Julian Design

Julian Design "Shaping the Art of Living" Design Services, Custom Design, Drapery, Furniture, Lighting, Area Rugs, Fine Art, Accessories, Wall Finishes, Flooring and More...

One of the first things we ask a new client has nothing to do with interiors. We ask about the drive home.Not the commut...
06/12/2026

One of the first things we ask a new client has nothing to do with interiors. We ask about the drive home.

Not the commute — the last sixty seconds of it. The moment you turn onto your street, pull into the driveway, cut the engine. What do you feel in that moment? What do you see? What does your house say to you before you've even touched the door handle?

Most people have never thought about it. But their body has.

The arrival sequence — the approach, the entry, the first thing your eye lands on when you walk in — sets your emotional state for everything that follows. A front door that's hard to find. A entry that offers no moment of arrival. A hallway that immediately pushes you somewhere before you've had a chance to land. These things affect how you feel in your home every single day, quietly, without you ever naming them.

The homes that feel like a relief to return to were designed with that sixty seconds in mind.

That's where the real work starts. Long before the sample book comes out.

Most spaces get designed in their best light.The showroom visit happens on a gray November afternoon. The paint samples ...
06/11/2026

Most spaces get designed in their best light.

The showroom visit happens on a gray November afternoon. The paint samples go up in December. Everything feels warm, grounded, exactly right. Then June arrives — and the same room feels completely different.

Minnesota summer light doesn't flatter the way winter light does. It's direct, it's long, and it's honest. It exposes the yellow undertone in that paint that read as cream in January. It bleaches out the warm fabrics that felt so rich in February. It makes a ceiling that felt cozy feel oppressive.

This is one of the quieter failures of residential design — spaces that were conceived for one season and have to live through four.

The rooms that work year-round were designed with that honesty built in. Ceilings given enough height to breathe in summer. Materials chosen for how they behave in full light, not just flattering light. Undertones tested in June, not just January.

Your home should feel right every month. Not just the easy ones.

Right now, everyone is specifying unlacquered brass. Chocolate brown is on every mood board. Grandma Chic — yes, that's ...
06/08/2026

Right now, everyone is specifying unlacquered brass. Chocolate brown is on every mood board. Grandma Chic — yes, that's a real trend name — has skirted upholstery and ruffled lampshades showing up in homes from Minneapolis to Miami.

Some of it is genuinely beautiful. We've specified all three this year and meant it every time.

But here's what twenty years in this industry teaches you: the most dangerous moment in a renovation is when something feels like the obvious choice. When you can't open a magazine without seeing it. When your contractor mentions three other clients who just did the same thing.

That's not inspiration. That's momentum. And momentum is a poor reason to make a decision you'll live with for fifteen years.

The clients whose homes we still love visiting a decade later didn't ignore what was current.

They filtered it. They asked a quieter question first — does this feel like me, or does it just feel like right now?

By all means, love the brass. Love the brown. But make sure you loved it before it was everywhere.

That's the difference between a home that's designed and one that's decorated.

What we've learned from the homes that age the best?After 48 years of designing homes — and then watching them live — ce...
05/29/2026

What we've learned from the homes that age the best?

After 48 years of designing homes — and then watching them live — certain things become undeniable.

The ones that still feel right a decade later aren't the ones that were most on-trend when we finished them. They're not always the biggest budgets or the most photographed projects. They're the ones where the right questions got asked at the beginning.

What we've noticed:

The homes that age well were designed for how people actually move through them — not for how they look standing still. The traffic flows without thinking. The kitchen works whether one person is cooking or six people are gathering. The bedroom feels like rest, not a hotel.

They have materials that earn their place over time. Stone that gets better with wear. Wood that deepens. Fabrics that soften. Nothing that needs to be replaced because a trend moved on.

They have one or two things that are genuinely surprising — a ceiling detail, an unexpected material, a view that was framed rather than left to chance. Something that makes you stop, even after a thousand mornings in the same space.

And they were never quite finished on the day we left. They left room for the family to complete them — with art collected over time, with furniture that arrived later, with the particular disorder of a life being lived.

That last part is the hardest to design for. And the most important.

Today we pause.For the ones who didn't come home. For the families who set a place at the table anyway. For the weight o...
05/25/2026

Today we pause.

