I don’t think you wake up one morning knowing how to make a room feel right. I think you build that instinct slowly, by paying attention. A hinge on an old door. The proportion of a window. The way a shower in Italy makes you feel.

Hugo and I talked about this during our first Walk & Talk, and this little moment still feels true to me.

We are all looking at more than ever. I’m just not sure we are noticing more.

That is what I want these Walk & Talks with Hugo to be about. Not polished design lectures or lists of what is suddenly “in” or “out.” Just honest conversations about how taste develops, why certain spaces move us, what the work really looks like and the occasional disagreement when Hugo refuses to accept my answer.

We are only four episodes in, but I think we are beginning to find something. If this one resonates, watch the full episode on YouTube and subscribe. It genuinely helps us keep making them and find more people who want to talk about design this way.

And tell me: What is one tiny detail you’ve photographed recently because you didn’t want to forget it?

xx

Laura

The clients imagined grandchildren running in after beach days, long slow dinners, movies with family, coffee in the kitchen early in the morning. Every design decision had to support real life while still feeling layered, calming, and beautiful.

This part of the home really became the heart of that vision.

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We had very few flowers. I love flowers… I really do. But most people do not live with enormous flower arrangements in every room. At least not all the time. And this house did not need them. The architecture was already doing the work.

The stone.

The light.

The furniture.

The objects that had been chosen slowly and intentionally.

The quiet spaces where we decided not to add one more thing.

I wanted the photographs to show the actual beauty of the home. Not prove that we could make it look beautiful for one day. There is a difference. Flowers can create an instant moment. They bring color, movement and life into a room, but they can also become the first thing you see.

I did not want the styling to lead. I wanted the home to lead, so we had to look more carefully. If we were not going to put a large floral arrangement on every table, what would hold the photograph? The architecture? The relationship between two pieces of furniture? The way an object caught the light? The empty space around something beautiful?

That became the real creative challenge of the shoot: how do you create art without making the house feel unlike itself? I think about this constantly in design. There is always another beautiful thing we could add.

Another chair.

Another object.

Another fabric.

Another idea.

The internet has made it very easy to believe that more styling means more beauty. But sometimes more is just more. A home can become so decorated that you stop feeling the people inside it. A photograph can become so styled that you stop seeing the room. Beyond that, life can become so full that you stop noticing how tired you are.

That last part may have been the real lesson of the weekend. I had planned to go to the flea market the morning after the photoshoot. In my mind, it was going to be perfect. I would wake up early, get coffee and wander through rows of old furniture and objects until I found something I did not know I needed.

This is one of my favorite things to do. I love the hunt. I love not knowing what is around the next corner. I love finding the strange piece everyone else walked past and imagining what it could become in the right room.

But Sunday morning came and I was tired. Not a little tired. Really tired.

The kind of tired where getting dressed feels like an unreasonable request. I still tried to talk myself into going. Maybe I would feel better once I got there. Maybe I would miss something incredible. Maybe the object I have been looking for was sitting in Long Beach waiting specifically for me.

Very possible. Haha.

But I stayed home.

There was no dramatic wellness moment. I did not light a candle and turn rest into a beautifully photographed ritual. I was just tired, so I did not go. The flea market continued without me.

I am trying to learn that this is allowed.

Running a design firm means there is always something else I could be doing. There is always another project to look at, another email to answer, another idea to chase, another opportunity that sounds exciting. My mind does not naturally arrive at enough. It usually arrives at, “What else?”

What else could this room become?

What else could we create?

Where else could we go?

What is the idea hiding behind the first idea?

That curiosity is one of the reasons I love my work. It is also why I sometimes have to be reminded that I am a human and not an endless source of creative energy. This week has been moving at lightning speed. Yesterday morning, I got my hair and makeup done early because there was not enough time to do anything between filming and the panel that evening.

We filmed a LUXE “Step Inside” video at our client’s La Belle Maison project with Black Taurus… talking about the stone we selected and how it shapes the feeling of the rooms.

The kitchen has exposed brick, richly veined stone, warm wood and a sculptural plaster hood. The primary bathroom is quieter and more serene. The playroom needed to feel relaxed and adaptable. The girl’s bathroom has personality and a little whimsy, but we did not want it to feel like a theme.

Every room is different. But they are connected by warmth, craftsmanship and materials that feel good to live with. That is one of my favorite parts of design. A home does not need every room to match. It needs a point of view strong enough to let every room have its own personality.

After filming, I headed to a panel with King Living, Modern Luxury and LUXE about form, function and the future of timeless design. We talked about why certain choices endure. How technology belongs inside a home. Why craftsmanship matters. How materials change with age. How people actually live. And what makes a home feel good beyond how it photographs.

It was a lot for one day. Don’t get me wrong, it is still all so exciting. I love these opportunities. I also know I will probably reach the end of the week with nothing left.

Both things can be true.

I can be grateful and tired. Ambitious and learning to stop. Excited about what is coming and aware that I cannot do everything. Maybe that is what I am beginning to understand about restraint. It is not only a design principle. It is knowing what the room needs and what it does not. It is knowing when the photograph needs another object and when the empty space is the thing making it work. It is knowing when to keep searching and when to trust what is already there. It is also knowing when the flea market will have to wait.

The Emerald Bay house did not need us to cover it in flowers. It needed us to pay attention.

To see the architecture.

To see the materials.

To notice the light.

To let the home be beautiful without over explaining it.

Maybe I needed the same thing. Not another plan. Not another place to be. Not another opportunity to prove that I could keep going. Just enough quiet to notice what was already there.

Then there will be another project. Another room. Another trip (Am I going to LA again this week? Who knows.) Another idea I cannot stop thinking about. I am going to keep sharing all of it.

The beautiful part.

The work behind it.

The opportunities that make me say yes immediately.

The mornings when I realize the answer has to be no.

The rooms that need one more thing.

And the ones brave enough to need nothing at all.

But the places that stayed with me all had one thing in common:

You could feel a clear point of view.

Not twenty opinions layered on top of each other. Not fear. Not “what’s trending.” Not “what will photograph well.” Just conviction.

I think that is what I am craving more of in the next phase of Laura Brophy Interiors.

Trust. Real trust.

Not the kind where clients hire a designer and then spend the next year asking ten friends, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, and their contractor what they think before making every decision.

I mean the kind of trust where someone says, “I hired you because I believe in the way you see.”

That kind of trust changes the work completely.

Because here is the truth no one really says out loud in this industry: The best projects almost never come from over-editing. They come from clarity. Courage. A strong perspective. A willingness to let something actually become what it wants to become.

I think social media has made this harder.

