New York City and Los Angeles have long dominated the interior design industry, churning out countless top designers and setting the style for the country. But smaller cities have their own draw, fueled by a generation of designers reshaping the character of their regions. Here are four to watch.
Atlanta
As Atlanta establishes itself as a tech hub of the Southeast, home to industry giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, it is making its mark as a design hub too. “Atlanta’s design community is growing at a faster rate than New York City’s,” says Elayne DeLeo, cofounder of MA! Design is Human, which produces the Atlanta Design Festival.
The city is growing, too with neighborhoods like Midtown and the Old Fourth Ward rapidly changing. Despite the city’s sprawling layout, the design community is tight-knit. “Everybody knows everybody,” says Leah Alexander, an interior designer who moved from Los Angeles to Atlanta four years ago and now frequently runs into other designers at the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center, with its 50 showrooms.
The city has no shortage of events, like the Atlanta Design Festival, which runs through September 30, virtually, this year, and show houses like Atlanta Magazine’s Home Modern Style Showhome, giving designers an opportunity to meet vendors, network, and socialize. “It’s a massive party and it's really fun,” Alexander says.
Philadelphia
For years, Dominique Calhoun wished Philadelphia had a showroom like High Point Market in North Carolina. So in July 2019, she opened Remix Living in the Frankford neighborhood in north Philadelphia. “People are definitely taking it as something different and something that they didn't expect,” says Calhoun, a Philadelphia native who started her own interior design business in 2016.
The showroom is in the Globe Dye Works building, a former factory that now houses arts businesses including a papermaker, framer, metalworker, and potter.
“Philly has its own vibe,” says designer Nile Johnson. “You can't even figure out what it is, because if I could I would bottle it and sell it.”
Neighborhoods like Fishtown and Kensington have been attracting young professionals, many of them priced out of New York and Washington, D.C. Buyers can choose from new luxury towers as well as Revolutionary War–era row houses.
The city’s low cost of living has another benefit: It draws and maintains local craftspeople and artists. “I definitely see the specialty business growing in this area,” says Calhoun. The Philadelphia Design District, for example, is an eclectic mix of galleries and design showrooms in Center City. And every October, the Center for Architecture and Design hosts the 10-day DesignPhiladelphia festival to showcase the city’s talents.
Nashville
Even in the middle of the pandemic, Music City keeps growing. In August, a luxury hotel, the Joseph, opened in the SoBro neighborhood, along with two new restaurants. Ranked as the top city for job seekers in 2020 by the personal finance website Moneygeek, Nashville regularly lands on the U.S. News and World Report list of best places to live.
“Nashville has really taken off,” says designer Amhad Freeman. “It will be a force to be reckoned with in a couple of years.”
Designers like Laura Thurman, a transplant from Los Angeles, attract clients (mostly newcomers from larger cities like New York, Chicago and Atlanta) who are not interested in the “country, farmhouse, shabby chic” look that’s long been popular in the area, she says. “Their expectation of design is elevated.”
Nashville is still a long way from established design centers like Los Angeles. “I wish we had a proper design center like the Blue Whale,” Thurman says, referring to the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.
But the city is catching up to the new demands. In January, the Nashville Design Collective opened in WeHo, with space for 15 showrooms. The collective shut down during the pandemic, but is now reopening again. “There has been a huge surge in population growth and there has never been a destination for design sourcing,” says Anne Puricelli, a co-owner of the collective. But as the collective grows, Puricelli hopes she will be able to fill that void.
Phoenix
Phoenix is the fastest-growing city in the United States, with newcomers drawn to affordable home prices, open space, and well-paying jobs. The growth has translated to a boon for the design industry. In June, Phoenix designers on the website Houzz saw a 92% jump in requests for new projects from the same time period a year ago, the second-largest uptick in requests for any city in the country.
“Design in Phoenix has really exploded,” says Inga L. Rehmann, the interior design director at Oz Architects in Scottsdale. “There are so many more available resources for you as a homeowner and as a designer too.”
Events like Modern Phoenix and attention from celebrity designers like Queer Eye’s Bobby Berk, who recently designed the interiors for model homes at the base of South Mountain, are helping to usher in a Phoenix style.
Charles Pavarini III, who has an office in Paradise Valley, says the area is evolving a distinct style, moving away from generic Southwestern themes and gravitating towards ones defined by the landscape. “It’s very clean lines, low walls of glass to take advantage of the geography of the area,” says Pavarini, who was born in Manhattan but raised in Arizona. “The area is known for its sunsets.” And new homeowners want spaces designed to celebrate the place where they chose to live.
