Myroslav Zhaldak on What Most Commercial Interiors Get Wrong (2026)

The hospitality industry loses money every year to interiors that photograph well and fail in practice – spaces that feel crowded at half capacity, with lighting that flattens rather than activates and layouts that funnel guests toward the exit. This pattern repeats across the market. The problem, according to Myroslav Zhaldak – an architect whose commercial projects span New York, Virginia, and Ukraine, and whose clients range from specialty coffee operators to Emmy-nominated creative executives – isn’t usually budget. It’s thinking.

“Most commercial interiors are designed to impress the owner, not serve the guest,” Zhaldak notes. It’s a principle that shapes his process from the first conversation with a client.

Over fifteen years and more than a hundred projects, he has developed a methodology that treats interior design as applied behavioral science. Space, in his framework, is not a backdrop. It’s a system. Most designers in the commercial sector start with a concept and work backward toward function. Zhaldak reverses that sequence, and the difference is legible in the results.

A member of both the Ukrainian Designers Association and IIDA, he has worked across multiple markets – commercial interiors in Ukraine, including projects for international retail brands, hospitality projects in the United States, residential work in New York State. His projects include Kyiv’s Retroville – a mixed-use development exceeding 100,000 square meters and one of Ukraine’s largest shopping centers, which earned him the national “Pride of the Profession” award in 2022 – and Workspace Symphony, which received three awards at Ukraine’s Interior of the Year competition in 2021, alongside specialty coffee shops in Lower Manhattan and a craft coffee bakery in coastal Virginia. The range is not coincidental. It reflects a practice built around problems, not typologies.

How the Space Works Before Anyone Sits Down

Zhaldak approaches every project by mapping what he calls behavioral scenarios – the sequence of decisions a visitor makes from the moment they enter. That sequence precedes any material selection, any mood board.

He believes lighting is the most underused tool in commercial design – not as accent, but as architecture. It defines zones and shapes how long people stay. Planning, he argues, should never be decorative. Every layout decision should correspond to a use scenario – seating that allows both privacy and community, circulation paths that feel intuitive without being obvious. What reads as a design failure, he argues, is usually a failure of planning.

SIMPL Coffee, Nassau Street

When Oleksandr Voievodin, co-founder of SIMPL Coffee and the operator behind a 152-location franchise network, needed a designer for his first New York location, he came to Zhaldak specifically for his grasp of hospitality logic – not just aesthetics, but how a space functions as a brand. The constraint was real: 250 square feet in Lower Manhattan, one of the most competitive retail environments in the country, a defined philosophy – “simple and special” – and no margin for error.

The solution – raw concrete walls, calibrated lighting, minimal forms, natural accents – was built around a core premise: that a calm environment shifts how guests experience time. Within one month of opening in December 2023, the location had collected more than a hundred five-star reviews. Downtown Alliance recognized the project for its concept and design, singling out the interior’s ability to embody the brand’s own stated identity.

When Voievodin expanded to 927 Second Avenue in 2025, he returned to Zhaldak, because brand coherence at scale requires someone who understands the original logic well enough to extend it, not just repeat it.

Operation Brew, Virginia Beach

Operation Brew was a different kind of commission. The 2022 scope included design, documentation, and supervision – executed entirely remotely, with Zhaldak coordinating from Ukraine during the first year of full-scale war.

The central challenge was one Zhaldak describes as the defining tension of small food-service spaces: how to maximize seating density without making guests feel it. Suspended drywall structures, finished to read as metal, drew the eye upward and relieved pressure on the floor plan – at 18% lower cost than the structural alternative. A large communal table anchored the center of the room, adding seats while functioning as a social catalyst. Warm lighting and live greenery shifted the atmosphere without adding square footage.

In the first year of operation, attendance rose 35% and revenue increased 28%. Operation Brew earned a regional “Best New Business” award and twice received Yelp’s “People Love Us” recognition.

The Verification That Matters

Tim Carter’s endorsement carries particular weight because of what he is staking on that judgment. Carter, CEO of Highlight Creative Agency and a three-time Emmy Award nominee whose client roster includes Disney, American Express, Airbnb, and Comcast, retained Zhaldak in 2022 to design two residential projects in New York State – a primary residence and an A-frame secondary home – and did so without hesitation.

What Carter’s endorsement establishes is not sentiment. It is calibration. Someone who evaluates creative work at the level of global brand campaigns and applies the phrase “stands on par with top architectural firms” is not reaching for a compliment. He is making a professional assessment. Zhaldak managed both projects under wartime conditions, across time zones, without reduction in quality or deadline adherence. That range – across commercial hospitality, large-scale retail, and high-end residential – is where Carter’s assessment finds its full context.

What the Work Adds Up To

In 2023, the Order of Ivan Mazepa – a state decoration awarded on Ukraine’s Constitution Day – recognized his contribution to design and international collaboration. In 2025, he joined the jury of the same competition he once competed in, evaluating commercial interiors as a peer authority in the field. That same year, his expertise was engaged as a peer reviewer for two international academic conferences on design and construction innovation – a role that extends beyond practice into the part of a profession where judgment is the deliverable.

The hospitality industry keeps solving the wrong problem. It optimizes for the opening and absorbs the cost of everything after – the guests who didn’t return, the seating that felt wrong at full capacity, the brand that couldn’t scale because no one understood what made the first location work. The difference shows up later, when the numbers move in a direction someone can finally explain. The spaces did what they were supposed to do. Most spaces never get that far. 
Follow more of his work on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zhaldak_design_usa?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

Content Writing by : Yamini patil