Ep. 464: Bring Travel Inspiration Home with Jessica Whitley

How to Decorate

Caroline McDonald

Arts, Business, Design

4.4 • 838 Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we are thrilled to welcome Jessica Whitley, the creative director of Jessica Whitley Studios in Athens, Georgia. Jessica is a true multihyphenate: a former corporate CPA who swapped crunching numbers for designing beautiful spaces and creating art! Jessica sits down with Caroline, Taryn, and Liz to share her serendipitous career pivot, why she treats her own home like a "test kitchen," and how her travels across all seven continents influence her aesthetic. She also discusses the process behind designing the Rivet House—a stunning boutique hotel inside an old industrial mill—and explains why studying the "flight pattern" of a room is the true secret to good design. Quick Decorating Takeaways: Study the "Flight Pattern": Jessica is obsessed with function. Before she worries about how a room looks, she analyzes how people will actually move through it. She suggests thinking about the "flight pattern" of a space—like who is opening the refrigerator door, where kids are running in, and how you entertain—to ensure the layout actually serves your daily life. Listen to the Location: It is easy to get caught up in whatever kitchen or bathroom is currently trending on Pinterest. Instead of copying trends, Jessica recommends looking at the specific location and architecture of the building and asking, "what does it want to be?" to create a much more authentic space. Treat Your Home Like a Test Kitchen: If you are nervous about design, use your own home to experiment. Jessica tested every fabric for durability against kids and guests in her own house before using them for clients, which gave her the confidence to know her designs would actually hold up to real life. What You’ll Hear on This Episode: 00:00 Welcome & Introduction to Jessica Whitley 01:26 Jessica’s serendipitous journey from corporate accounting to art and interior design 04:06 Treating her first home like a "test kitchen" for fabrics and function 04:41 Shifting away from Pinterest trends to find authentic, location-specific design 05:24 Why analyzing the "flight patterns" of a family is the key to good design 07:17 How traveling the world (specifically the Cotswolds and Amsterdam) shapes Jessica's aesthetic 07:51 The story behind designing the Rivet House boutique hotel in Athens, Georgia 49:37 The difficulty (and importance) of editing and restraint in design 50:00 Closing thoughts & where to find Jessica's work Also Mentioned: Jessica Whitley Studio | Website Follow Jessica on Instagram: @jessicawhitleystudio Rivet House (Athens, GA) Shop Ballard Designs Please send in your questions so we can answer them on our next episode! And of course, subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. You can always check back here to see new episodes, but if you subscribe, it’ll automatically download to your phone. Happy Decorating! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home.
0:09.1	I'm Caroline. I'm on the marketing team. And I'm Taryn and I'm a product designer. I'm Liz. I head of the creative team.
0:14.8	We're your host. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists,
0:20.9	and other talents in the design world. Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each
0:24.8	episode. We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us at podcast at balderdesigns.net.
0:30.5	Now on with the show.
0:33.8	Okay, today we are thrilled to welcome Jessica Whitley, a CPA turned creative, who swapped crunching numbers for designing beautiful spaces as creative director of Jessica Whitley's studios in Athens, Georgia. She's known for her classic, cool, collected style, and her work spans both homes and hospitality. She's traveled all seven continents. She paints, she designs, and today she's here to talk about how we can bring a little bit of the world into our own homes. Jessica, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.
0:58.5	I'm excited to be here. Yes, I loved, we're thrilled to have you. I loved getting to look at your work
1:04.3	because, as I mentioned in the introduction, you've done a lot of traveling, and you can really see that
1:10.3	in the shapes and the textures and the colors that you've done a lot of traveling, and you can really see that in the shapes and
1:12.1	the textures and the colors that you've brought into your spaces. So I'm excited to dive into
1:17.4	that a little bit and hear more about it. But before we do that, why don't you just tell our
1:22.6	listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into design? Oh, so I loved design since I was a little kid.
1:29.6	So I started doing art workshops instead of sports. So I was that girl, went into LSU from
1:37.1	Louisiana thinking I was going to do into your design and art and worried about, you know,
1:42.7	my dad really pushed to do business school,
1:45.1	so I ended up going into accounting and finance,
1:47.4	and I actually ended up loving it, but always did art and design on the side.
1:52.1	But anyways, did corporate accounting and finance for quite some time,
1:57.0	and met my ex-husband.
1:58.9	He moved to me.
1:59.5	We were doing long distance.
	...

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