Everyone has access to beautiful images now, but I also think people are consuming so much inspiration that they are losing connection to their own instincts and taste.

Homes start becoming collections of saved images instead of reflections of actual people. Honestly… I think people can feel that when they walk into a space.

I know I can.

The projects I am proudest of were never the safest ones.

They were the ones where the client trusted us enough to fully lean in. The projects where there was room for instinct. Emotion. Tension. Personality. Even a little discomfort sometimes.

Because that is where originality lives. Not in trying to make everyone happy.

I think this next chapter for me creatively is going to be less about trying to prove ourselves and more about refining our voice even further.

More restraint. More clarity. More emotion. More spaces that actually slow people down when they walk into them.

I want homes that feel deeply personal. Not overproduced.

And honestly… I think people are craving that right now in every part of life.

Less noise. Less perfection. Less trying so hard. More soul.

I also think this realization is personal for me because I can see how much of my own life has been spent overthinking, overworking, pushing, striving, trying to get to the next thing.

And maybe the next level creatively is not actually doing more.

Maybe it is trusting yourself enough to do less… but actually follow through with that.

That feels really important to me right now.

I say that as someone who spends an extraordinary amount of time sourcing online.

You can study dimensions, request samples, zoom into a finish, and compare ten chairs without leaving your desk. You can build a presentation that makes every option look perfectly sensible.

But you cannot feel scale through a laptop. You cannot tell how a chair receives your body. You cannot see what an unusual material does when the light moves across it. And you cannot always explain why one piece feels completely right until you are standing in front of it.

That was the reason for two very full days in New York with my clients Quentin and Natalie, sourcing for Quentin’s Crosby Street apartment.

And this was not a trip to just fill rooms.

Quite the opposite.

A project like this is often about knowing when to stop filling them.

Quentin and Natalie are not passive clients. They both have real taste, real curiosity, and real opinions — which makes the work that much more fun.

Quentin sends me pieces he finds himself. He wants to know who made something, whether it is original, and what a restoration may have changed. He found a Pierre Chapo T22 table and started asking the right questions: Is it authentic? Is it good? If it has been restored, does it still have the integrity we want?

He was looking at work by Mike Diaz, a Chris Wolston table, vintage pieces, and even the possibility of a custom disco ball.

At one point, while we were discussing a chair near the entrance, he wrote:

“Let’s do some crazy fabric on it. It’s the first thing you see walking into the room, so let’s make it set the vibe.” Talk about a very fun client to design for.

Natalie is equally engaged. Before the trip, she went through the itinerary, cut stops that did not feel necessary, reordered the days, and added places she thought we should see. Then she sourced beside us, considering how each piece might live in the apartment rather than simply whether it looked good in a showroom.

So the story of New York is not that I took my clients shopping.

It is what happens when a designer and clients with strong instincts go looking for the pieces that will make a home impossible to duplicate.

Beautiful Things Are Everywhere

The presentation for Crosby Street already contained plenty of beauty: a low, wonderfully eccentric sectional made from a patchwork of textiles, an organic wood coffee table, sculptural chairs, vintage case pieces, an irregular dining table, a music room built around serious listening, rich reds and greens, patterned walls, and objects with just enough humor to keep everything from becoming too precious.

The challenge was not to find more things we liked. The challenge was to decide which version of the apartment we believed in.

That is one of the biggest misconceptions about interior design. People assume the designer’s value is finding beautiful furniture. There are beautiful things everywhere. The harder skill is knowing which beautiful thing belongs.

Does this room need another object with a strong silhouette, or is that one hero too many?

Does a contemporary chair need something with age beside it?

Is the unusual finish adding a new note, or repeating something the room already says?

Is the piece actually wonderful, or have we simply been told that it is important?

Those are very different questions.

Looking for Relationships

Our itinerary took us through some of the New York galleries and showrooms that continually influence how I think about collectible design.

On the first day, we moved from Studio Twenty Seven to The Future Perfect, Egg Collective, R & Company, Todd Merrill Studio, Hostler Burrows, Prelle, Maison Gerard, and The End of History.

The second day included Roll & Hill, Society Limonta, Ochre, Pierre Frey, Holly Hunt, GARDE, KRB, Ralph Pucci, and Roman and Williams Guild.

It was a lot.

After enough showrooms, however, you stop seeing isolated objects. You begin to see relationships.

At R & Company, the question was not whether we liked the room as a whole. It was which individual piece had enough presence — and enough relevance to Crosby Street— to stay in our minds after we left.

At Egg Collective, furniture lived beside artwork and smaller objects, which made us think beyond the standard checklist of sofa, chair, and table.

At the textile showrooms, color and pattern opened completely different possibilities for pieces we had already been considering.

I’ll say it until I am blue in the face. This is why physical sourcing still matters. Sometimes the most important thing you find is not the thing you buy.

It is the material that changes the chair. The proportion that changes the table. The strange object that gives you permission to make the rest of the room less polite. One discovery changes what you look for next.

Specificity Is Its Own Kind of Luxury

After two days of moving through New York, the word “luxury” starts to feel less useful.

Luxury is not one material.

It is not automatically marble, polished brass, or a particular price point. And it definitely is not every object in a room competing to announce that it was expensive.

For me, luxury is increasingly about specificity.

It is something made by an artist whose hand you can still feel. A vintage object that has lived another life. An imperfect finish. A strange lamp. A chair upholstered in a fabric that probably should not work, but somehow makes the room.

The Crosby Street presentation is full of those tensions. The living room combines a highly expressive sectional with warm woods, sculptural tables, vintage storage, and a disco ball. The tea room moves toward something almost theatrical. The music room is immersive and personal rather than generically sleek. Even the bedroom fabrics lean into mood instead of playing it safe.

None of those decisions can be made well by asking whether each thing is beautiful on its own.

The apartment has to hold together without becoming predictable.

That balance is the work.

A Client With Taste Changes the Assignment

When a client already has a point of view, my job is not to hand over a completely formed aesthetic and ask them to approve it.

My job is to listen carefully enough to understand the world they are trying to create — even when they cannot yet see the whole of it — and then give that world structure.

Quentin might send a vintage table, ask about a restoration, react to the weight of a coffee table, and then start a conversation about a custom disco ball. Natalie might pull wallpaper references, reconsider the itinerary, and help edit what is worth seeing in person.

Those are not interruptions to the design process. They are the design process.

Collaboration becomes especially interesting when everyone is willing to say, “I love this,” “I don’t believe this,” or “What if we did the slightly crazy thing?”

The designer still has to edit.

Sometimes that means encouraging the strange idea. Sometimes it means explaining why a beautiful piece is still wrong. Sometimes it means protecting a room from one more thing.

