She is one of the most successful and recognized interior designers in the world. With regular programming on HGTV, The Food Network and others, Taniya Nayak- is without doubt- a global sensation. No matter where she goes -or what she does- her dreams are forever rooted, and designed, at home in Boston.
Image: Harris Davey // Stylist: Wave + Woven // MUA: Beauty by Nelse // Hair: Allison Arcand
AS one of the most well-known interior designers in the nation, it would be natural to assume Taniya Nayak has always had a passion for design and a lifelong ambition to turn it into a career. But really, she’s always simply been adaptable, optimistic, and confident in her ability to thrive.
Born to first-generation immigrants from India, Taniya grew up in South Weymouth with her parents and sister.
“I’m so proud of my Boston upbringing,” she says. “I think there is a level of how I grew up that shaped a lot of who I am today.” There were both positive and negative things about growing up on the South Shore in the 80s as an Indian girl in a predominately Irish suburb.
“I had a tough time,” she says. “And I don’t blame [the other kids]. It’s just how they were brought up. But I don’t regret it, weirdly. Now I look back and it made me stronger. It gave me a greater sense of empathy for others and kept me grounded.”
She continued to push herself and participate in the things she loved to do, like taking drafting classes in high school, the only girl in them, because she had thoughts of becoming an architect like her father. And dance – which she still does to this day, challenging herself with professional Latin ballroom dance classes.
“It was something that made me comfortable getting on a stage and feeling confident,” she says.
Being raised by an Indian family, education was the top priority and there was no question Taniya and her sister would further theirs at a college. Taniya’s father, who knew the cyclical nature of life as an architect in business for himself, encouraged a different, more stable path. She went to UMass-Lowell and got her degree in business marketing.
“I learned a lot in that program,” she says of her time there. “But the jobs I did after were not for me.” After working as a sales representative selling hearing aids and doing more connecting with her potential clients on a personal level then aggressively trying to sell them anything, Taniya made the first major adaptation of her adult life: she signed herself up for a master’s program in interior architecture at the Boston Architectural College.
Though she has always been very close with her family, Taniya took the steps to get into the program on her own and didn’t share her plans with them until they were already in motion.
“Most daughters would be scared to tell their parents they were getting a tattoo,” she says. “Instead, I hid from my parents the fact that I was going to get a masters degree.” It was her father’s initial discouragement of the architecture path that worried her, but of course they were ultimately supportive. She threw herself into her new program.
“Seriously, when you follow your passion, it was as if these floodgates opened right up,” she says. It was in her final year at the Boston Architectural College that she received an email from the program that the creators of Queer Eye were holding a casting for a new show on ABC Family they were developing called Knock First. The premise of the show is that the parents would be kicked out of the house and the designers would redesign their child’s room in a way that told a story about that child. The College encouraged their students to attend, feeling it would be a great learning experience for them.
“I didn’t go there to be put on TV,” said Taniya, who just thought it would be fun and impressive to the Dean of Students who had implored everyone to go. She suspects her outfit, inspired by Sporty Spice of The Spice Girls, is what caught the casting agents’ eyes enough to be invited back for a callback, during which she had to sit with a teenager she would potentially be designing a bedroom for. What landed her the job was that she sat on the floor with him and laid out all the materials she had in mind for the redesign – they’d liked how she was able to connect.
“I was like ‘I’m getting paid to do this? This is unbelievable,’” she said of her experience on the show, which lasted a few seasons. When the show ended, Taniya was devastated – she’d loved her time there, and also knew nothing about the TV and entertainment business she’d suddenly become a part of coming from her background as a trained designer. She found herself in a position of using her business marketing degree, only this time the product was herself. She was certainly not down and out though.
“You can’t have light without dark,” she says. “You can’t have a high without a low. I don’t think I would have the same joy with the high without experiencing the low.” She knew things would turn for the better, and they certainly did: one of the producers she’d worked with directed her to a new series that HGTV was casting for. She had found the posting on Craigslist, of all places. Taniya replied to the posting with a link to her work at Knock First, and got a phone call 30 minutes later. That is how she became a part of the HGTV family, which she is still a member of to this day.
Despite her ongoing run on HGTV, she can also appear on different networks. Taniya is heading into her 12th season of The Great Christmas Light Fight on ABC, which involves 6 weeks of traveling around the nation searching for the most over-the-top Christmas light displays the cast can find. A top four is narrowed down, and the winner gets a $50,000 prize on each episode.
“They’re like live Vegas shows,” she says.
She is also co-hosting HGTV’s Battle On The Beach with Ty Pennington of Extreme Home Makeover fame and Alison Victoria from Windy City Rehab. They serve as mentors of teams, not unlike The Voice, and the winner of an extreme 6-week renovation gets $50,000. There have been four seasons; Taniya’s team has won two of them so far.
Her time in TV has also included 13 years and 23 seasons on Food Network’s Restaurant Impossible alongside Robert Irvine, which brought together her passion for design and how she has specifically applied it to the restaurant industry, which she has been involved with in some capacity for over 20 years. It was working as a bartender to put herself through design school that she met her husband, Brian O’Donnell.
He was her manager, having worked in the restaurant industry his whole life and well on his way to becoming a locally renowned restauranteur. With both of them involved in other relationships, Taniya initially didn’t see him in a romantic way – in fact, he was the overly strict boss. But she did have admiration for his character. One day, she suggested to him that the restaurant staff was under the impression that he played favorites. His answer always stuck with her.
“I do play favorites,” he said. “If you show up on time, you work hard, you smile – then yes, you’re a favorite.”
They developed a friendship, and when they both found themselves single, they ended up going on a date. It has proved to be a lasting match, and his successful career in the hospitality industry heavily influenced hers.
“I’ve watched him grow into this incredible restauranteur,” Taniya says. His restaurants include Madre in Milton, the Yellow Door locations, and Lower Mills Tavern, which he co-owns with Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys.
Her design company, Taniya Nayak Design, specializes in the hospitality industry and has redesigned over 25 Ruth’s Chris steakhouses, as well as the Tuscan Group’s restaurant and hotel in Salem, New Hampshire, among many others.
Their biggest challenge over the years was in trying to have children. “We tried all the things,” she said. “It just didn’t happen. But we also came to terms with the fact that it just was not in the plan and made peace with that.”
Once again, Taniya pivoted with optimism. “We decided that if that wasn’t in our plan, we were going to live our lives slightly differently.” They promised each other that every year, they would go on an “epic” trip – they both love what they do professionally and enjoy working hard, but they committed to taking the time to enjoy life and reconnect with each other. This year, the epic trip was to South Africa.
It was the second big, important international trip. In February, Taniya went to India to attend her cousin’s wedding. She’d grown up going back to India every five years, but hadn’t returned in some time.
“Something about that trip kind of reset me,” she says. “I feel like I’ve been living my every day craziness here with filming, the business, all these other things, and I just went back and I felt so whole after not going for many, many years.”
Next on the agenda for Taniya is building an entirely new brand – she is launching a new line of hotel accessories this year. She thought of other celebrity designers who have their own lines, and noticed that this was an untapped space in the market with most of them focused on residential versus hospitality design. She also has branched out into hospitality-specific wall coverings, and a new tile line. It’s a new outlet to be creative and the natural progression of her background, talents, and grounded humility combined with an inner self-confidence. She’s even considered restaurant dinnerware.
“Somebody made this,” she said, holding a water glass at Madre. “Why isn’t it me?”
