There’s something about entering Delray Beach’s newest furniture & home showroom, Iron & Oak Home; from the moment of entry guests feel immediately at ease. Maria Giraldi, co-owner of Iron & Oak Home, has witnessed this effect time and again since she opened the store with partner Barry Tartarkin last September.
“You can hear people exhale, which is so sweet,” Giraldi says. “Maybe it’s the music playing, or the candle in the corner, but when you walk in, it really feels like home.”
As a boutique retailer and furniture studio, Iron & Oak Home leans into the materials in its name as foundations for its owners’ Mediterranean- and California-inspired aesthetic. Unlike Florida coastal design, which is commonly found elsewhere—think blues and greens, flowers and nautical imagery—Iron & Oak’s selections are rooted in organic simplicity married to a contemporary cool. “I love the California coastal aesthetic,” Giraldi says. “It is more natural and easy to incorporate into almost any décor, with neutral, reclaimed wood, and recycled, craftsman-made furnishings.
“Just like the world of fashion, you can layer anything on top of each other now. The world of home is just like that; you find what is pleasing to your eye, what makes it feel good, and group it together.”
Rather than organizing furniture types together, as in a traditional big-box store—sofas here, dining-room sets over there—Giraldi arranged the 3,000-square-foot showroom as a series of vignettes: fluid rooms, stocked with accessories, in which consumers can imagine themselves living.
Giraldi brings decades of design experience to her role at Iron & Oak. She started with Chanel before co-founding Lemon, a brand that helped elevate loungewear into the luxury clothing space, in New York in 2008. Iron & Oak Home arose in part from Giraldi’s desire to flex her design muscles after she sold Lemon just prior to the COVID pandemic.
“I didn’t love retirement. It made me sad that I wasn’t doing anything creative,” she recalls. Tartarkin had become a broker for Sotheby’s, and began to buy and sell real estate. “That brought me into the interior furniture world, of staging a home, and I absolutely adored it,” Giraldi says. “Because I loved that type of business—color, placement, balance—I said, ‘let’s open a furniture store.’”
Drawn to the city’s combination of a thriving cultural scene and an emergent business community, Giraldi and Tartarkin set their sights on Delray, purchasing two bays off Atlantic and Fifth avenues in the heart of downtown. “I fell in love with Delray Beach,” Giraldi says. “I love the vibe and the excitement. The reaction we’ve gotten thus far has been lovely.”
Iron & Oak’s offerings span from artisanal furnishings to manufactured selections to one-of-a-kind vintage pieces chosen from the High Point Furniture Market in North Carolina. The business offers a white-glove delivery service, and shoppers may also buy items directly from the studio floor or a warehouse 2 miles away, and take them home the same day. Eventually, Giraldi hopes to open a coffee and panini bar inside the shop, encouraging customers to linger longer—and ensuring that Iron & Oak feels even more like home.
Visit Iron & Oak Home at 47 S.E. Fifth Ave., Delray Beach. For more information, call 561/908-2447 or visit ironandoakhome.com.