The goal is not to dilute everyone’s opinions into a tasteful middle. It is to find the through-line strong enough to hold all that personality.

Getting to “Of Course”

This is the part of interior design that finished photographs rarely communicate. When you see a completed room, the choices can look inevitable.

Of course that chair goes there.

Of course that table works.

Of course those colors belong together.

But getting to “of course” can involve hundreds of decisions, dozens of options, several strong opinions, paint chips in a bag, fabric samples in the car, and two packed days moving around Manhattan.

I love that part.

The week itself had a slightly improbable rhythm: a wedding in Boston, Fenway, traveling with Indy, New York with Quentin and Natalie, Hugo documenting the trip, and then another plane to Wisconsin with Sub-Zero and Wolf.

By the time I came home, it felt as if I had been gone for a month.

But I came home seeing differently.

That may be the real value of travel to my work.

I rarely return wanting to reproduce a showroom or copy a room I have seen. I return noticing a new relationship between materials, questioning an old assumption, or feeling braver about the thing that is slightly off.

The objects matter. But the point of view you bring home may matter even more.

The full New York sourcing trip on YouTube—including the showrooms, the pieces we considered, the conversations with Quentin and Natalie, and some of the beautiful chaos behind the rooms you’ll eventually see photographed. But first, let’s start with a walk-and-talk with Hugo.

Because beautiful living really does begin with paying attention, and beautiful was only the beginning of this assignment.

Maybe I’m off. Maybe this ages horribly in two years and everyone is living inside AI-generated dream houses and I’m sitting in some weird vintage chair talking about “soul”.

But something feels different right now.

I really noticed it after I got back from my most recent trip to Italy.

Being in Europe completely surrounded by insanely beautiful design everywhere you go and then getting home and opening Instagram honestly felt kind of strange. My brain suddenly could not process another “beautiful room.”

Everything started blending together.

Good lighting.

Perfect plaster walls.

Beautiful kitchens.

Beautiful people making matcha in beautiful robes.

And the scary part is… AI is also getting really good at making all of it. Like weirdly good. I think we are about to enter a phase where beautiful becomes cheap. Not actual beauty maybe… but visually pleasing? Yeah. That’s already everywhere. I cannot stop thinking about what that does to design. Because if everyone can generate a gorgeous interior in three seconds… then what actually matters anymore?

I honestly think taste is about to split in half.

One side is going to become hyper-generated perfection. Fast dopamine interiors. Everything kind of optimized within an inch of its life.

And then I think there’s going to be this other side… The side I personally feel myself craving way more lately.

Spaces that feel human. A little strange. A little imperfect.

Homes that actually look like someone interesting lives there instead of someone just being good at finding things that they see on Pinterest.

I don’t know… I think people are getting tired.

Not just of AI, but of perfection in general. Even with myself lately, I can feel it. I’m less interested in things being impressive and more interested in how they make me feel in my mind and my body. That sounds very wellness girl of me but whatever. It’s true. I care way more now about whether a space calms my nervous system down than whether it gets saved and reposted on Instagram.

And honestly? I think the future of luxury homes is going to become way more about that. Not bigger and flashier, but smarter in quieter ways.

Lighting systems that change throughout the day without you thinking about it. Materials that feel grounding. Homes that support sleep and rituals and actual life.

Not homes designed only for content.

I think that’s also why some of the spaces in Italy stayed with me so hard. The best places weren’t perfect. They had tension. Warmth. Weirdness. History. A little mystery. You could feel the hand behind them.

And maybe that’s what I’m scared AI wipes out if we’re not careful.

Not designers. Humanity.

Taste that comes from living an actual life. Traveling. Falling apart a little. Obsessing over details. Getting older. Evolving.

The internet made everyone visually literate really fast. AI is about to make everyone visually capable too, which honestly means “pretty” is not enough anymore. Weirdly, I think that’s going to force creatives to become more themselves, not less. At least the good ones.

The people who stand out next are not going to be the ones making the prettiest things. It’s going to be the people brave enough to have an actual point of view. Even if it’s slightly off.

So I don’t really have a tidy conclusion here.

I’m not worried about AI making beautiful things. It’s going to. It already does. What I’m worried about is us getting so used to beautiful that we stop asking anything else of a room.

Because the spaces I still think about from that trip weren’t the most photogenic ones. There was a space in Florence with a sofa that was objectively the wrong color, and a stack of books being used as a side table, and none of it would do numbers online. But I remember exactly how the afternoon light hit it. I remember wanting to stay.

That’s the thing a prompt can’t get you. Not because the machine isn’t good enough yet, but because that room was the residue of a person. Their weird books. Their kooky sofa. Thirty plus years of small decisions nobody else would have made.

So maybe the move now is just to be more specific. More yourself. Buy the strange thing. Keep the chair that doesn’t match.

Let the room be a little wrong on purpose.

I think that’s going to be the whole game soon.

From the very first conversation, this home was never about resale value or trends. The clients wanted a home their family could live in for decades. Peaceful, warm, relaxed, and luxurious without ever feeling stuffy.

Located just blocks from the water in Huntington Beach and backing up to the golf course, the home was designed around real life. Grandchildren running in after beach days. Long dinners with family. Spaces that felt beautiful but could actually be lived in.

One thing we kept coming back to throughout the project was restraint. We wanted every room to feel elevated without feeling over designed. A lot of that came down to texture, curves, natural materials, vintage layering, and lighting that softened the architecture instead of overpowering it.

Today I’m sharing details from the entry, dining room, study, and powder bath.

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Not the finished room.

Not the reveal.

Not the photo.

The middle.

The part where a room is torn open and gray, where a slab is on hold, a to-scale print out of an outdoor light is taped to the wall, and an appliance we love keeps slipping its delivery date.

This is the world behind the work. And I want to start taking you along.

01 — THE MORNING THE APPLIANCE MOVED AGAIN

Some mornings, the first email of the day is letting me know a delivery date has moved for the third time.

Right now, it is a beautiful dishwasher. There is a promotion on it — the better unit for less — and its arrival keeps sliding a week, then another.

So we have the quiet conversation we have on almost every project. Do we swap it for something available now, or hold for the piece we actually chose?

Usually we hold. Then we build the schedule around the wait instead of pretending it hasn’t arrived yet.

This is most of what a timeline actually is. It does not always have to do with the crew. It is more pertaining to the lead times, and the patience to plan around them.

02 — WE TAPE THE LIGHTS TO THE WALL

A plan is a drawing. A room is a physical thing, with pipes and beams and the exact height of your eye when you sit down.

So before anything is wired, we go to the site and put actual-size print outs of the fixtures on the walls, at the real height.

