Ina Garten Gives a Tour of the ‘Coziest Room’ in Her New York City Apartment — See Inside!

The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ star joked she went through “a thousand paint samples” to find the perfect hue for the space in an interview with ‘House Beautiful’

Ina Garten is opening the doors to one of her favorite rooms in her New York City apartment!

The Barefoot Contessa star, 76, detailed some of the design elements in her Upper East Side abode during an interview for House Beautiful’s October 2024 digital cover story. According to the outlet, the space is the “jewel” of her two-bedroom apartment that she purchased with her husband Jeffrey Garten in 2016.

“It’s the coziest room in the house,” Ina says of her library, where she often unwinds after dinner parties.

She notes that the journey to selecting the perfect wall color was not easy, though she eventually landed on the perfect purple hue. The Food Network star — whose new memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens comes out Oct. 1 — reveals she sifted through “100 to 200 purple paints” to find the right shade for the room.

“When I'm picking a color, it's like a thousand paint samples,” she adds. “I picked this one because I wanted a grayed purple that had life in it.”

Related: Ina Garten's Assistant Once 'Dismissed' a Letter from Jennifer Garner Asking to Be on Ina's Show (Exclusive)

Ina has taken on over a dozen renovation projects — from her Hamptons home to her Paris apartment — and loves to tackle even the most challenging remodels.

“I’m an adrenaline junkie,” she says. “I give myself a project that I think there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to do. And then I go do it. And when it's over, I'm like, that worked out really well. I like having an impossible problem to solve. I like the challenge of trying to figure something out.”

Related: Ina Garten ‘Couldn’t Understand Why People Had Kids' After Her Own ‘Horrible Childhood’ (Exclusive)

The celebrity cook worked with designer Daniel Romualdez to outfit the space to her exact liking. While the furniture in Ina’s library once adorned her former New York City apartment’s living room, Romualdez says it looks “so much better” the way they reimagined it in this room.

“It was really dramatically different,” he said of the furniture in the new space. He also emphasized their excitement when they saw each piece playing off of the colors of the book bindings.

Of working with Ina to design the space, Romualdez says “she's as good as it gets.” He continues, “She’s a bit of a design fanatic. So she comes to the table knowing what she wants, and then at the same time, she's extremely open to ideas that are not necessarily hers.”

Related: Ina Garten Opens Up About Childhood Abuse By Her Father: ‘I Remember Thinking He Would Kill Me’ (Exclusive)

In addition to curating her current Upper East Side abode, Ina tells the outlet that she worked on another unique space just for her husband when he was living in Japan. She says she made his Tokyo home into an “exact replica” of their New York City apartment at the time.

“Jeffrey moved every year when he was a kid,” she explains. “He hates moving, and I love building things, so we kind of had this unspoken contract that I can build whatever I want, and I can make any decision I want — but I know what he likes. And I just take his clothes and his toothbrush and move him in, and he shows up, and it’s done.”

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During a PEOPLE cover story interview in September, Ina opened up about her 55-year marriage with Jeffrey and how the pair were able to overcome a rough patch when they separated and almost divorced in the 1970s.

She revealed that she needed her husband to see her as his equal and like they had a partnership in their marriage, so she asked him to see a therapist.

"One hour, that's all Jeffrey needed," she told PEOPLE of the action that saved their marriage. "He went once for an hour and totally got it."

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