

In her earliest work, Araya says she quickly became a “sounding board” for those who were “stumped” about how to introduce vibrant shades into an already established color palette. Using her own frame of reference from childhood, Araya doesn’t start with visual inspiration: She conducts pointed personal research (“What activities do you do daily? What’s your favorite way to get cozy?”) that uncovers a subconscious reality of how each client feels cared for when at home. Those early consults ended up becoming more engrossing projects with each person who asked for help — it went from simple wall paint selections to full room makeovers. Eventually, Araya found herself creating what she calls “throughlines” in entire homes throughout the Northeast and beyond. 

Unsurprisingly, Araya has been asked about her secret for creating gorgeously cheerful spaces soaked in hues designed to make people smile. But true to form, her answer isn’t as simple as she makes it look: There isn’t a “magic” formula for executing her signature bold color palettes. “There is no single right way to use color,” she tells her clients, even those who are desperate for something as simple as the 60-30-10 rule, which Araya refuses to subscribe to. In her own home in upstate New York, she has “over 20 colors” in play — a far cry from the three-to-five color palettes that usually dominate design magazines. She firmly believes palettes are meant to be flexible guideposts: As real rooms take shape, she’ll “veer off” from them as needed. For her, a palette is a starting point, not a firm box.

“My version of balance is finding a throughline between all the different spaces of a home,” she shares. Araya aims to keep anyone from feeling “jolted” when drifting from space to space, instead creating rooms that “all feel like [they’re] part of the same ship, even if you’re moving around it a bit.” In her own home, that means blending shades of red and pink in the kitchen, then repeating them as accents in a yellow-drenched living room and then again in a guest room that’s “totally soaked in green.” Anything is possible “when you’re working with all the colors of the rainbow,” Araya says — a throughline is cohesive and stitches a home together even when saturated colors are dominant, like familiar characters in one room to the next.

Like many interior designers, Araya has a complicated relationship with trends — especially color trends. “Treating color as an emotional investment is different from how the industry usually talks about it: just a trend to track, resale-safe neutrals, or this year’s it color,” she says. “I think the future of decorating has less to do with a specific look, and more to do with building confidence. Living in your house versus decorating it for someone who might walk through it, someday.” 

So Araya deliberately coaches her clients to reconsider norms they may have inherited from popular culture and rules and formulas they’ve heard from other designers. “I will always push,” Araya says of her signature bold instincts, “but I’m not here to enforce design rules — I’m here to protect what actually makes my clients happy in their own homes.” It’s a quality that many of her peers and colleagues have come to celebrate about her: Ariel Kanter, a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, and Vanity Fair, told Apartment Therapy that Araya “literally changed my life and my business” through her signature consulting approach. After hiring her to redesign a digital newsletter, Kanter says her own outlook on design has shifted permanently. “Every time I buy something colorful, I send her a picture because I know she’ll be excited that she’s influenced me into experimenting,” she shares. “Sharing the joy of color is her passion.”

This year, designers are aligning with Araya’s longtime ethos — and fully embracing joyful details fully customized for the exact people and homes they’re in. “I’m seeing customization a lot, which isn’t something we haven’t seen before, but more just like the idea of joy and whimsy,” she shares. “I recently worked on a project where we made a custom wallpaper with illustrations of [the client’s] pets and icons that had to do with her family … it was such a fun way to add personality to a space, taking that into the hands of the person who’s living there.” 

Whether it’s customized Delft tiles or DIY projects featuring personal mementos, Araya is thrilled that more people are embracing personalization; it’s beyond a cute flourish, as it’s a brand of maximalism that focuses on a push towards objects that feel unmistakably you. Paired with her larger emphasis on psychological symbolism and bespoke details, these trends point to a future where a “trend” is less about copying a look from Instagram and more about finding idiosyncratic ways to make a home feel singular.

“I’m so enjoying the insane rollercoaster of working for myself … of learning what it means to run a business as an interior designer,” Araya tells me, sharing that she’s actively considering opening a physical studio in the future — possibly after she’s done working on a full makeover for a two-story brownstone in Brooklyn. “I’m also working on a project in Los Angeles that I just landed, a really fun home that’ll hopefully be drenched in color and lots of other exciting pieces.” 

One thing’s for sure: Araya is prioritizing maintaining a close relationship with her clients, even as she tries to scale. “It’s just me, so I’m really trying to figure out what that means for my business, and how many projects I can actually take on.” But she’s already eyeing projects beyond residential spaces — her plan is to soon dip a toe into hospitality design, including hotels and restaurants. “The dreams are big,” she tells me with a giggle. And given the deeply personal, emotionally intuitive spaces she already creates, it isn’t difficult to imagine her bringing that same kaleidoscopic vision to a resort lobby or a restaurant lounge that guests will never want to leave.