Motherhood Completely Changed How I Design Homes

The other day Rocco and Roman were racing down our hallway with a soccer ball, laughing hysterically, while our dog Ruffin tried to keep up.
They must have done that loop twenty times.

Before becoming a mother, I designed homes through a different lens.

I thought about composition, proportion, light, and materials. I thought about how a room felt when you walked into it. How textures layered together. How a space looked in photographs.

All of that still matters to me.

But motherhood added something else entirely.

It made me think about how a home lives.

When you have small children, you begin to notice things differently. Where they naturally gather. The windows they press their faces against. The corners toys slowly migrate to. The hallway they run down again and again until you wonder how such small legs can hold so much energy.

You realize that a beautiful home is not just something you look at.

It’s something that quietly holds your life.

Before kids, I think I was more precious about spaces.

Now I think much more about comfort. A sofa that can hold the whole family on a Sunday morning. A kitchen that can handle flour everywhere while someone “helps” you bake. A table where drawing, homework, and dinner all happen in the same place.

Homes need to work harder when children are small.

But they also become more meaningful.

The wear, the fingerprints, the small scratches on wood floors. They’re signs that the house is being lived in fully.

Children move constantly. They run loops through a house in ways adults never do.

Because of that, I think more about flow than I ever did before.

Wide pathways. Clear sightlines from the kitchen to the living room. Spaces where children can play while still being near the adults.

The best homes feel intuitive. You move through them easily without thinking.

Watching how children interact with a space has taught me more about layout than any design book ever could.

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