When you’re an interior designer, and if you’re lucky, your clients welcome you not only into their homes, but also into their lives. This has to be one of the very best parts of what we do. We get to see families grow, and sometimes, we get to come along for the ride when our clients begin a new chapter with a move to a new home. This is just what happened when, after years of searching for just the right place, our Rittenhouse Revival clients jumped at the chance to purchase a new home to meet their changing needs. They reached out to us prior to the closing to begin the design process for a few of the main rooms, including the formal living room, dining room, and a more relaxed den.

Let’s talk Living Spaces. These are the spaces that work so hard to serve our families day in and day out. Whether it’s the bedtime snuggle zone, the holiday dinner hot-spot, or movie night central, these are the spaces that are sanctuaries in our busy, often chaotic, lives. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite living spaces from our portfolio for a dose of inspiration.

We’re digging into some of our favorite ways to paint trim, millwork, and other architectural features so that you can bring some of the vestige HOME look into your own space. In case you missed it, we already rounded up some of the most requested paint colors from our projects and a few other painting tips here.

One of the comments that we receive most often on social media is, “What color is that?” And we certainly understand the curiosity! We love embracing color and even consider allover color as a “neutral base” when we are designing unique spaces for our clients. The impact of paint is undeniable. It’s one of the fastest and least expensive ways to transform a space, top that off with a low commitment level (you can always repaint!) and paint is firmly cemented as an interior design hero.

It’s finally springtime here on the East Coast and if you’re anything like us, the warmer weather has you feeling down-right giddy. The beauty of spring, coupled with the hopefulness of the continued vaccine distribution, is giving me that joyful boost I needed to shake off the long winter. It’s the perfect time to share one of our favorite projects from the last year - a lovey row house that’s home to a young family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Welcome to our #TraditionalGraduate project.

Welcome friends to our #SocietyPines project. If you’re anything like us, you’ve been craving more designs filled with rich, saturated colors, pattern, and personality. Perhaps its the reality of our new pandemic-era lives that is fueling our desire to create homes that are uniquely our own. We want to see more spaces that ooze comfort AND that can work hard for our families through thoughtful multi-functionality. If this sounds familiar, we have you covered.

Hello friends! It’s been almost a year since our last client project reveal, and yet, it still feels like just yesterday since we revealed the Highland House. But despite that lag (thanks to this whole COVID thing that has slowed some things down this year), we're really grateful that 2020 kept our little firm very busy and that thanks to a little bit of creativity and some new technology, we were still able to move forward on client projects.

Well, here we are friends, the finish line, the big reveal of the dining room that we’ve been working on the past seven weeks! If you’re joining us for the first time and want to see where we started and all of the project progress, you can check it out in the previous posts here.

This is me, taking a deep breath right here before writing this post. So much of what is happening in the world right now (and especially the United States) makes this feel like blogging about design is the least important thing I could be doing. With an election still undecided and what’s bound to be a razor thin win when it comes, anxiety is at an all time high. Add in the pandemic cases/deaths surging again, and the countless injustices around the US and the world, life feels very heavy right now.

Hello friends! Welcome to week four of the One Room Challenge, we’re really hitting our stride now and seeing all of our planning from the past years, months weeks, come to fruition!

If you’re just tuning in, you can check out the before’s and catch up on what we’ve been working on to-date below:

Hello friends! Gosh, can you believe that it’s already been a week? Time is flying by and while there hasn’t been a ton of action in the space itself, the behind-the-scenes work of planning and scheduling took priority - ensuring that all the elements for the space can fall into place.

If you’re just tuning in, you can check out the before photos and a full explanation of the design plan below:

Hello friends, welcome back to another week of the One Room Challenge. Last week, I introduced you to the spaces that we’ll be transforming over the next six weeks. If you are just checking in, and want to see more of the “befores”, you can revisit the previous weeks here: Week One

This week, we’re diving into the specific design plans for the space. But before I get to the plans, let’s talk about where it all starts - the moodboard.

Hello friends! Welcome to another round of the One Room Challenge! If you are new around here, the One Room Challenge is a bi-annual event hosted by Linda Weinstein of Calling it Home and Better Homes and Gardens. Over the next six weeks, designers and homeowners across the internet will be transforming a space in just six short weeks and sharing all the behind-the-scenes details so you can follow along! This is my fourth One Room Challenge and I am excited to finish yet another space in our early 1900’s Philadelphia home that we purchased two years ago. For those of you who have been following along for a while, you might remember that very shortly after we moved in, we worked on our last One Room Challenge, our main bedroom.

In the fall of 2018, we moved from our twin in Philadelphia to a single family home just 10 minutes away. While house hunting, my husband Adam and I honestly considered the reality of our often all-consuming careers and we decided to look for something that was livable as-is and take our time turning it into the place we wanted it to be. Looking back, I am SO happy this is the direction we decided to go in - trust me, it was beyond tempting to be lured into a dilapidated historic home just screaming to be rescued, but it just wasn’t right for us. The new home provided us with some much needed space, privacy and a long list of to-do’s to make it into the home of our dreams.

You move into your first home and think, “we’ll stay for just a while and then we’ll move on.” Fast-forward a few years and you find that you love your sweet neighborhood and your beautiful street dotted with mature sycamores. Your favorite places are just a short stroll away - restaurants, shops and even your favorite local co-op. In your heart, you don’t want to move but that starter home just doesn’t feel quite right yet. You’re ready to make it your own - more personality, a little more sophisticated.

First, I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who has followed along with our week of reveals for this special project. Our client was so thrilled to see how were were able to create more function and transform the entire feeling of their spaces, they recently texted to say how much their were enjoying Christmas in their new spaces! In case you missed it, you can see the kitchen reveal here and check out the new powder bathroom and foyer here. If you’re already caught up, let’s talk more about this lovely dining room.

Hello friends! Welcome back to our week of reveals for our Rittenhouse project. We hoped that you loved the reveal of the kitchen (in case you missed it, click here to check it out!) and today we are excited to share not one but two spaces with you - the new powder bathroom and foyer. First up, a tiny but exciting powder bathroom.

When our clients contracted us to design the first floor their historic Rittenhouse Philadelphia home, our initial visit left scratching our heads and asking…hmmmm…what were they thinking? A remodel by previous owners had included the addition of a rounded powder bath that jutted out into the kitchen area. While certainly a conversation starter, in a home with limited square footage it wasn’t the best use of the space. Our clients needed a kitchen that could serve as a workhorse for frequent family meals and also be beautiful enough for entertaining.

In our ongoing practice in interior design, we have learned that there are no “bad” color choices when designing. Color is all about context and emotion. When combined with a palette of different colors, textures and patterns color can add depth and interest.

The process of turning something raw and unusable into a functional, livable, beautiful space is hands down the best part of what we get to do here and this project is a great example of just that.

Our Mainline clients came to us with an unfinished basement space and 2000 square feet of bare canvas just ready to be broken up into rooms that fit the needs of their family. Helping to define those areas as well as create a cohesive design for them felt very daunting for our clients, so they called us in to help them in the early planning stages through the finishing details.