Ep. 226: designer Lauren Liess

How to Decorate

Ballard Designs

Arts, Business, Design

4.2 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2021

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our guest today, designer Lauren Liess, has quite an impressive rap sheet. She began writing her blog, Pure Style Home, in 2008 and has since written the two best-selling design books Habitat and Down to Earth. Her new book, Feels Like Home, is hitting shelves this Fall. Her HGTV show, Best House on the Block, follows her and her husband as they design and renovate homes throughout the DC metro area. Her work has been featured in House Beautiful, Country Living, Traditional Home, Architectural Digest, Martha Stewart Living, and many more. We talk about how she manages her incredibly busy life, embracing the imperfect, her new book, lighting toys on fire, and much, much, more! What You’ll Hear on This Episode: How Lauren’s design journey began. More about Lauren’s new book Feels Like Home. How does Lauren manage her very busy life and balance her work and family? What does Lauren do to bring out her calming aesthetic in her projects? Some tips & tricks for finding the “diamond in the rough” of houses. How does Lauren recommend embracing imperfection? What is Lauren’s approach to managing all the “stuff” with kids? Lauren’s gardening tips and favorites. What are some of Lauren’s go-to white paint colors? Some staples in Lauren’s new book. Decorating Dilemma Hi Hillary, I can identify with this right now! My advice is to arrange things as best as you can and hang up some artwork even though they aren’t quite right; just enough to make it feel like home. My house is a mess right now, so I’m trying to live each day one at a time. I’m bringing in simple things like branches, flowers, candles, and good music and meals. Focus on experiences and bringing the outside! It’s so hard and we get it! It’s definitely a mental exercise in patience when you can’t quite make the space the way you want it, but find the joy where you can. Mentioned in This Episode: Lauren Liess on Instagram Pure Style Home Lauren Liess & Co Best House on the Block Habitat: The Field Guide to Decorating Down to Earth: Laid-back Interiors for Modern Living Feels Like Home

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home.
0:08.7	Each week will help you unleash your inner decorator. I'm Caroline, and I'm on the marketing team.
0:13.7	And I'm Taryn, and I'm a product designer. And I'm Liz. I head up the Ballard creative team.
0:18.2	We're your host. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs
0:21.6	for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists, and other talents in the design world.
0:25.9	Plus, we'll answer our listener question at the end of each show. So don't forget to send them to
0:30.0	podcast at Ballarddesigns.net. Yes, we love answering them. Now on with the show.
0:36.1	Okay, so today, our guest is designer Lauren Lease.
0:40.5	She started her incredible blog, Pure Style Home, in 2008, and her career blossomed from there.
0:47.1	Her work has been featured in so many publications from House Beautiful, Country Living, Traditional Home, Architectural Digest, Martha Stewart Living.
0:54.5	Oh, and the list goes on and on.
0:56.9	She's been seen on HDTV's Best House on the Block that follows Lauren and her husband, David, as they design and renovate homes.
1:05.6	She's the author of two design books and a third that's just about to hit bookstores calls Fields Like Home. We're excited to
1:12.2	have you here today. Welcome, Lauren. Thanks for having me. So you have had such an
1:17.6	incredible journey. Can you just kind of walk us and our listeners through like how you got
1:23.3	started? Sure. It started out. I graduated from college and was working for my family business
1:30.1	selling locomotive components and doing trade shows and branding. Yeah, it's just very related
1:36.2	to decorating. Go straight in. Exactly. And I was doing my first apartment and I realized that
1:43.4	doing my apartment was so much more fun than
1:46.1	my real job.
1:47.6	And so I kind of was like, what am I doing here?
1:51.1	And so I took a distance design learning program and decided I wanted to be a decorator
	...

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