A little while ago, I opened the newest issue of Sactown Magazine and found my work inside it. I’ve read that magazine for years… it’s the one that ends up on the coffee tables of the homes I admire most around this region – so being part of this year’s 2026 Designer Showcase is a real honor. I wanted to take a moment, here in my own journal, to reflect on what it means and to say a genuine thank you!
Being included alongside designers I respect – several of whom I’m fortunate to call colleagues – says less about any one of us than it does about the moment Sacramento design is having right now. That’s the top of mind for me, because it’s bigger than just a single feature in a magazine.
Sacramento Is Having a “Design Moment”
Something has been building in this region for a while now, and the Designer Showcase is a lovely snapshot of it. Families are pouring real care into how they live – in Granite Bay, El Dorado Hills, Folsom, Roseville, and across the Sacramento area – and that care has grown a genuine design culture here. Not a borrowed one. Our own.
Sacramento has a sensibility all its own: warm, livable, unhurried, built around family and gathering rather than show. The homes I love here are the ones you actually live in, where the kitchen is the center of gravity and the back patio fills up on a summer evening. There’s an honesty to it that I find creatively freeing – the goal isn’t just to impress a visitor in the first ten seconds (well, maybe it is sometimes), it’s to make a family feel more like themselves every single day. Seeing that sensibility celebrated in print, by a publication that knows this region as well as Sactown does, is its own kind of joy. This is a wonderful place to be designing right now, and it’s only getting more interesting.
A Community, Not a Competition
The thing that struck me most about the Showcase is simply how much talent is in it. Page after page of designers doing beautiful, thoughtful work for the people who live here.
I’m part of a design community in this region, and the honest truth of it is that we cheer each other on. We refer clients to one another when the fit is right, we share resources and trusted trades, we celebrate each other’s projects. There’s a generosity to the design world here that I didn’t take for granted when I arrived, and I value it more every year. The work isn’t a fixed pie that we’re each trying to take a bigger slice of – there are far more beautiful homes waiting to be designed than any of us could ever get to. That abundance makes room for everyone to do their best work, and it makes the whole community better.
So if you’re reading this and you found me through the Showcase, I hope you’ll look at the other designers featured there too. The fact that you have that many talented people to choose from is exactly what makes designing in Sacramento such a gift.
Finding My Place Here
There’s a personal layer to all of this that I don’t talk about often. When I moved my practice from the Bay Area to the Sacramento region, I didn’t really know how I’d be received. Relocating a design business means starting most of your conversations over – new trades to build trust with, new colleagues to meet, a new community to earn your place in. It’s humbling, and it’s a little daunting, no matter how many years you’ve been doing the work.
What I found was a region that made room for me. Twenty years in the Bay Area had given me my training – a demanding, design-forward market that teaches you quickly and holds you to a high standard. Sacramento gave me something I didn’t fully expect: a place where that experience could land gently and genuinely serve people, in homes that are meant to be lived in rather than just looked at. The families here want warmth and function as much as beauty, and that has always been the work I most wanted to do anyway.
Being part of the Designer Showcase a few years into this chapter feels like a quiet confirmation that the move was the right one. That’s really what the title of this piece means to me. A place at the table, in a community I’m grateful to belong to, doing the work I love for the people who live here!
Why I Design for “How People Actually Live”
When Sactown asked about my approach, I kept coming back to one idea: the most important element in any room is the people who live in it. I’m not interested in designing showrooms. I want a home to reflect how a family actually lives: rooms that feel as good on an ordinary Tuesday morning as they do when the house is full on a Saturday night.
That’s really what custom home interior design means to me. Not a signature look stamped onto every project, but a home shaped around the particular people inside it – how they cook, where they gather, what makes them feel at ease the moment they walk through the door. The Saratoga project I chose to share in the feature is a good example of the feeling I’m always after: layered warmth, rich materials, a touch of color, and enough restraint to let the architecture breathe. Sophisticated, but never cold.
In practice, that means the early conversations matter more than any single material or color. Before I think about finishes, I want to understand the rhythm of a household – whether mornings are quiet or chaotic, whether the dining room is a centerpiece or a pass-through, which corner everyone gravitates to at the end of the day. Two families can ask for the same square footage and the same budget and need two completely different homes. Designing for the people, rather than for a look, is the whole job, and it’s the part I find endlessly interesting after all these years.
After more than twenty years of this work, that’s the conviction I keep returning to. A home should feed the spirit. The finishes and the floor plans are in service of that, never the other way around.
Where Sacramento Design Is Heading
The direction I’m most excited about happens to be the one that fits this region beautifully. The design world is moving toward warmth again… natural materials, real wood and stone, calm and considered spaces that feel restful rather than stark. Warm minimalism, some are calling it: restraint, but “with a soul.”
That sensibility is a natural match for how people live here, and it’s part of why I love being a luxury interior designer in Sacramento at this particular moment. The conversation in Sacramento interior design isn’t about chasing whatever photographs well this season. It’s about building homes that feel personal and last – homes you grow into rather than out of. There’s a patience to good design that this region seems to understand instinctively, and it makes the work better. That’s a direction I’m proud to be part of, and proud to see so many of my colleagues moving in alongside me.
See If We’re a Fit
To everyone at Sactown Magazine, and to the readers and colleagues who’ve reached out since the Showcase – thank you. It means a great deal to be part of this community and this moment.
More than anything, the feature has reminded me how lucky I am to do this work in a place that values it. Every home I’m trusted to design is a privilege, and every conversation that starts with someone who simply wants to love where they live is the reason I do this. If the Showcase introduced you to my work, I’m so glad it did.
And if you found me through the feature and you’ve been thinking about your own home, I’d love to hear about it. Not a sales pitch – a conversation about how you live, what you’re hoping for, and whether we’re the right fit to design it together.
Ready to Discuss Your Project?
I take on a limited number of projects each year—it's how I ensure every client gets my full attention. If you're considering a transformation for your home, big or small, I'd love to learn about your vision and explore whether we're the right fit to bring it to life.