ABOUT
My name is Brett & I'm passionate about the art of creating home
With a Masters in Interior Architecture from Academy of Art, San Francisco and a B.A. in Psychology from UC Berkeley, Brett combines these two backgrounds to create a space that truly reflects you.
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She built her career at award winning, hospitality design firm, AvroKO, creating restaurants & hotels around the world before branching out on her own in residential design in San Francisco, specializing in historic renovations. She currently lives in a little patch of paradise in North Idaho and services projects near and far.
On how she discovered her love of design Brett says:
“When I was a child, I wanted to be a waitress. I loved setting the table, having great food, & creating a memorable experience for others. Not a lot has changed in this regard, except, perhaps, my definition of what I wanted to be. As I grew older, I realized design and creating a sense of home was the career path that would be the intersection of my various passions.”
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She is particularly interested in the psychology of space and the intersection between holistic design, integrating the senses, employing methods of feng shui, astrology, and clean living to live your best life.
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OUR PHILOSOPHY
We are storytellers and it’s what makes our approach unique. Creating interesting narratives that inform the design is the key to developing an outstanding project. Our inspiration comes from both the client & the project itself. We spend time getting to know our clients’ vision, what is important to them and how they want to live. We want to create a space that truly reflects their values and feels deeply personal. We take inspiration from the history and architecture of the building and weave our client’s story into the design. The result: curated interiors that are cozy, inviting & feel like home.
Our goal is to create interiors that inspire a space for togetherness, full of rich relationships and warm hospitality. Our version of luxury is one where you immediately feel comfortable and reflects who you are. We achieve this through the use of quality materials that patina gracefully, through a mindful & considered approach to decoration employing objects that tell a story & through the principles of integrative, holistic design: using the effect of light, shadow & smell to influence the psyche. We look for spaces to create magic: a window seat where you’ll be curled up with your favorite book, a kitchen island you’ll gather around to share nourishing meals with your friends and family, a secret, fantastical nook where your children will create lasting memories. We are passionte about creating environments where you can live well in all regards: from choosing healthy building materials to creating the space to enjoy life’s simple pleasures together. We believe design is more than just creating a beautiful space; your environment has a profound effect on your whole being.
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FOLLOW MY BREADCRUMBS
Not everyone is made to live on a linear path. It’s only in looking back that you can connect the dots and see where the breadcrumbs have led you. Since childhood, I’ve been subconsciously studying the art of creating a meaningful home & life. This is a snapshot of my journey:
(What felt like) Every week of my childhood begrudgingly spent in Home Depot while my Mom flipped houses. Swore I would never renovate anything, ever. I really hated Home Depot.
Adult circa 1990: What do you want to be when you grow up? Me: A waitress (subtext: I imagined setting a beautiful table with delicious food and creating a memorable atmosphere for others)
Studying Psychology in undergrad at UC Berkeley, I was fascinated by human behavior and consciousness. A study abroad year led me to Italy where I experienced first hand a different way to live: seasonal living & slow food which ignited the spark of my love of cooking and the seed of an idea that there’s an alternative to hustle culture. Returning to the Bay Area with food top of mind, I learned of Berkeley natives: Alice Waters, the mother of the organic food movement in the US via Samin Nosrat (who was a friend of a friend at Berkeley) and later read Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” which completely dropped the veil on the connection between food production, safety & health and started a seed of an idea of food as medicine.
After college, I bopped around a bit. I did event planning and worked for a photography company tapping into creating those memorable experiences I longed to create as a child but I kept hitting road blocks.
Those blocks led me back to school: this time to get a Masters in Interior Architecture at Academy of Art in San Francisco. I seriously thought about becoming a chef, but that ping I’d gotten about hustle culture in Italy reminded me, I didn’t want a life of 24/7 work. I thought that hospitality design would be the perfect blend of my love for food & creating memorable experiences for others. I learned how much spaces can subconsciously influence people & through the “new” topic of green design circa 2011 how much of our world is poisoning us (Thank you, “Slow Death by Rubber Duck”).
With degree in hand, I landed my dream job designing hotels and restaurants around the world for the award winning firm, AvroKO. I learned the ins and outs of creating incredible, unique projects. I learned I'm a big picture idea generator with a knack for storytelling. I absolutely loved it, but I also completely burnt out and ruined my health working 15 hour days. Once my son was born, an autoimmune condition dictated I needed a total change in how I lived: no stress, rest, self care, and whole foods. It was the first time in my life where my body felt radically nourished. I truly learned to cook and what it meant to take care of myself. About this time, a podcast about Feng Shui and holistic living started me down the path of enquiry I find myself on today. Soon after, we discovered the world of Waldorf education which felt like finding everything that was important to me in one place.
Just after I left my job, we finally received our home building permit approval after literal years of waiting (SF peeps, you understand!). It was perfect timing & I realized how much I loved full gut, historic renovations. I also realized I spent so much time studying and working that I had no time for hobbies, joy orreally any conscious understanding of who I was and what I truly liked versus what I liked because it was trendy. It’s so easy to coast through life subconsciously.(This began a 10 year process of inner work and self discovery that I have taken the best bits of to share with you.) I decided to branch out on my own & hit the ground running. The projects kept coming and it was exciting. I truly loved it but 5 years in, I found myself frustrated in that familiar burn out hustle culture again. I was working nonstop, sacrificing my health and family time for projects that paid the bills but weren’t lighting me up and I knew something again had to change. This coincided with Covid, naturally.
2020 I spent trying to create joy for my family in any way I could as a form of psychological survival reflecting back on the tips from Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project, that I had read many moons before. By 2021, a serendipitous trip to visit friends in Montana inspired a move to North Idaho where we felt that the way of life was slower, safer & the small town life was more aligned with our values: seasonal living, connection, organic food, holistic living. As I focused on wrapping up projects in the Bay Area, I also began astrology and human design workshops for “career clarity”, my first inkling that these modalities could be used to help you live a more aligned life. It got me pondering: If these can be used to give you more intention around your career, could it be used to gain clarity around how you live in your home?
Enter home renovation #2 in our new hometown. I started to apply all that I was learning in real time to my own space leading me on a journey of self discovery while simultaneously thinking deeply about how I could change the work that I loved to create meaningful projects without burning the candles at both ends. I realized that if I, as a person who lives and breathes design, had struggled to define my style and create a space that reflected me, then other people most definitely had this problem. And because I had spent 10+ years trying to answer these questions: Who am I?, What do I value?, What do I like?, I was in a unique position to help others. It all seems totally obvious looking back, right? After the birth of my daughter, the birth of this new project also came to fruition.
While I still love a great renovation, what I’m most passionate about is helping people gain clarity around creating an intentional home. Your home reflects you whether you are aware of it or not. It subconsciously communicates our values, our struggles, our goals. I created a series of workbooks with prompts to help you reflect on who are you, how your past may be subconsciously showing up in your home, and how we can program the future you & all the moments you long to create into your home. To call this design doesn’t begin to grasp the scope of work we do. It’s deep inner work. Sometimes it’s hard (emotionally), but the end result is always worth it. I translate what we discover from your work into intentional, meaningful design ideas that reflect you.
One part therapy; One part design.