Last week that meant standing in a powder room holding sconces against a vanity wall that turned out tighter than the drawing promised.

On the same walk we found a fire sprinkler sitting exactly where a chandelier was meant to hang. It has to move before the ceiling can close.

A medicine cabinet could not go where it was drawn, because there were pipes in the wall behind it. So we returned it and found a mirror at the same exact size.

None of that shows up in a photograph. All of it shows up in how the room ends up feeling and looking.

03 — THE SPINE

Every project has a document we quietly call the spine. Room by room, every surface, every finish, tagged and specified before anything is ordered.

And a rule we do not break: we never approve a finish from a photo alone.

A screen lies about stone and paint and wood. So we compare to the control sample, and if there is any doubt at all, we get it in our hands or go see it in person.

Natural stone gets its own care. No two slabs are alike, so we hold specific slabs and confirm the numbers and the sequencing (the order the pieces are cut so the veining runs the way it should).

It is invisible, unglamorous work. It is also the difference between a kitchen that feels effortless and one that feels like a surprise nobody asked for.

04 — THE HUNT

This is my favorite part, and the part that never really sleeps.

Right now we are chasing a vintage coffee table through a gallery that extended us trade pricing, and presenting it to the client this week.

A dining table for another home is being made entirely by hand, by a maker in Europe who works in a material most people would never guess, on a timeline you simply cannot rush.

A set of bedding arrived from a tiny textile studio with a kind handwritten note and an extra pillowcase they had tucked in as a gift.

A rug is sitting in a will-call warehouse, waiting for us to schedule the pickup for the install so it does not live in a box for a month.

A lot of these pieces of these took months to find.

That is the difference between shopping and sourcing.

05 — THE ROOM BEFORE THE ROOM

People are often surprised that we design the entire room before we buy a single thing in it.

The vision, the palette, the hero pieces, and a full checklist of everything that has to exist for the room to feel finished. All decided first. Then sourcing becomes filling known slots instead of discovering a hole at the worst possible moment.

Meanwhile the house itself goes through its ugly adolescence. Drywall going in. Everything gray and dusty. This is the phase where clients quietly panic, and the phase where nothing is actually wrong.

The gray middle. Drywall, framing, protective plastic, a room that looks worse than the before. This is the shot that makes people trust the process.

06 — THE THINGS THAT GO WRONG, AND WHY YOU RARELY SEE THEM

A chandelier arrives defective. You would see a finished room a few weeks later and never know a thing.

What you would not see is the studio spending those weeks working the vendor for the credit, chasing the replacement, and protecting the budget while the room still comes together on time.

There’s the install where a fixture ran so late. The client finally let it go, and we quietly reworked the plan around the gap so the room was still completed.

So much of what a client is really hiring is the resolution of a hundred problems they never find out about.

07 — THE PART THAT MAKES IT REAL

Eventually, the day comes.

The room that was gray and covered in dust gets cleaned, styled, and photographed, and it looks like it was always meant to be that way.

Some of these homes go further than we ever expect. One coastal renovation that began as one of those torn-open rooms ended up on a magazine cover and later won an award, which honestly still feels surreal.

However, when I think back on a house, it is never the cover I remember. It is the gray middle, and the day it finally all just clicked into place.

08 — WHY WE RUN IT THIS WAY

None of this works on talent alone. It works because every project runs the same way, on every job, no matter whose name is on it. The builder, the architect, the vendors.

The same spine. The same room-first order. The same standard, so a client gets the same warm, buttoned-up, sure-of-itself studio no matter who they happen to be emailing that day.

That consistency is not bureaucracy. It is what lets the work feel effortless to you while all of this is happening underneath.

^{This is the world behind the work. The part I used to keep to myself. I am going to keep taking you along.}

BEFORE YOU GO

Tell me which part you want to see more of.

The sourcing. The site walks. The messy middle. The finish. Comment below, and I will build the next dispatch around what you most want to come along for.

Laura Brophy Interiors is a luxury interior design studio based in Orange County, California, specializing in coastal home renovation, organic modern design, and high-end residential projects throughout Southern California.

Yesterday, somewhere between the office, the inbox, and the projects that do not care if anyone is on vacation, the day became very real.

One email said, “9:30 works.”

Another said, “I’m in.”

Another asked if someone could circulate an invite.

A different thread was about a powder faucet and drain that had arrived and whether or not they could be shipped to the site.

Another one confirmed an appliance delivery and installation window for Monday from 9 to 10.

There was a refund receipt attached to an email.

A door order was waiting on acknowledgment.

A vendor said tracking would be sent once it was available.

None of this sounds like design. And yet, this is exactly what design is.

THE REAL DEAL

This is the part that actually makes the room happen.

Not the inspiration image. Not the reveal. Not the moment when everything is styled and glowing and someone says, “How beautiful.”

Before that, there is this.

A Tuesday morning meeting getting pulled together because the project needs eyes on it.

A client waiting to know if the thing they paid for is actually coming.

A vendor confirming the arrival window.

A builder trying to keep the sequence moving.

A team member revising sconce locations in plan and elevation because the wall, the room, and the actual human body moving through the space all have their own opinions.

A design book being updated so the vision does not get lost in the machinery of building.

Fabric samples sitting on a credenza, waiting for me to see them.

That is my real life as a principal designer.

Not sitting alone making every selection myself.

Not floating through the studio with a perfect mood board.

A VERY ALIVE SYSTEM

It is like standing in the middle of a busy and fast moving room and listening for what needs my attention.

Where is the vision clear?

Where is it getting diluted?

Where does the team need a decision to be made?

Where does the client need reassurance?

Where is the project quietly drifting from what it wants to become?

That is the work.

And honestly, I love it.

I love that a real design firm has a pulse.

I love that there are projects in different stages, all moving at once. One is waiting on renderings. One is working through appliance timing. One needs exterior samples reviewed. One needs cabinet hardware counts. One needs a proposal approval. One needs someone to stand in an unfinished room and decide where the light should land.

That is not glamorous.

But it is alive.

DESIGN IS A VERB

I think I have become more interested than I ever have in showing this part.

The part where design is not a noun. It is a verb.

It is happening.

It is being emailed, revised, measured, shipped, delayed, approved, questioned, walked through, marked up, reconsidered, and protected.

It is the powder faucet on its way to site.

It is the meeting invite that has not been sent yet.

It is the exterior sample on the credenza.

It is the refund receipt in the thread.

It is the sconce that moves because someone cared enough to look again.

And if we do our job well, none of that will be obvious in the end.

The room will just feel right.

The client will walk in and feel held by a thousand decisions they never had to carry alone.

9:30 WORKS

That is the part I want people to understand about design. The beauty is real, but the beauty is not the whole story.

