Magic Out Of Mud

I have a knack for making people feel welcome.

It wasn’t taught to me and I didn’t study how the masters of design achieved it. A lifetime of fine-tuning my own world is how I honed my craft.

I was raised in a humble home that buzzed with creativity and chaos. While I celebrated the joy and inspiration it provided, I found the need to carve out a space that was peaceful, comforting, and calm. And since I never really had any money, I had to break some “rules” and make magic out of mud.

Sometimes the mud was where the magic was.

I Just Can’t Help It

My mom is a dreamy romantic and a fabulous artist. When I was young, we used to walk through homes under construction in our neighborhood and try to figure out what would go where. Have you noticed that when you are taking in something that you are excited about, you describe it in a whisper? Take note next time you touch a beautiful piece of fabric or see a piece of art you love, you’ll exhale and then whisper how much you love it. Every time.

This design thing isn’t something I can stop. It happens in my head and in my heart constantly. I savor the spaces that I find beautiful.

I wonder what it is I love about them and consider all of the details. I love watching how people navigate and experience spaces. When I see how things are helping or frustrating people I take note. It’s in every fiber of who I am. I just can’t help it.

Spaces That Nourish

My bent is for more. More texture, more color, more seating, more comfort. This is not to be confused with clutter. It’s about insisting that we live surrounded by things that work well for us and that we find beautiful. Spaces that beckon us to sit and stay a while. Things that feel as good to sit on as they do to get up out of. Where the drink is easy to set down, your feet can go up on anything, and the color…the color envelops you in what you need.

Color is subjective. When I was considering the color to paint the main rooms of my own home, I really had to think about what I needed. Our home is blessed with classic white painted trim work but has crappy wood floors that make me crazy. The color I was contemplating needed to distract me from them. It also needed to be a color that made me feel calm. I love, love, love a fresh white space and have designed many of them for my clients. They always feel wonderful. But for me, I needed a warmer embrace and the second I painted a deep, dark teal on my walls I had a physical reaction to it. I just knew it was perfect. I was excited. I turned up the Yacht Rock and painted non-stop for two days and never felt tired.

The color was feeding me what I needed and it continues to nourish me to this day.

Juxtaposition is one of my favorite words. I stop and stare at the gorgeousness of peeling paint on classic architecture or the vintage patina of a well loved chair in a stark white room.

There is so much love about juxtaposition and contrast. You need the dark to see the light, you need the supple to appreciate the rough.

Contrast is often thought of with color but contrast in all aspects of a space creates a sexy tension. Rooms that pull you in because you just have to sit in that chair placed in that unexpected way in that room where the lighting makes you look and feel amazing. You kick off your shoes and curl your legs up under you as you sit in that alluring chair with the sublime fabric next to a table perfectly suited to set down your book and pick up your drink. Too much of the same, too much that is new, or too much that is impersonal doesn’t create this vibe. This seduction comes through introducing friction with elements that surprise you and draw you in.

These are the spaces people whisper about - these are the spaces I create.

Tension & Harmony

It Takes a Team

No matter the size of the project, your team will be one of the biggest investments you will make.

When problems arise, as they absolutely always will, it takes all members of the team working together to solve it. I built my business knowing that designs are appreciated when they are not just clever and beautiful but clear, comprehensive, thoughtful, and buildable. Providing a road map for the bidding and building process means that pricing can be more accurate and the job will move along with fewer hiccups.

We work with builders and clients who respect us, who seek us out for our process and our great designs, and who respect the team approach. Our best design work is born out of trust, and our clients trust that they are choosing a design team that has their best interests at heart.

Our ideal client is the person who understands that what we are doing isn’t just a function performed to make money. We don’t start a design thinking “How would this look best on our website or in a publication?” We always, and I do mean always, approach a design keeping the client and how they will use their space in mind.

We think about what greets our clients when they enter their home and continue imagining lives being lived in the spaces we create. We think about how moments will feel as they move through their spaces - what they see, how it functions, the texture, color, light, flow, proportion, scale - all of it.

This is why our clients love our spaces - we connect so fully with who they are and how they live.