The Interior Collective

Celebrate a decade of IDCO Studio with 10 days of 30% off site-wide. Use code DECADE30 at www.idco.studio today to lock in your savings. Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with two people whose business model sits at the intersection of residential design and hospitality ownership. Katie Labourdette-Martinez and Olivia Wahler are sisters-in-law and co-founders of Hearth Homes Interiors, a full-service residential interior design studio based in Santa Barbara. They started together in 2017 in a staging business, developed a reputation for honoring the character of older homes, and eventually pivoted their business entirely to full-service design. In 2023 they founded Hearth Hospitality Group alongside Olivia's brothers Lucas and Julian and their longtime friend Jason. They now own and operate three historic inns and two restaurants across Santa Barbara, with Hearth Homes Interiors as the design arm for all of it. The Craft House Inn was included in Goop's best of Santa Barbara guide, named one of the Best Hotels in Santa Barbara in the 2024 Sunset Travel Awards, and their design work has been featured in Luxe, Sunset, Modern Luxury, and Rue. The Hearth philosophy is simple: honor what came before, and create spaces with an unmistakable sense of place. Today we are discussing what it means to design across both residential and boutique hospitality, and what other design studios can learn and implement into their own business.

Celebrate a decade of IDCO Studio with 10 days of 30% off site-wide. Use code DECADE30 at www.idco.studio today to lock in your savings. Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with someone I've really been looking forward to getting to know — Sean Anderson. Sean grew up in rural Mississippi, where his mother encouraged his love of art long before he ever thought of it as a career. He never went to design school. He started in Memphis in his thirties with a small circle of loyal clients and word of mouth, and he's said that he considers every day in this industry an education — that every install is still his final exam. Since founding his namesake studio in 2013, Sean Anderson has grown into offices in both Memphis and New York. His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Milieu, Garden and Gun, and Departures. He's been named to the 1stDibs 50 and the Wallpaper 400. And this fall, he's releasing his debut monograph with Rizzoli, Interior Narratives — with a foreword by architect Jeffrey Dungan, text by Sam Cochran, and photography by his longtime collaborator, Haris Kenjar. We are getting into all of it today. What it actually took to build a two-city practice from a standing start in Memphis. The creative partnerships — with an architect, a writer, a photographer — that shaped this book and his business. And for every designer who has a book on their vision board, the real, unglamorous path to publication from the inside.Seans Andersons book, Interior Narratives, is now available!

Celebrate a decade of IDCO Studio with 10 days of 30% off site-wide. Use code DECADE30 at www.idco.studio today to lock in your savings. Tiffany Piotrowski is back, and this time we are digging into her studio’s 100 image exercise. This episode relies heavily on the video portion of it, as Tiffany generously shows us physical examples of what she’s explaining. If you are not already watching this on Patreon or YouTube, pause, and head over there. Subscribing on Patreon gets you access to not only the full video conversation to this and all episodes, it also gains access to 2 additional episodes per month, exclusive to Patreon subscribers. Supporting the podcast directly is what makes it possible to keep this show running, and we have a lot more of it coming. Tiffany is the founder of Tiffany Leigh Design, a full-service studio based in Barrie, Ontario, known for its English-inspired interiors, layered materiality, and a deeply thoughtful approach to understanding what home means to each client. Tiffany is a close personal friend, and in one of our industry group texts, she mentioned this concept of a 100 Image Exercise. Immediately I knew we needed to record a show about it. In her process, Tiffany has developed what she calls a Dream and Scheme Meeting, a structured first meeting with every new client that goes far beyond the standard questionnaire. It has four parts, it happens in person at her studio, and it is designed to surface the things a client would never think to write down. One of the centerpieces of that meeting is the 100 image exercise, something she learned from Melissa Oholendt of Oho Interiors and has since made her own. Today she is walking us through the whole thing, and she is doing a live demo on camera. The 100 image exercise itself: how her team curates and prints 100 images for every client, and why the physical, printed format matters more than a digital slideshow. The exact printer she uses: https://a.co/d/0hL48rkV

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with someone whose career trajectory is genuinely one of a kind in this industry. Britany Simon grew up around construction, the daughter of a residential developer in Arizona. She earned a degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in business and interior design, and spent years working in some of the top design firms in the state before landing her big break on HGTV.  After gaining national recognition as a runner-up and fan favorite on Design Star, she went on to appear on multiple design-focused television programs, developing a strong media presence alongside deep technical expertise. In 2015, she launched Britany Simon Design House, which she has since grown into a highly respected boutique studio known for its elevated client experience, strong internal systems, and thoughtful approach to scaling a design business. Today we are covering what those years on set taught her about delivering under pressure, and how those same instincts became the foundation for a client process that protects her time, her margins, and her relationships. We are going step by step, phase by phase, because a well-structured client experience is the difference between a busy studio and a profitable one.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with Claire Staszak, founder and principal of Centered by Design, a full-service residential interior design studio based in Chicago specializing in the design and restoration of historic homes. Claire came from journalism and marketing before she came to interiors, and that background has shaped everything about how she has built her firm, including how she thinks about showhouses. Most designers treat a showhouse as a client opportunity, but Claire treats it as a brand investment with a measurable return. She has done both local and national showhouses and built a team that helps make it all happen. Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Domino, Luxe, and the Chicago Tribune. She has a studio and showroom in East Lakeview, a second design annex on the North Shore, a wallpaper collection with Isidore Leroy, and a debut book slated for Fall 2027. Today we are getting into the real costs of a showhouse, the brand partnerships that make them financially viable, what local versus national showhouses actually produce for a studio, and what every designer should be thinking about before they say yes to the next one.