The beginning of this week was the sadness trifecta– a Monday, the 20th marking 3-months, and it was pouring rain. I was having a bit of a day when I got a surprise call from La Jefa. La Jefa is my friend from college who spent junior year in Spain with me and now lives in Boston. She is one of my favorite travel partners as she researches and plans everything and I just let her be the boss. Thus the nickname.
So she calls me because they’ve just bought a house from the 1800’s and she doesn’t even have a Pinterest account. This sounds like a dream project to me– I’m so excited. She tells me she spent hours with post-it notes and a pile of magazines she’s borrowed.
Now when I was in high school, one of my favorite things to do with my mom was to buy a bunch of magazines and then lay around all day reading them. My dad would always come into our lazy living room lounge and ask with disdain, “What are you doing all day… just reading magazines?” It came out sounding like, “What are you doing all day… just smoking opium?” We would laugh sinfully and flip to the next page with extra sass.
I feel kind of bad, but I tell La Jefa that yes, she has wasted hours of her life with magazines. The only way to go is Pinterest. Here I come… to saAAave the day!
This post perfectly coincides with intro’ing La Jefa to the vast world of house design, and my current day job as an “Owner slash Builder.” That’s what they call me in all the contracts.
So a quick Google search has revealed that no one has done a landscape analysis of the types of house design content in the world. I’d broadly put them into the following main categories. While my list is almost entirely dominated by women, I’d venture that’s a feature, not a bug:
- Eye Candy: Interior designers with beautiful pictures and in general, terrible writing. These artists publish the best house porn on the internet. But many of their articles are “obsessed” with everything, including the intolerable use of overabundant exclamation points!!! Search and follow them on Pinterest and/or Instagram.
- Amber Interiors
- April Tomlin
- Becki Owens
- Jean Stoffer
- Katie LeClercq
- Kate Marker
- Lindye Galloway
- Studio McGee
- Urbanology Designs
- W Design Collective
- Whittney Parkinson
2. Houzz: Download this app for articles worth reading while eating lunch alone. Don’t save pictures you like to their ideabook– save them to your Pinterest app so you have them all in one place. Houzz content mostly features Design/Build firms that create beautiful projects but generally don’t have the production value of Eye Candy.
- aaNovo
- Homebunch (kind of an aggregator in this space)
- I’m sure there are more but I’m getting tired because of…
3. YouTube House Tours: I enjoy watching these in the 5am hour with my seriously delicious Illy pour over coffee. Yes, Intenso is the only choice. Right now I’m learning all the quirks of renovating in Australia with the Three Birds…they call electrical outlets “power points” and say “homely” but apparently it doesn’t mean ugly.
4. Moms of the Midwest: This may totally be a stereotype so please, hold the hate mail. But you’ll know it when you see it. They create their own beautiful homes project by project. They usually have indoor drinking fountains and school rooms. Some of my favorites include:
5. HGTV: Home and Garden Terrible Vision. These cookie cutter shows continue to be today’s Trading Spaces. Flip or Flop? Total flop.
6. Joanna Gaines. She’s our modern day Martha Stewart, though I’m more of a Chip fan. While they’re a bit overexposed, they’re making some of the best house TV, including about other designers. Discovery+ and HBO Max seem to have the same content and the best content. Some of my faves include:
Obviously this analysis isn’t exhaustive as I’ve left out highly aspirational sources like Architectural Digest. Some people love to look at Gwyneth’s kitchen and Meghan’s mansion but I’ve never believed the Us spread “Celebrities: They’re just like us!” Yeah, no they’re not. You catch that magazine reference right there? That’s for one of my besties… you know who you are.
Looking through all of these sources will absolutely give you a warped sense of space, ceiling heights, budgets, and what people actually “need.” But it’s fun and creative and I’m all about pursuing frivolity these days.
Through my extensive research I haven’t found any design bloggers featuring widowed single moms providing youth soccer coverage, teenage anecdotes, musings on grief, and house building advice.
Looks like I’ve got this area of the market cornered.