The story is the work behind it.

The team behind it.

The pressure behind it.

The tiny decisions that never make the caption, but make the room. So yes, 9:30 works. And somewhere inside that one little sentence is the whole business of design.

xo,

Laura

Laura Brophy Interiors is a luxury interior design studio based in Orange County, California. Specializing in coastal home renovation, organic modern interior design, and high-end residential projects throughout Southern California, including Laguna Niguel, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Dana Point.

The streets, the rooms, the show, the scale of it all. The colors. The meals. The tiny details that catch you when you are not really looking for anything.

But once I am home, it usually becomes much simpler than that.

A few things stay.

A shape. A material. A room I cannot stop thinking about. A lamp in a corner. A color that suddenly feels right again. A piece that has some kind of energy to it.

That is what I love most about travel. Not the obvious inspiration, but the things that follow you home quietly.

This first part of Italy was about seeing. Walking the show, visiting ateliers, paying attention to what felt new and what felt old in the best way. There is so much beauty there, but the pieces I respond to are usually not the loudest ones. They are the ones with a little restraint. Something handmade. Something slightly imperfect. Something that feels like it has already lived a bit.

That is where taste comes from, I think.

Not from choosing the most impressive thing in the room, but from noticing what keeps pulling at you after you leave. A few of those pieces came home with me.

There are lamps now at Brophy Market that came from this trip. I am not sure they need a big explanation. I just loved them. The scale, the surface, the way they feel both old and fresh. They have that quality I am always looking for, where something does not feel overly designed, but it still changes the room.

They are the kind of pieces I want the Market to hold. Things that feel found, not forced. Pieces with a point of view. Objects that make a room feel less decorated and more collected.

I will share more from the atelier soon, because that part deserves its own story. There is something very different about seeing where things are made. It changes the way you look at the finished piece. You start to understand the hand behind it, the decisions, the patience, the small irregularities that make it feel alive.

But for now, this is really the heart of it:

I went to Italy to look. Some things came home.

Not because they were perfect, but because they had that feeling. The one I am always chasing a little bit. The one that makes a space feel personal, layered, and alive.

The lamps are at Brophy Market now. And they feel like exactly the right place to begin.

_xo,

Laura

Anyone can fill a room from a catalog. The rooms that stop you, the ones that feel like they have a soul, are almost always full of pieces that took effort to find: a single block of carved wood, a piece of stoneware from a 20th century master, a vintage chair with a real provenance, a light made by hand by people who have been doing it for decades. Those pieces do not come from a “shop now” button. They come from a method.

This is the method. The actual one. The galleries, the fairs, the makers, the way I vet a piece before I fall in love with it, how the money really works, and the exact email I send to get in the door. I am giving you the parts I normally only share with my own team.

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I want to say something that is going to relieve a lot of you: you are allowed to like color again.

Minimalism is finally dying, the all-white kitchen is on its way out, and we are all done designing our homes for the algorithm. Good.

For about a decade, we all quietly agreed that a “tasteful” home meant the same things. White walls. A greige sofa. One curvy bouclé chair. A wavy mirror. A little stack of coffee table books nobody reads, fanned just so. It photographed well. It got the likes. And it left a lot of people living inside a space that felt like a hotel lobby that forgot to have a personality.

That era is ending, and I could not be happier about it.

The whole conversation in design right now has flipped. The all-white, sterile, everything-neutral look is on its way out. Minimalism, the cold kind, is being pronounced dead by basically everyone. And the thing replacing it is not another trend you have to chase.

What’s Actually Happening

The shift comes down to one idea: people are done designing their homes for an audience.

For years, we were all, consciously or not, decorating for the photo. For the feed. We picked the things that would read well in a square, that matched what everyone else was doing, that felt “safe”, catering to that social media aesthetic. We ended up with millions of homes that looked exactly alike. You have walked into them. You have maybe scrolled past your own.

The backlash is here, and it is loud. The spaces people are drawn to now are layered, lived-in, a little imperfect, and unmistakably personal. Rooms that look like a real human with real taste and a real history actually lives there. Color is back. Pattern is back. Brown is back (thank you). Bold materials, saturated walls, a red room, a moody dining room, a kitchen that is not white. The pendulum has swung hard from “make it disappear” to “make it mean something.”

And the stuff that is on its way out tells the same story: all-white everything, overly themed rooms, and anything that was clearly created purely to perform on social media. We are tired. We can feel the difference between a home and a set.

A Little Deeper

Here is the trap I want you to avoid. The internet will now try to sell you the new look as a checklist. Burgundy walls, a specific lamp, the unexpected red theory, buy these nine things. That is the same mistake in a different font. Swapping a beige checklist for a maximalist checklist is still letting the algorithm decorate your house.

The actual lesson of this whole shift is the opposite of a checklist. It is permission.

Permission to use the color you are actually drawn to, not the one that photographs as “elevated.”

Permission to keep the slightly weird inherited thing because you love it, even if it does not “go.”

Permission to layer, to mix old and new, to let a room come together over time instead of in one delivery.

Permission to design for how it feels to stand in the room at 7pm with the lamps on, not for how it matches your feed aesthetic.

The homes that will look timeless in ten years are not the ones that nailed the 2026 trend. They are the ones that are deeply, specifically personal. Personal does not go out of style, because it was never in style. It was just true.

How I’d Actually Start (if you want to break up with the beige)

You do not have to gut anything. Here’s a few honest moves:

Find the one color you actually love and let it in somewhere real. Not an accent pillow. A wall, a cabinet, a sofa. Commit a little.

Add age. One genuinely old object, a vintage piece, an inherited thing, instantly makes a room feel collected instead of ordered-in-a-weekend. Soul comes from history.

Layer the lighting. Stark rooms are almost always over-lit from the ceiling. Lamps, sconces, warmth at eye level. This single change undoes the sterility in a space faster than anything.

Keep the imperfect thing. The piece with a story beats the piece that matches. Every time.

Stop asking if it photographs well. Ask if it feels like you. That is the entire assignment now.

The Bigger Picture

I think this is about more than decor. We spent a decade optimizing everything, our faces, our feeds, our living rooms, for how it looked to other people. The fact that people now want homes that feel personal, warm, a little messy and entirely their own? That is a small, good sign that we are coming back to ourselves.

So no, you do not need to panic-paint everything burgundy. You just get to stop performing. Make the home that feels like you. That is the only trend that has ever actually mattered, and it is finally the one we are all chasing.

Tell me in the comments: what is the one un-beige, not-safe thing you have been secretly wanting to do to your home? Permission granted. Let’s talk about it.

xo,

Laura

Laura Brophy Interiors is a luxury interior design studio based in Orange County, California, specializing in coastal home renovation, organic modern design, and high-end residential projects throughout Southern California.

