Envisioning the Possibility Within

Helana Shumway
Aug 19
3 min read

“If you can envision it, we can make it happen.” That is Julie Muscato’s motto. Owner of Julie Muscato Home & Gifts in Lockport, she makes it a habit of creating dreams for homeowners. The showroom, located at 1 Walnut Street along the beautiful and historic Erie Canal, is 7,000 square feet of inspiration. Along with a gift shop that ensures locals and tourists alike have the perfect gift for any and all occasions, Julie Muscato Home & Gifts is a staple in Western New York.

Exceptional Offerings For Every Style

As a women-owned small business, Julie Muscato Home & Gifts stands out from the crowd. Most of the upholstery and furniture in the showroom is American-made, with limited exceptions for certain case goods. The showroom focuses on creativity and strays far from trends that may be common for larger corporations.

From mid-century modern to classic traditional and every style in between, Julie and her team think outside the box and help each customer arrive at their interior design destination. With limitless creativity, Julie Muscato Home & Gifts is a luxury brand that offers many different price points, making it simultaneously elegant and accessible. When Julie and her team finish a room, it won’t look like many others, and that is the point. Each project is unique and caters to the customer.

The showroom is versatile and features one of the largest fabric libraries in Western New York, along with an incredibly large wallpaper library that rivals anyone in the region. Julie says, “We have several different upholstery lines that offer all sorts of different styles.” Custom window treatments and bedding, along with beautiful, reupholstered pieces of sentimental value, invite unique patterns, textures, and palettes into each room.

Women-Owned, Team Oriented, Proven Success

Julie Muscato Home & Gifts is currently in its fourteenth year of business – a feat that reflects the impact it has had on the Western New York region. To Julie, this has only been possible through dedication and hard work. She describes getting up every day, loving what she does, and serving her community.

As a women-owned, women-led business, Julie and her team of five are small but very mighty, and she says, “We inspire each other every day.” Team members come from different backgrounds and bring a diversity of talents to the work. Each year since inception, the business has grown, and Julie loves being able to take the team with her on this path of success. Each member has an equal place and collaborates openly on every project, a teamwork model that is at the heart of the business.

Julie acknowledges that there were few local women-owned interior design businesses when she first started, and she hopes to create space for female business owners or those who wish to begin the journey of starting their own business. Additionally, she is a member of the Interior Design Association of Western New York, which brings together many other vendors and women-owned businesses to connect and collaborate in creative environments.

In addition to a dedicated team, communication is crucial when working with customers, Julie says, as “Our customers invest a lot in us. The communication between us and our customers through the entire [design] process is huge.” A project for a single room in a customer’s house could involve upwards of twenty different vendors. To make each project come together in harmony, Julie and her team focus on strong organization and transparent communication between many moving parts. Working closely over the course of days, weeks, or months with customers, they remain detail-oriented and steadfast in building trust with each client as they ensure their dream space becomes reality.

Fall Into Place

With fall around the corner, this is the perfect time of year to work on an interior design project. As the leaves turn bright red and crisp orange, cooler weather brings many of us indoors to reflect on changes and hopes for the home. Starting a project with Julie Muscato in autumn – before the busyness of the holiday season – provides homeowners the opportunity to reinvent their space while getting everything in order before family converges.

If an interior design project is not on the horizon this season, Julie Muscato’s gift shop has home accessories to brighten any room in the house. From needlepoint-chic pillows with clever, funny quotes to beautiful clothing and jewelry to fancy pink coup glasses, the gift shop is a destination for those looking for variety.