New Yorker Betty Wasserman set the tone for a sophisticated and subtle apartment in the city.

When Neeraj Bewtra left his job as a New York bond trader in 2008, he was burned out and looking to take some time off, a six-month sabbatical perhaps. Years later, he still hasn’t made it back to Wall Street and, with his ob-gyn wife, Barbara, found their dream apartment a block north of Washington Square Park, overlooking a row of Victorian carriage houses.

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Betty Wasserman Art & Interiors provided furnishings “on the modern side but not ultramodern,” Barbara says. The results are both sophisticated and subtle – this is an apartment that does double duty. On the one hand, the loft is a showcase: 11-foot ceiling, vast windows, sprawling entertaining space outfitted with prize furniture and art. But this is also very conspicuously a comfortable family home, kid-friendly and pet-friendly.

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Betty Wasserman set the tone in the entry, where a roguish, splattery abstract painting accompanies a console and bench by one of her favorite collaborators, a will-make-anything artisan whose handiwork can be found all over the loft. On the floor, a plum-accented round shag rug beckons the Bewtras’ gregarious wheaten terrier. Walls are surfaced in Venetian plaster, a durable material that makes it easy to remove, say, the marks of grubby hands or skittering balls-a plus when the long hallway connecting the entry to the bedrooms is the twins’ indoor soccer field.

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For the kids’ room, Wasserman chose a boldly colored striped rug and bedding and commissioned a mural showing cartoonlike planes and helicopters. However, the twins’ favorite place turns out to be their parents’ enormous glassed-in shower. “They think it’s a water park,” Bewtra says. The runner-up is probably the stylish playroom. When no guests are sleeping on the crimson sectional, which transforms into a queen-size bed, it’s a cozy TV-watching spot or, he adds, “an excellent trampoline.” In addition, the round upholstered ottoman comes apart into pieces that the twins use as rocking horses on the cushy tufted wool rug.