For the ones who didn't come home. For the families who set a place at the table anyway. For the weight of what freedom actually costs.

There's nothing to add to that. Just gratitude — quiet, and real.

You've seen it happen. A room that stops you mid-scroll — the light, the layering, the palette, everything seemingly rig...
05/22/2026

You've seen it happen. A room that stops you mid-scroll — the light, the layering, the palette, everything seemingly right. Then you walk into it and something is off. You can't name it. But you feel it immediately.

The camera is a generous editor.

It flattens scale, so a sofa that's slightly too large for the room reads as commanding rather than overwhelming. It compresses depth, so a space that feels cramped in person feels intimate on screen. It can't capture acoustics — the way sound moves through a room, or doesn't. It doesn't feel the draft from a window that was positioned for the view rather than the living. It doesn't notice that the "morning light" in the photograph was a single styled hour that doesn't repeat.

The reverse is also true. Some of the most livable rooms don't photograph well at all. They're scaled for people, not lenses. Their beauty is in how they hold you — the chair that fits exactly right, the temperature of the light at 6pm, the way the layout makes conversation feel effortless.

This is the problem with designing for Instagram. You end up optimizing for a moment that lasts one hour on one day — and living in the result for years.

Design should feel right first. The photographs will follow.

Balance isn't the same as symmetry.—Matching lamps on matching nightstands. Identical sofas facing each other. Art cente...
05/19/2026

Balance isn't the same as symmetry.

—

Matching lamps on matching nightstands. Identical sofas facing each other. Art centered to the inch above a console that's centered to the inch beneath it.

Symmetry isn't wrong. It's just easy. And when a room relies on it entirely, you can feel it — everything is balanced but nothing is alive.

The rooms that actually hold your attention are almost never symmetrical. They're balanced through visual weight. A large dark painting on one side, a cluster of smaller lighter objects on the other. A heavy stone coffee table offset by a chair that floats. A tall lamp anchoring a low moment in the furniture arrangement.

Visual weight works with color, scale, texture, and density. A single dark, substantial piece can balance three lighter ones. A rough texture carries more weight than a smooth one at the same size. Empty space, handled deliberately, weighs something too.

The goal isn't perfect mirroring. It's a room that feels settled — where your eye moves through the space and finds somewhere to rest, without everything announcing that it was arranged.

Symmetry gives you order. Visual weight gives you life.

Some projects start with a floor plan problem. Others start with a feeling.This one started with a question: why doesn't...
05/17/2026

Some projects start with a floor plan problem. Others start with a feeling.

This one started with a question: why doesn't this space feel like us?

The bones were good. The layout worked. But the home was speaking a language that had nothing to do with the people living in it. He photographs the world beneath the surface of water — depth, color, light behaving in ways it doesn't on land. She wanted warmth, personality, a home that didn't apologize for having a point of view.

So we stopped playing it safe.

Rich, saturated color where there had been none. Wallpaper with the kind of print that rewards you for looking closely. Organic shapes that move the way water moves — nothing too rigid, nothing too expected. The floors were refinished to ground it all, the ceilings lightened to give the color room to breathe. A new island. New light fixtures that finally felt like a choice.

The result is a home that stops you when you walk in. Not because it's loud — but because it's specific. Because it clearly belongs to someone.

That's what design looks like when it's actually personal.

–

The moment you walk through your front door, something speaks first.It might be a wall of color. A chandelier. A view st...
05/13/2026

The moment you walk through your front door, something speaks first.

It might be a wall of color. A chandelier. A view straight through to the back of the house. A ceiling that's lower than it should be. A staircase that commands the room — or a cramped entry that quietly says this home is smaller than you think.

That first impression sets the emotional tone for everything that follows. Every room you walk into after carries the weight of that first word. And most people have never chosen it deliberately.
Walk through your front door right now and notice — what does your house say first? Is it what you'd want it to say?

Because that moment is designable. The sightline, the ceiling height, the first surface your eye lands on, the quality of light in that entry — all of it is a decision, whether you made it consciously or not.

The homes that feel cohesive from the moment you step inside are the ones where someone thought carefully about that first word.

What's yours?

—

Address

Wayzata, MN
55391

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 4pm
Tuesday 10am - 4pm
Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 4pm
Saturday 10am - 3pm

Telephone

+19529370589

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