Come with me to Guastalla. Press play above, then meet me below for the rest of the story.

I’ve always thought Bertazzoni was beautiful. I’ve specced their ranges for years, I’ve seen them in showrooms, I’ve matched them to cabinetry, stone, and hardware more times than I can count. But I’ll be honest with you: after flying to Italy to visit Bertazzoni in person, I can say I genuinely wasn’t prepared for what I saw and learned.

Guastalla is not a place most people have on their list. It’s a small town in Emilia-Romagna, the part of Italy that quietly makes some of the most extraordinary things in the world, and you feel that the moment you arrive. This is not a brand that was dreamed up in a marketing meeting. This is a family that has been in the same region, doing the same work, for six generations.

I walked the showroom with Federico Bertazzoni — sixth generation of the family behind the name on the range — and what he showed me was not what I expected.

Back to 1882

Federico took me decade by decade beginning in 1882; the early ranges, the way the designs evolved, the moments the company made a leap, the details that quietly carried forward from one generation to the next. There’s something about standing in front of 140+ years of a single family’s obsession that reframes the whole thing. You stop seeing a “product” and start seeing a lineage.

And then there were the pieces I’d never laid eyes on. So much of what Bertazzoni makes never makes it to the U.S. — different collections, finishes, and configurations we simply don’t get to specify here. Walking through them felt a little like being let into a back room. I kept thinking about clients, about projects, about the kitchens these could live in.

What You Can Actually Feel

Here’s the part that’s hard to put into a spec sheet: the craftsmanship is something you feel. The weight of a knob. The way an edge is finished. The engineering you don’t see but absolutely sense when you use it. There’s a reason these ranges have a presence in a room… it isn’t an accident, and it isn’t nostalgia. It’s a century-plus of refining the same thing until it’s right.

As a designer, this is exactly what I love. I care so much about understanding the story behind what we put in our clients’ homes. When I specify a range, I’m not just choosing an appliance; I’m choosing a maker, a history, a point of view. Bertazzoni is one of those rare brands where the history, the engineering, and the beauty all come together in the same object. After this trip, I don’t just think it’s beautiful. I understand it differently now.

A Few Things That Stayed With Me

History you can specify — Knowing a piece comes from 1882 and an unbroken family line isn’t trivia; it’s part of what we’re selling our clients when we put it in a kitchen.

The Italian collections we’re missing — There’s a whole world of Bertazzoni design beyond what lands in American showrooms, and it’s worth asking about.

Detail over decoration — The things that make these ranges feel special are mostly things you’d never notice in a photo; which is exactly why I wanted to film it.

If you’ve ever wondered whether a trip like this changes how a designer sees a brand, it absolutely does. Completely.

So, come with me to Italy. The full video is above, and I’d genuinely love to know what you think after you watch.

xo,

Laura

I’ve been traveling a bit lately — Chicago, then straight to Milan for Salone, then Florence, then Rome. Beautiful hotels, incredible design, amazing people. Moments I know I should have sat in more fully than I did.

And yet my brain was almost always already somewhere else. Onto the next project, the next idea, the next version of how something could be better. I’m not sure people always understand this part of being creative. From the outside it probably looks exciting — and it is, genuinely. I’m deeply grateful for this life and the work I’ve put in to build it. But there’s also this strange thing that happens when your brain is wired to constantly create: you stop fully arriving anywhere.

Even in Milan, surrounded by some of the most inspiring design in the world, part of me was already asking how I could make our work better, what needed to evolve, what was coming next. That drive is probably a big part of what built my career. But if I’m being honest, it can also be exhausting.

There’s a quiet pressure creatives put on themselves that doesn’t get talked about enough — this feeling that you’re only as good as your last idea, your last project, your last moment of relevance. And social media pours gasoline on that. You finish one thing, and before you’ve even processed it, your brain is already consuming the next. More beautiful. More viral. More successful. More attention.

I noticed it at Salone too. Some spaces felt so overproduced, so desperate to become the moment online, that they’d lost something in the process. You could feel when a space had been designed more for the photo that was inevitably going to be taken than for real life. The ones that actually stayed with me were quieter than that.

Florence was the thing that cracked me open a little, honestly. Not because it was flashy, but the opposite. It was wandering through tiny ateliers, sitting with creatives who have spent decades refining their craft, and realizing they weren’t rushing. They weren’t trying to go viral. They were just deeply, quietly devoted to what they make. And I think part of me craved that because internally, I move fast. I push hard. I rarely feel fully satisfied — even after winning an award, there’s already a part of me thinking about how to do something better next time.

Sometimes I wonder if creatives like me even know how to fully celebrate ourselves, or if we’re so conditioned to keep building that we skip right past our own lives while we’re busy trying to create them.

That thought really landed when I was sitting with Rob at the Six Senses in Rome at the end of the trip. No event. No party. No adrenaline. Just quiet. And I think I needed that more than anything else on the entire itinerary.

A lot of creatives probably feel this way and just don’t say it out loud — the constant striving, the overthinking, the pressure you silently put on yourself, the nagging feeling that you should be doing more even when you’re already doing a lot. The irony is that the best work usually comes when you slow down enough to actually feel something again. Not when you’re trying to prove yourself or keep up or perform creativity for the internet, but when you’re present enough to notice the smell of wood and stone in an old Florentine atelier, or the energy of Bar Basso spilling into the street at one in the morning, or what it feels like to finally exhale beside someone you love at the end of a long trip.

Maybe that’s the real work right now. Not becoming more. Just learning how to actually be where I am.

xx, Laura

I want to walk you through all of it. Where I went, what stopped me mid-step, what I’m mentally filing away, and the read on each shop that I usually only give clients.

Even on a deadline, I think this is so important for projects. Sourcing isn’t only about the project in front of me. It’s how I keep my eye current. I’m looking for specific pieces, yes. But also for what’s out there for Brophy Market, what might work for projects down the line, and how the best shops in the country are styling things right now. That last one matters more than people think. The market is always moving. If you stop looking, your eye dates faster than you’d believe.

WHAT I WAS ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR

This particular day had a project behind it: a SoHo loft. Not a typical one.

The client is building around sound — a music-obsessed, slightly hedonistic, deeply considered space that’s zoned by the rhythm of a day instead of by rooms. The governing idea is what I’d call maximal-minimalism: minimal in count, maximal in interest. Old sits beside new. Nothing is allowed to be boring, and everything has to earn its place by actually being used.

Which is a very specific thing to shop for. It rules out anything precious or untouchable. It rewards pieces with patina, provenance, and a little theater… objects that look like they’ve already lived a life and are happy to keep living one. A New York loft, not a California home: cooler light, harder edges, more nerve.

