The Chic Home

The Chic Home Interior Designer- Bay Area

06/23/2026

The 30-minute reset is for guests. This is the 15-minute one I do for me — usually Tuesday around 7pm.

It’s not cleaning. It’s resetting how the room feels.

1. Three lamps on. Overheads off.
2. Couch blanket folded once. Not folded perfectly. Once.
3. The book I’m pretending to read goes back on the side table, dog-ear visible.
4. One thing on the coffee table that wasn’t there yesterday — a candle, a single bloom, the day’s mail in a bowl.
5. Music on. Low. The room doesn’t need to perform. It just needs to feel.

Your home should feel different at the end of a workday than it did at the start of one. Fifteen minutes is enough.

Tell me what your weekday reset looks like — I’m collecting other people’s rituals.

06/22/2026

The day between the mood board and the install doesn’t happen at the install. It happens in stores.

Here’s a research day:

Coffee, mood board open on my laptop. The list isn’t furniture. It’s questions. Does this house need warmth or restraint? Is the natural light cool or warm? Will the dog get on the linen?

Notes get written. The mood board gets refined. The recommendation list gets shorter, not longer.

This is how I actually know what to recommend at any price point — because I’ve held it, photographed it, and made it argue with the mood board first.

Comment a store you want me to dive into next. I’ll go.

06/18/2026

Empty corners read as unfinished. Stuffed corners read as cluttered. The middle is harder than it looks.

Here’s the rule I use to make any corner feel collected:

Three pieces. Three different heights. Three different stories.

The art on the wall, hung lower than your instinct — the goal is to feel intentional, not afraid of the wall.

The vase below it — flowers, branches, sculptural stems, anything with shape and presence. The vase should be doing work, not just being a vase.

The third thing — a book stack, a sculpture, a small bowl. Something with a life before it landed here.

When all three agree on a feeling but disagree on shape, you’ve got a collected corner.

Try it this weekend. Show me your corner in the comments.

06/17/2026

This Bay Area living room came together for $14K of furniture and decor. Here’s where every dollar went:

— Sofa: $4,200. The single biggest line item in any room. Worth getting right the first time.
— Rug: $2,800. Real wool, oversized. The “”right”” rug is almost always one size up.
— Lighting (two floor lamps, one table lamp): $1,600. Layered light, never overhead-only.
— Art: $1,200. One large piece + two paired smaller pieces. Not a gallery wall.
— Coffee table: $1,400. Wood, with a shelf below. The shelf earns its keep.
— Side tables (×2): $900. Different shapes, same wood family.
— Textiles (pillows, throws): $700. Real linen, real wool. No polyester.
— Accessories (vases, books, candles, tray): $1,200.

$14,000. Designed once. Lived in for a decade if you do it right.

If you’re a Bay Area homeowner staring at a room that feels half-done, DM me. We’ll figure out what’s actually missing.

06/16/2026

Most people think hiring a designer means a stranger showing up to tell them what to buy.

It’s actually this.

Hours alone with fabric swatches, paint chips, photographs of the rooms next to the one I’m designing, the way the morning light hits the wall.

The mood board is where the home is decided. Everything that happens after — the sofa, the lighting, the rug — is just the mood board getting executed.

When you hire me, what you’re really hiring is the 30 hours of this. The sourcing, the editing, the agreeing-with-yourself-about-the-feeling-of-the-room before you spend a dollar on the room itself.

If you’ve been buying furniture one Pinterest screenshot at a time and wondering why it doesn’t add up — DM me. Let’s do this part first.

06/11/2026

People DM me asking “”how does this actually work?”” Here’s the honest answer:

1. You DM. We get on a call. I want to hear about your home and what’s not right about it yet.

2. I come walk your space with you. We align on what you actually want — and what you don’t.

3. I design your plan and your mood board. Every detail, every source, every reason. This is the part most people don’t realize they can hire for separately.

4. We bring it to life together. Your pace, your home. I’m there for the parts you want help with.

Real homes. Real plans. Real you.

If you’re a Bay Area homeowner who’s been wanting your home to feel finished and you didn’t know where to start — you’re already at step 1. DM me.

06/10/2026

There are three things I won’t design, full stop:

1. A kitchen with no counter landing zone. Cooks need at least 24”” of clear counter on both sides of the cooktop. If your kitchen doesn’t allow for that, we’re rethinking the layout before we pick a tile.

2. A primary bedroom without somewhere to set a glass of water. Bedside surface is non-negotiable — even a stool counts. Without one, the bedroom reads “”guest room”” no matter how nice the linens are.

3. A home where everything matches. Matching nightstands, matching art pairs over the bed, matching sofa-and-loveseat sets. Buying as sets is the design equivalent of dressing in head-to-toe outfits straight off a mannequin.

These aren’t trends. They’re the things that make a home not work, no matter how beautiful the pieces are.

If a Bay Area designer has ever talked you out of one of these — that’s me, in advance.

DM me if you’re early enough in a project to actually catch one of these.

06/09/2026

Every Bay Area homeowner asks some version of these five before they book. Here’s what I actually tell them:

1. “”Can you work with what I already own?””
Yes. The best homes are 60% kept, 40% added. If you have heirlooms, we’ll work around them. If you have an antique dresser you secretly love, we’re keeping it.

2. “”How long does the process take?””
The plan takes 4–6 weeks from kickoff to presentation. The ex*****on takes as long as you want it to. Some clients implement in a weekend. Some take a year. Both are right.

3. “”What if my taste is really different from yours?””
That’s the point. I’m not designing my home, I’m designing yours. The mood board you approve isn’t my taste — it’s yours, edited.

4. “”Do you actually source things or just point me at Pinterest?””
I source every single piece. Specific store, specific size, specific finish, specific link. You shouldn’t have to guess.

5. “”What if I get stuck halfway?””
Most clients do. That’s what we plan for. We’re not done when the plan is delivered — we’re done when the home feels right.

If you’re a Bay Area homeowner who’s been “”almost ready”” to reach out for a year, this is your nudge. DM me. We’ll start with the call.

06/08/2026

Before I propose a single piece of furniture, I spend 30 minutes alone with a mood board.

90% of homeowners skip this step. They go straight to shopping — and that’s exactly why their home never feels cohesive.

Here’s what 30 minutes of mood-boarding does:

1. It forces you to commit to a feeling before you commit to a couch.
2. It tells you what’s missing in the rooms next to it — because every room is a sentence and the home is the paragraph.
3. It saves you from buying three sofas in five years.

The mood board isn’t decoration. It’s the strategy.

Save this for the next time you’re tempted to “”just go to the store and see what speaks to you.””

Comment MOOD if you want to see the one I’m building right now.

05/28/2026

I didn’t grow up in a “”designed”” home.

I grew up in a home where:

The good plates came out for everyone.
There was always a soft light on in the entry, no matter what time you came home.
Every room had something handmade in it — embroidered, knit, framed, or stitched by someone whose name we knew.

I didn’t think any of that was design. I thought it was just how we lived.

Now I put one of each in every project I do. I think most people raised in homes like mine could find the same three.

Tell me what your childhood home had that you didn’t know was design. I bet you have a list.

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Walnut Creek, CA

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