Where Inspiration Begins and How It Becomes Your Home

Even though I always start with a formula for all my designs, it then moves into a tangible object to get the design flowing.

For me, inspiration can be a vintage lamp spotted at a flea market in Pasadena, a handmade ceramic piece picked up at a small local shop in Los Feliz, or the architecture in Downtown Los Angeles.

This is how inspiration actually works in my studio. It is not abstract. It is something you can touch or see.

For the vestibule and powder room I am designing this year at the Pasadena Showcase House, the hand-illustrated wallpaper from House of Hackney was one of my first decisions. It is the kind of wallpaper that stops you in your tracks. Dense, moody, botanical, drawn by hand in a way that no digital print can replicate. Once I knew that wallpaper belonged in the room, everything else fell into place. The marigold trim came next, pulled from the warmest tones living inside the pattern. The brass hardware and finishes followed. One beautiful thing led to the next, and the room grew outward from there.

Travel has filled my reference library in ways that no showroom ever could. Working on a casita in Costa Rica, the design was shaped almost entirely by the colors and materials of the land. A sink carved from a single piece of locally quarried stone. Custom teak furniture built by craftspeople. Materials that were native to the place and could not have come from a catalog.

This is what I want your home to feel like. Not a space assembled from a single shopping trip or a single style moment, but a room that holds things that tell your story.

Those are the pieces that make a room feel like it was made for someone specific. Finding them, understanding them, and knowing how to use them together is the work I love most.