That brief is the lens for everything below. It’s why some pieces I loved stayed on the floor, and why a few others are now quietly being held.

Here’s everything worth knowing from the day.

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1 — Theragun Pro Plus

Recovery, but make it a ritual. This isn’t just a massage gun — it’s the thing he’ll reach for every single morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Five attachments, built-in heat and vibration, a carry case that looks good on the nightstand. Whether he’s an athlete, a guy who sits at a desk too long, or someone who just holds stress in his shoulders (aka, everyone), this changes the game. Gift it. Watch him become a better version of himself.

2 — Saint Laurent Multitool

Utilitarian meets obscenely chic. Saint Laurent made a Swiss Army knife and somehow it works — completely, effortlessly, iconically. It lives in his pocket, his bag, his car. It’s the thing he pulls out and people immediately ask about. Equal parts functional and fashion-forward, it’s the conversation piece he didn’t know he needed and will never stop reaching for.

3 — Frette Waffle Robe

The Sunday morning robe. Frette does it better than anyone — weightless, sculptural, hotel-level luxury without the checkout anxiety. The waffle texture is everything: breathable, beautifully textured, impossibly soft. Once he puts it on in the morning with a good cup of coffee, it’s over. He’s never leaving the house again and honestly? That’s the whole point. Good for him. Good for everyone.

4 — Jura Z10 Coffee Machine

This is the one. The machine that turns your kitchen counter into a café worth lingering in. Bean-to-cup perfection at the touch of a button — espresso, cappuccino, cold brew, flat white… you have 40 different drink options. The milk frother actually froths. The design looks like it belongs in a Swiss hotel lobby. If you’re going to invest in one thing for the kitchen, make it this. Morning rituals will never be the same.

5 — Long Confidence Tumblers

Found at Brophy Market for a reason. These are the glasses that make every drink feel like an occasion — water, whiskey, an afternoon sparkling, whatever. Sculptural, weighty, and so beautiful on a bar cart that you’ll want to leave them out always. A set of two because the best moments are shared and every good bar setup deserves a glass worth raising.

6 — Tom Ford Noir Extreme

Dark amber, cardamom, sandalwood, a hint of rose. It’s warm. It’s confident. It lingers in the best possible way and somehow gets better as the day goes on. This is the fragrance for the man who walks into a room and owns it without trying — not loud, just present in that unmistakable way. A Tom Ford classic for a reason, and one that never, ever gets old.

7 — Flamingo Estate ‘Fridays From the Garden’ Set

Heirloom olive oil, honey vinegar, and a cookbook that belongs on a coffee table and in the kitchen equally. This is the gift for the dad who cooks with intention — who believes dinner is an event, not a task, and that good ingredients are the foundation of everything. Flamingo Estate sources like no one else, and the packaging alone makes it feel like unwrapping something truly special. For the dad who appreciates where things come from.

8 — Bombas Socks

Men can always use mores socks. It is a classic, yes — but hear me out. The best socks you will ever put on a human foot, full stop. Cushioned in exactly the right places, seamless where it matters, made to genuinely last. They’re the everyday luxury that doesn’t feel like a compromise, the thing he’ll reach for every single morning and quietly appreciate every single time. Stack the colorways, go monochromatic, mix it up. He’ll thank you without even knowing why he feels so good.

9 — AirPods Max

Noise-canceling at its most beautiful. For the commute, the long flight, the Sunday deep-focus work session, the moment he just needs to disappear into a great album. The sound quality is genuinely unmatched and they look like something you’d spot in a design museum — architecture for your ears. The new colors are stunning. This is the tech gift that doesn’t feel like tech. It feels like an upgrade to his entire existence.

10 — Bang & Olufsen Portable Speaker

If sound could be sculptural, it would look exactly like this. Bang & Olufsen’s portable speaker delivers rich, room-filling audio wrapped in extraordinary craftsmanship — the kind of object you place somewhere intentionally and then just leave out because it’s that beautiful. It belongs on a bookshelf, on a terrace at golden hour, in the kitchen on a Sunday morning. Wherever the best moments happen, this is the soundtrack to them.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads with great taste — and to the people who know exactly how to shop for them.

xo, Laura

Here are six things I’ve been thinking about, saving, sourcing, and sending to friends.

01 — Society Limonta

Italian Stone-Washed Linen Bedding, Made in Como

The kind of bedding that gets better the more it gets used. Stone-washed, quietly imperfect, with a feeling you can’t translate to a product photo. I’ve been layering it into nearly every bedroom we’re finishing this season. If you’re in Milan, their showroom is absolutely worth the detour.

02 — Palazzo Daniele, Puglia

The Boutique Hotel I Send Everyone To in Italy

A 19th-century palace turned contemporary boutique hotel. Vast white-vaulted rooms, feels almost empty in the best way, original frescoes left exactly where they’ve always been. The kind of place where the design itself teaches you something about restraint. Stay three nights minimum if you can. You probably won’t want to leave.

03 — Hessentia

A New Italian Furniture Vendor in Our Studio Rotation

Handmade in Italy, but not in the heavy-tassel sense. Clean, sculpted, slightly emotional silhouettes… the kind of materials that anchor a room without dominating it. Beauty in simplicity. We just added them to the line card this spring and I keep speccing them.

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04 — Bertazzoni

Why a Colored Italian Range Belongs in a Luxury Kitchen

I’ve always thought they were beautiful. After seeing them on their home turf this spring, I have a deeper appreciation. A colored range is the most underrated thing in luxury kitchens right now, and the proportions of their product read more like a piece of furniture than a functional appliance.

05 — Portola Roman Clay ‘Patagonia’

The Warm Plaster Finish I Keep Specifying

Taking notes from Italy again… you see plastered surfaces everywhere. The way it catches light at dusk is something drywall will never be able to do. We’ve been using Portola Paints’ Roman Clay in projects all spring (The shade ‘Patagonia’ is one of my favorites) and lime washes for the rooms where we want even more movement.

06 — Sourcing in Person

Why the Next Decade of Design Belongs to People Who Go See It

I think the next decade of good design will belong to people who get out and see things for themselves. Less ordering based off of photos online. Touch the rug before you buy it. Walk through the nursery before you pick the tree. Hold the linen up to the window. See how it feels against your skin. Travel. The stories you bring home are what make a room feel uniquely yours instead of theirs.

