Australian expat Nathan Orsman kicked off his courtship with the Hamptons 16 years ago. He instantly fell in love with the South Fork, the ultimate grown-up playground. “It was fun — it was really fun,” says the interior- and landscape-lighting designer, 40, principal of Southampton-based Orsman Lighting Inc., which opened a Manhattan office earlier this month. “I was young and from Australia, where it’s a much quieter lifestyle, but in the Hamptons, there were a lot more parties. I had all these great friends and we got invited and went to everything. It was very social.”
Fast forward nearly two decades, and Orsman — along with his husband of nine years, Jose Castro, 35, the senior vice president of retail development at Nickelodeon — are full-time Southampton residents. (They also own a three-bedroom apartment near Union Square in Manhattan.) But Orsman’s hedonistic heyday is over.
“We don’t have wild pool parties — we have pool parties,” he says. “The wild part of my life is done. Fun, yes. Entertaining, yes. But I don’t like anything out of control.”
Adds Castro, “I’m a big fan of the [philosophy that] the minute that you’re not working, you should be having fun, and the best fun is with family and friends. Being in the Hamptons, you have the added benefit that everyone is there to have a good time.”
Today, Orsman and Castro’s get-togethers draw a well-heeled crowd, largely from the worlds of fashion, design and media: think designer Dennis Basso and husband Michael Cominotto, interior designer and TV personality Thom Filicia, and socialite and DJ Marjorie Gubelmann.
“I love having people over,” Orsman says. “I’m a ‘the more the merrier’ kind of guy, but that doesn’t mean putting it all on, pouring the wine continuously. The time we have on the weekends, when we don’t have to be working, we want to spend with friends. This is the most amazing place to do that and enjoy it.”
And Orsman stays true to his native roots. “I’m usually attached to the barbecue most of the season, because I’m Australian,” he says. “I’ve been known to cook a dinner for 60 people. I would say every weekend we do something, and then every other weekend something more elaborate, like a 10- to 15-person dinner.”
Castro says farm-to-table entertaining is also at the core of the East End lifestyle. “Being in the Hamptons, you’re grilling outside and picking things up at farm stands. Entertaining becomes much more of a lifestyle thing.”
And while many Hamptons-bound weekend visitors flock to outposts of Manhattan nightclubs and restaurants, Orsman isn’t interested. “I find if you have a house out here, you tend not to go out so much, because you want to enjoy what you’ve created, or you want to spend the moments with your friends in a more comfortable setting,” he says.
It’s that appreciation of the Hamptons that prompted Orsman to move to the East End full time, about a decade ago. His first home was a rental he occupied for one year in the Southampton hamlet of North Sea. “It was a tiny little shack, a saltbox, on the water, with one bedroom upstairs, and a tiny spiral staircase,” he says. “It was amazing.”
Two years ago, in January 2013, the couple ultimately purchased their current home in nearby Water Mill: a two-bedroom, three-bathroom, cedar shake-shingled, 2,600-square-foot, farmhouse-style Victorian. Built in 2005, it sits on a 1.25-acre lot dotted with copper beech, privet, boxwood, maple, cedar and Leyland cypress trees. There’s also a guesthouse comprising an additional bedroom and bathroom.
Tidying up and removing scrub oaks were key to the home’s exterior design. “I wanted to clear it out, so there is a strong visual element looking back from the house,” Orsman says. “It’s all designed so that when you’re outside or inside, you look and see the lighting of the trees at night.” Small lights are placed in the ground, at the bases of several of the trees, shining up, while the larger trees have lights placed inside them.
And outdoor lighting, says Orsman, is key to entertaining, and therefore central to the Hamptons lifestyle. “I create entertaining environments,” he says. “The fact is, people come out here on a Friday at 4 p.m., and what are you doing until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.? You’re entertaining outside.” And what better place to do it than the couple’s patio, shaded by mature trees strung with lights he fabricated himself.
Another significant outdoor modification was the addition of a pool with underwater speakers. “Jose wanted them so he could dance and listen to Madonna,” Orsman says, laughing.
The work on the pool house — or cottage, as Orsman refers to it — was extensive. “We had to raise the whole building up because it was musty and smelled horrible, and water was coming in,” Orsman says. “We redid the whole foundation, redid the floors, redid the septic tank, painted the walls blue and added a bar.”
Although there is a guest bedroom in the main house, Orsman says, laughing, “Single guests tend to take the cottage, because they may stay out a little later, and bring home unapproved prey, which is not allowed in the main house. But no one is that saucy anymore!”
Inside the main house, a moderate amount of work was done with the assistance of Manhattan-based David Scott Interior. In the kitchen, under-cabinet lighting was added, as was lighting above the wood cabinets to illuminate the ceiling. Other modifications in the kitchen included repainting the bright green walls white, refinishing the pine wood floors and staining them gray, and adding an island that was created with steel from Southampton’s Anvil Ironworks and stone from a yard in Hampton Bays.
Typically, says Orsman, the pair entertain in their more casual family room, which has high ceilings and furnishings in wicker and modern shades of gray. “Everything happens in here. We dance in here at the end of the night. Between 11 p.m. and midnight, this room is a lot of fun.”
Plus, there is a party-friendly DMX control panel on the wall that allows the lights above the room’s ceiling beams to change into an array of colors. Says Orsman, laughing, “It always looks the best when it’s red in here. It’s a little bit of an Amsterdam-hooker-dancing-in-the-window red.”
The living room skews more formal, without losing its playful feel. It features a colorful assortment of art — including an abstract geometric painting by Australian artist Cameron Haas and a gold-plated dish by French artist Hervé Van der Straeten — with more intimate proportions for quiet fireside chats. “I like the lighting in here because it’s moody,” Orsman says. “There is more poignancy. It’s recessed lighting with really great glare control.”
Upstairs, the master bedroom’s angular ceiling was raised to over 13 feet from its original 8 feet. A beam was also added, “because it fills the space — it feels weird without it — and it’s a lighting technique, since there’s LED lighting above the beam,” says Orsman. The best feature of the master bedroom, according to Orsman, is that it looks out onto the tree-filled yard.
“Before Jose and I go to bed, we get to see the whole visual of the trees lit up. It’s just very beautiful and enchanting. It makes me really happy.”
While Orsman and Castro are eager to share their home with friends and family, they do have their limits. “It might be bigger at some point,” says Orsman, of expanding the home. “For resale, it needs more bedrooms. But I don’t want it to be huge. I have no intention of that. All you’re going to do when you make it bigger is have more people come and stay, which is fine. But it’s more costly. It’s like running a hotel.”
He certainly understands why guests might want to “check in” for the summer. “Good luck finding somewhere better!”
Photo shoot by Brett Beyer
Prop styling by Brice Gaillard
Shop the look
Capture the decorative spirit of Orsman and Castro’s Hamptons home with these chic pieces from One Kings Lane.
