If you love modern furnishings and entertaining and your partner would rather curl up in a room made for one-on-one relaxing, Greg Tufaro of HGTV’s What’s Your Sign? Design can come to the rescue. With a degree in psychology from Dartmouth and a lifelong interest in astrology, he’s the man for finding design compromise—and he does it by studying astrological signs. He even practices what he preaches in his own New York City apartment. "My wife is a Virgo and I’m an Aquarius. Virgo is considered a traditional earth sign guided by emotional intellect. They’ll overthink things to the point of worry, thus they’re called the worrywarts of the zodiac. That same quality oftentimes will reflect itself in a need to be studious of some sort." In Tufaro’s wife Mary’s case, that means she’s a big reader/history buff and would love nothing more than for the couple’s living room to be a library. "I, on the other hand," Tufaro says, "like a forward-thinking Aquarius, love anything technological. I have the newest, latest laptop, HDTV, gaming system? you name it."
Virgos, he says, typically know to make things feel warm and Aquarians have the tendency to make things feel too mechanical and cold. "I think we compromise very well," he says: "If you were to see our living room, you’d see, for Mary, we have a nice traditional oak bookshelf filled to the brim with books, more traditional furnishings made of wood, a country-style (without being roosters and hens) light yellow couch, and for me, a 32-inch HDTV, my desktop computer corner, Xbox 360 and a floating laptop which I can bring in and out of the room."
HGTV.com asked him a few questions about his interest in design and astrology:
How did you get into astrology?
My father actually studied astrology for many years and I don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know about astrology. But I have three siblings—two older brothers and a younger sister—and I’m the only one who really studied astrology. Maybe as an Aquarius, I am drawn to more esoteric/eccentric type things. But, by the same token, I like to have a scientific explanation to them. As a Pisces rising, I’ve always known that I can intuitively pick up on people’s feelings relatively quickly. I think having those two qualities in my character made understanding astrology come relatively easily and give me the ability to explain it in a way that isn’t hokey.
Why are astrology and this HGTV show important to you?
I think astrology has gotten a bad rep from people simply because of a lack of understanding it. People think it’s fatalistic. I disagree. I like to think of it like genetics. Genes guide our lives through probabilities and possibilities. I think the same of the position of the planets. In discussing astrology with people, I don’t say the planets cause people to behave a certain way. Rather, I say that there is a synchronicity between the placement of the planets and the likelihood of events happening and personality types reflecting themselves in a person’s life. It’s all about pattern recognition?planetary position has been plotted over thousands of years and there is a reality to how their placement reflects itself in our lives and in our personalities.
![PHOTO](javascript:popup("http://img.hgtv.com/HGTV/2006/07/11/GregTufaro_e.jpg",350,450))