That’s what’s on my mind this month. If anything here sends you somewhere — a hotel, a brand, a finish — I’d love to hear what you found.

xo, Laura

SOURCES AT A GLANCE

Society Limonta | Palazzo Daniele | Hessentia | Bertazzoni | Portola Paints (Roman Clay)

Laura Brophy Interiors is a luxury interior design studio based in Orange County, California. Specializing in coastal home renovation, organic modern interior design, and high-end residential projects throughout Southern California, including Laguna Niguel, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Dana Point. Searidge was featured on the cover of LUXE Interiors + Design and recognized with a Design 9 award.

I have been in this industry a long time and I cannot think of a single period where people were not saying:

“Everything feels so expensive right now.”

I know this can be a touchy subject. I know how hard it is right now. People are stretched. Budgets that felt reasonable two years ago feel vastly different today. The gap between what something costs and what it used to cost is real, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But, I also want to be honest about something that I think gets lost in that conversation.

Craftsmanship, quality materials, skilled labor, thoughtful construction… those things have never gotten cheaper. Not ten years ago. Not before the pandemic. Not now. I almost feel like the design industry has avoided saying this out loud because nobody wants to sound insensitive or out of touch.

But pretending otherwise is not helping people either.

Good design costs money.

Good materials cost money.

Time costs money.

Restraint costs money.

And the hard truth is… the projects that end up feeling timeless are usually the ones where people were willing to protect the vision, not slowly value engineering the soul out of it.

Here is what I have watched happen, more times that I can count:

Budgets tighten. Everyone asks where they can save. Those decisions — each one feeling small and reasonable in the moment — quietly unravel the entire feeling of the home.

The flooring changes.

The windows change.

The plumbing changes.

The scale changes.

The stone changes.

By install day, people are standing in a house wondering why it no longer feels like the original dream.

Materials matter. Way more than people realize. For example, a kitchen countertop made of the cheapest engineered porcelain on the market is going to feel and look different than a natural stone. There’s just no way around it.

I wish more people understood that when designers obsess over unlaquered brass or natural oak or the kind of plaster… it is not because we are trying to be difficult. Those decisions compound emotionally. You feel them later. In how quiet a room feels. In how light moves through the space. In whether the home feels grounding or cold. Layered or flat. Timeless or already tired.

Let’s be real, social media has made this even harder because almost anything can look good in one photo now. What you see on Instagram or Pinterest doesn’t always translate to real life.

Living in something is different. You can absolutely tell when a house was designed around short-term savings instead of long-term feeling.

I want to be absolutely clear — I am not saying every project needs an unlimited budget.

Some of the most beautiful homes are restrained. But restraint and cutting corners are not the same thing. That is where people get confused.

I would rather help someone do fewer things really well than stretch themselves thin trying to do everything all at once.

Buy once, cry once is very real in this industry. You can’t just magically swap something out for free if you’re not feeling it like you were a couple months ago.

Every budget has a ceiling. As a designer, it is part of the job to be honest about what a given amount can and cannot achieve. It’s not to discourage anyone, but having clarity in the beginning protects people from disappointment throughout the process and in the end. Trust between a client and their designer matters.

That does not mean a home cannot still be beautiful. It just has to be designed honestly around what a budget allows, not stretched unrealistically across a vision it cannot hold.

I think this next phase of Laura Brophy Interiors is going to be even more rooted in that kind of honesty.

Less performing. Less trying to please everyone. More conviction. Better materials. More trust.

More spaces that actually make people feel something.

Because the homes that stay with you are usually not the loudest ones.

They are the ones that quietly get better over time.

This is Part 2 and honestly, it might be the more interesting half to talk about.

Not because the spaces are more dramatic. But because the decisions here were quieter. More restrained. And in a lot of ways, more consequential.

This Searidge source guide shares the primary suite, primary bathroom, and outdoor living sources behind our LUXE cover project in Laguna Niguel.

One thing we kept coming back to throughout this project was how the home should feel at the end of the day. Not just how it photographed, but how it actually felt to be inside it when the light was low and the family was home. The primary suite and the bathroom, the outdoor spaces… these are the spaces that spoke to that feeling. They’re where a house either delivers on its promise or doesn’t.

Searidge delivered.

A reminder: The best spaces usually aren’t the flashiest ones. They’re the ones that continue revealing themselves to you slowly over time.

For anyone planning a coastal renovation, primary bathroom remodel, or outdoor living space, these are the sources and design decisions that made Searidge feel layered, calm, and livable.

What I’m covering:

• The stone, tile, and plumbing finishes used in the primary bathroom

• Absolutely everything in the primary suite

• Outdoor furniture selections

• The smaller details that quietly elevated the entire home

• The importance of creating spaces that don’t just look good, but feel good

Let’s get into it.

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The proportions. The colors. The way their ranges feel more like furniture than appliances. As a designer, I was always drawn to that side of the brand first.

But after spending time with the family in Italy and walking through the factory… it became something much deeper for me.

And honestly, I think this is the part people miss about really great brands.

You can feel when something comes from real people.

Not marketing.

Not trend forecasting.

Not a boardroom trying to manufacture authenticity.

Real people. Real history. Real pride.

Bertazzoni started in 1882 in Guastalla, Italy. Which honestly kind of blew my mind once I understood the timeline. The family originally built wood-burning stoves inspired by the engineering of trains that passed through their town. Trains. That detail stayed with me for some reason. There is something so grounded and practical and romantic about that beginning.

And somehow… you still feel that spirit inside the company now.

What struck me most was not actually the product.

It was the family.

Grounded. Warm. Unpretentious. Deeply connected to what they are building. You could feel how proud they are of the craftsmanship without it feeling performative or corporate.

That is rare.

Especially now.

I think we are living in a time where a lot of brands are trying very hard to appear human while simultaneously becoming more disconnected from actual humanity.

This felt opposite of that.

Walking through the factory was honestly one of my favorite parts of the entire trip. Seeing how much detail, engineering, and human touch still goes into everything made me understand why the brand feels the way it does in a home.

There is soul behind it.

And I think that matters more than people realize.

As designers, we spend so much time talking about aesthetics, but the older I get, the more I realize people can actually feel the difference between something that was thoughtfully made and something that was simply manufactured to sell.

That feeling translates.

It shows up in kitchens. In homes. In the emotional temperature of a space.

And I think that is why I left loving the brand even more.

Not because of one launch or one beautiful range.

Because the deeper I looked, the more aligned it all felt.

The history made sense.

The design made sense.

The people made sense.

Nothing felt disconnected from the original spirit of the company.

Honestly… that is the dream.

Not just building something successful.

Building something that still feels human as it grows.

I think that is what I am craving more and more lately in every part of life honestly. Brands, homes, spaces, relationships, even our work at Laura Brophy Interiors.

More depth.

More intention.

More soul.

Less trying to convince people.

More actually meaning it.