A Fresh Eye for the ‘Indy’s’ New Digs

A Fresh Eye for the Indy’s New Digs

From Celebrity Spaces to the Newsroom,
Patrick Delanty Has Built a Career Around
Making Spaces Feel Like Home

By Tiana Molony | September 3, 2026

Read more Home & Garden Fall 2026 stories here.

While other kids were riding their bikes and playing catch, interior designer Patrick Delanty was moving the furniture around in his room. 

“Totally not functionally by any means,” he confessed. He wasn’t following feng shui or trying to create some perfectly balanced space; he simply wanted a cool bedroom. “I just had a knack for it.”

Sometime later, in the early ’90s, Delanty was living in Atlanta, Georgia, where one of his friends’ moms had just opened a boutique store. At the time, he was taking a continuing education course in interior design, which he said was both “remedial and ridiculous — it was me and these housewives.”

He started working at the boutique, managing the store. Then, an opportunity arose to transfer to the design office and become a design assistant. He took the job. “I just kind of fell into it,” he said. The opportunity was there, the timing was great, and “I was really fortunate with how it all unfolded.”

Ten years into the position, he found himself working on actress Halle Berry’s condo in New York City. Through the project, the pair quickly became friends, and Berry convinced Delanty that his time was up in Atlanta. L.A. was where it’s at. She was moving, too, and told him to throw all his stuff into her van. 

In L.A., Delanty opened his own design firm, Delanty Designs, in 2006. He would go on to work on many projects for Berry, including a custom trailer for her movie sets. He also worked for Ty Pennington, whom Delanty knew before he scored his leading role in HGTV’s Extreme Home Makeover: Home Edition. He worked on the show and later produced design segments for Pennington on shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Rachel Ray Show, ABC’s Nightline, The Today Show, and Good Morning America.

And, more recently, his best work yet (in my completely unbiased opinion): designing the Indy’s new office space at 223 East De la Guerra Street. “They’re going to need help,” he remembers thinking. So, in exchange for some ad space, Delanty offered his design expertise.

He recalled the former Indy offices on State Street, which were cramped and much smaller than the new space. He wanted to not only transform the new workspace but also create an environment where employees actually wanted to work. 

Art is at the forefront of all his designs, and Delanty had loads to sift through: posters from Fiestas past, film festival
photographs, and collages of old covers. He hung them methodically. Plants were also “crucial,” he said, not only to the design but to employees’ well-being. He scattered a few throughout the office, bringing the outdoors in.

He did little in the way of furniture, working with what he had and replacing things here and there. He recalled two wooden chairs with upholstered seats that “looked like they were from a law office in 1980.” They were so bad, he said, that he asked Independent Publisher Brandi Rivera if they could replace them with something that felt more like it belonged in someone’s home. He doesn’t believe an office needs office furniture.

In addition to the common areas, Delanty helped design individual offices, including that of Indy Editor-in-Chief Marianne Partridge-Poett. He remembers watching Marianne move into her office and “piling” all her stuff in there. He told her to “go away and don’t come back” while he styled her space. He transformed her bookshelf, creating a design by mixing books with family photos and other accessories. 

After seeing what he could do, a few other Indy staffers asked for his help, and Delanty lent a hand hanging art and rearranging spaces for better flow. It took one staff member some time before asking for Delanty’s expertise. Delanty distinctly remembers Executive Editor Nick Welsh brushing off the need for any design in his space.

“There were just piles of stuff everywhere,” he recalled. “Nick’s office was funny because he doesn’t really, and he’ll admit it, have much of a design aesthetic.”

After a few months of working in squalor, Nick called Delanty up. “And he’s like, ‘I’ve seen what you could do,’ ” said Delanty, who got to work hanging art and organizing Nick’s space, making it a suitable place for a working human and proving that a little design really can go a long way, even for the Angry Poodle.

Delanty is not done just yet. Design is an ongoing process, and he’s still got some unfinished business with the conference room. There, he envisions a gallery wall featuring some of the Indy covers from the Covering 40 Years exhibition at the Santa Barbara Library’s Faulkner Gallery, some of which he actually helped hang.

For Delanty, the power of intentional design comes down to one thing: It’s less about what you have and more about what you do with it. “It’s not the provenance of an item that makes it,” he explained. “It’s how the designer puts it together and places it in the room.”

Read more Home & Garden Fall 2026 stories here.