LETTER 12. YAP: DESIGN IS NEVER DONE

My house is not finished. And, honestly, it never will be. 

Not in the “we’re waiting on one more chair” sense. Not necessarily in the “we still need to hang the art in the hallway” sense (although there are still some open gallery wall spots for us to grow into with future memories). In the deeper sense — the sense in which my house has never been finished, will never be finished, and, more radically, was never designed to be. I have lived here for over 4 years now. I designed most of it upfront, as it was a complete gut-renovation, and I still, with each new additional year, have a growing list of all the areas living rent-free in my mind in need of my design touch. 

I say this out loud because I don’t know that the design industry really speaks on it much.

There is a saying I have used for years, in client meetings and to my team, across media interviews,  and, at this point, to myself several times a month:

design is never done.

I mean it as a philosophy. I also mean it as a lived reality. I am an interior designer, which means I am fully immersed in the world of design — new materials, new makers, new palettes, new proportions, new ways of solving a room. Every week the studio brings something new across my desk. Every sourcing trip, every showroom, every design market, every catalog? every project I visit — my eye is being fed constantly. This is the great gift of the work. It is also, sometimes, a curse. 

I am truly fulfilled mostly through client projects. The rooms I am able to keep specifying, project after project, are what allow me to walk into my own kitchen and not feel the urge to tear out the counters every six months. Design work is how I metabolize the constant creative input that comes with this profession. I am in a flow of abundance in that way — most people who love design and love their homes do not have a myriad of active projects a year in which to channel that impulse.

But — and this is why I am writing to you today — the impulse is there anyway. Even for me. Even after nearly two decades  of specifying rooms professionally. I look at my dining room some days and head down a rabbit hole of redesigns. I look at my bedroom in late September and think about whether the linen at the windows should be heavier for winter. I look at my kitchen and, occasionally, wander down a few sites for options replace all of the hardware pulls. 

If it happens to me, it happens to you. I need you feel entirely, completely validated in that.

Here is how I think about it, and how I recommend clients think about it, and how, increasingly,I think about it for my own house:

Design the bones for the long haul; material, cabinetry, stone, flooring, plaster, tile, plumbing, primary lighting. All of this should be specified with the intention that it will still be right in ten years. Five years is the minimum. Ten is the goal. Nothing on this list should be chosen because it is having a moment — because the moment will pass and the material will remain. This is what I mean when I talk about restraint, and about honest materials, and about designing for longevity. This is where you spend your money and your judgment.

Design the accessories for the itch. Rugs, throws, pillows, sometimes art, small objects, table linens, vases, seasonal branches, the tray on the coffee table, the candle on the bedside. All of this is where design gets to keep moving. A different pillow set in the fall. A new piece of art you found on a trip. A rug swapped in  the living room is one of my favorite changes. The impulse to change something has to have somewhere to go — and if the bones are right, the accessories are where the impulse can safely live, and bonus points for intentional  seasonal living in the accessories. 

The clients I have worked with longest — the ones whose houses I designed five, eight, ten years ago — are still living beautifully in the rooms we made. Not because they have not changed anything. They have changed things without touching the bones. The rug is a different rug. The pillows are on their third round. The art in the primary bedroom has been swapped twice. But the walls are the walls. The floors are the floors. The kitchen is the kitchen.

That is a house that is finished at the level of the bones and unfinished at the level of the surface. It is the only kind of house that will be loved for decades.

I love every corner of my own house. I mean that with my whole heart. And also, I am dreaming about the next small thing (always). Two things can be true, and both will always be true here. That is the honest condition of being a designer, and I suspect it is the honest condition of being anyone who cares about the rooms they live in.

Design is never done. The trick is to build the parts that shouldn’t be done —” the bones — and leave the parts that get to keep going annd growing or evolving with you, open.

Your house is not truly “finished” either. It’s not supposed to be. Exhale a little. 

—xobe.