MY GIFT TO YOU THIS VALENTINE’S DAY
This Valentine’s Day, I found myself reflecting on what I truly wanted to write. I went through my usual mental process of brainstorming titles, ideas, and angles, turning possibilities over in my mind until something felt right. And in that familiar ritual, I asked ChatGPT who, by now, knows me quite well for perspective. The suggestion was simple: write about objects that tell love stories. And suddenly, my thoughts began cascading with clarity.
I immediately thought of the pieces many of my clients ask me to integrate into their projects objects that once belonged to someone they loved, furniture that has accompanied them for years, material memories already filled with life. These are not simply beautiful pieces; they carry emotional weight, narrative, and presence. They are fragments of lived experience, and they deserve to be treated with intention.
As these reflections unfolded, I began writing almost without breathing. Because in the end, as a designer, what moves me is not only creating functional, practical, aesthetically powerful spaces. What truly moves me deeply is knowing that what I do is, in its own quiet way, an act of love.
An act of love can be placing a chair exactly where the late afternoon light pours in, so that when my client comes home and sits down to read, the space feels as though it had always been meant to exist in that way. It can be designing a kitchen island at the right height so a petite client can cook comfortably, without straining her back because design should adapt to the body, not the other way around. It can be selecting textures and layers that genuinely support rest soft, breathable, intentional for someone who struggles to sleep. It can even be creating a thoughtfully designed corner for the furry companions who walk through life alongside their humans.
For me, design is not about staging perfection for a photograph, nor about creating something that only works on reveal day. It is about anticipating how you will feel on an ordinary Tuesday. It is about imagining the quiet, private moments no one else will ever see. It is about creating spaces that hold you consistently and silently, without you even realizing why they feel so right.
So this Valentine’s Day, my gift to you is this:
My commitment not only to meeting a deadline or respecting a budget, but to truly thinking about you. My gift lives in those late-night hours at home, when everything is quiet and I am still turning your project over in my mind. It is the time I spend questioning decisions, refining proportions, reconsidering materials, asking myself again and again whether each choice genuinely serves you. It is ensuring that your home becomes the most honest reflection of your lifestyle, and that your space adapts to you never the other way around.
That gift cannot be touched, nor can it be photographed. It is not the piece of furniture you purchase or the lamp I carefully select. It is the intention behind every decision. It is the hours spent comparing options, hesitating, discarding, choosing. It is the countless sofa compositions I analyze down, feather, foam, fiber adjusting densities and layers until the balance feels precisely right for your way of living. These details may be invisible, but they are fundamental. They shape how a space supports you long after the reveal day has passed.
When I studied archaeology, I was fascinated by how excavation sites required us to reconstruct the lives of those who once inhabited them to imagine how they ate, slept, loved, celebrated, and grieved. Today, as an interior designer, I feel I do something similar, but in reverse. I do not reconstruct lives. I help build the setting where life will unfold.
And if that is not a form of love, I truly do not know what is.