This year’s first-time additions to the 1stDibs 50 are a globe-trotting and stylistically wide-ranging group, with studios taking on projects everywhere from Lake Tahoe and Tampa to Riyadh, São Paulo and the Tyrolean Alps.
Although their approaches differ — some architectural, some atmospheric, some pattern-driven — they have in common a dedication to creating interiors that are both livable and transportive.
Here, each of the 12 debuting designers offers a glimpse into the inspirations and ambitions guiding their practices in general and their 1stDibs 50 spaces in particular.
Catherine Kwong Design
In a Lake Tahoe breakfast nook, Catherine Kwong paired 1970s oak Razorblade chairs by Henning Kjærnulf with a sculptural elm pedestal table, bringing a Scandi sensibility into the Sierra Nevadas setting without slipping into cliché.
“So much of the ‘mountain design’ of the past was dark and heavy. But when you’re out in Tahoe, or Aspen, or Park City, it’s all crisp air and bright skies,” Kwong says. “I wanted to capture that airiness here.”
As for what she’d most want to work on next: “It would be incredible to bring a more bespoke approach to one of San Francisco’s public libraries,” she says. “To design a beautiful, light-filled space for work, study and community events.”
Ashley Lavonne
Los Angeles designer Ashley Lavonne conceived this Hancock Park family room as a space where children can play by day and grownups gather in the evening. “Lavender walls and a camel rug were initial design decisions to create a base layer of warmth,” she says. A figurative canvas by Tiffany Alfonseca jolts the room to life.
Vintage armchairs by Fritz Hansen and Gunnar Göperts join a custom multi-pattern sofa to form what Lavonne Walker calls “a highly personalized space that is both spirited and welcoming.” Asked what she would most like to build, she echoes Frank Lloyd Wright: “My dream project is ‘the next one.’ ”
Bespoke Only
Melissa Lee, founder of Bespoke Only, is known for honing interiors through subtle shifts in tone and pattern. In this living room in Accord, New York, vintage furnishings, including Gio Ponti nesting stools and a 1930s Jindřich Halabala pouf, look at home with the historic architecture.
As for the colors, Lee says, “The soft greens and grounded palette echo the Hudson Valley just beyond the windows, while the pattern language references William Morris’s illustrations, where nature is translated into something more composed and enduring.”
Lee names Robert Kime as a hero of hers for creating interiors that were “unpretentious and deeply comfortable even when designed for royalty.”
Studio Santos
Miami-based Gregory Santos takes a relaxed yet refined approach to working with mid-century Brazilian pieces. Set within a multigenerational house outside São Paulo, this living room features travertine floors and plaster walls that serve as a restrained container for white-upholstered icons by Jorge Zalszupin and Lina Bo Bardi, a sleek steel fireplace and paintings from the homeowners’ collection of Brazilian art.
As inspiration, Santos says he channeled “Brazil in the 1950s and Alain Delon.” And while he excels at working on the human scale, his ambitions are sky-high: His dream project would be “a skyscraper, designed top to bottom, with a consistent design language throughout.”
Waldo Studio
Tom Bartlett, coprincipal with Sasha von Meister of Waldo Studio, demonstrated his keen eye for interesting convergences in a grand house in the Austrian Tyrols. The library incorporates pan-European arts and crafts traditions through pieces like the towering hand-built bookcases and Emma Olbers’s Bibliotek rug, designed for Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum.
Unexpected juxtapositions keep the vibe from being overly reverential. Chandeliers by Philippe Malouin, including a custom fixture above the billiards table, fit well with the soaring scale, while the pairing of prehistoric great elk antlers with a work by Frank Stella creates what Bartlett calls “a combination we never thought we would see.”
For Bartlett, design is ultimately about “imagining how best to make a client’s life as beautiful, individual and seamless as possible.”
Nickey Kehoe
Todd Nickey and Amy Kehoe, of Nickey Kehoe, approach interiors with equal parts affability and sophistication, a balance embodied in this multipurpose space in a shingle-style house overlooking the Pacific in Santa Monica Canyon.
The designers lined the room, originally finished in drywall, with cerused-wood paneling to temper the brightness of the Southern California light and create what Kehoe calls “a richer, warmer library feel.” Twin oversize George Smith Jules sofas are drawn close together for conversation, accompanied by a late-Victorian brass-and-walnut lamp and a wood-and-bronze Holzstern chandelier by Kalmar.
“The endless inspiration from makers throughout history and those carrying the torch forward is what excites me most about design,” Kehoe says. “I love rediscovering the old through travel and books and falling in love with new creators.”
OITOEMPONTO Architecture & Interiors
Artur Miranda and Jacques Bec, cofounders of Portuguese firm OITOEMPONTO Architecture & Interiors, relished the challenge of combining “large proportions and profusion of fine details” in a reception pavilion and pool house they designed in Riyadh.
Nestled in a lush palm grove in a wadi, the space brings together green-suede Joe Colombo Elda chairs and a floating Harvey Probber sofa with a T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings mahogany coffee table whose brass legs echo the gleaming library ladder. Nearby is a Marzio Cecchi wicker-and-glass table used for card games, while triangular Guy Bareff sconces punctuate the paneled walls.
The result expresses “a Middle East lifestyle with a European twist,” say the designers, who dream of one day creating “a jet plane, from scratch!”
Billy Cotton
A giltwood mirror from James Worrall reflects a Christopher Butterworth chandelier in the study of a Brooklyn townhouse designed by Billy Cotton. Nearly every fixed surface, save the hardwood floor, is covered in a deep-green lacquer. A bronze Valenti floor lamp and Victorian chairs in Loro Piana leather round out the room.
The mix of periods exemplifies Cotton’s preference for immersive, multidimensional interiors over staged, all-contemporary compositions. “I don’t ever want my projects to feel like showrooms,” he says. “When I meet with a client, I’m trying to derive what brings them joy.”
Hannah Ozburn Interiors
Charlotte-based Hannah Ozburn has earned a reputation for bravely mingling patterns without tipping into excess. That skill shines forth in a sun-drenched den where florals and flame-stitch fabrics animate the decor. “There is not one solid fabric in this room,” she notes, “but yet it does not feel overwhelming.”
The scheme began with the client’s inherited artwork and was extended to conversational groupings that include curved-back club chairs, slipper chairs, a Moroccan painted star table and 1980s-style cocktail tables. Even the gun closets participate in the dance of patterns, lined in Pierre Frey chevron fabric, “which is just over the top in the best way possible,” says Ozburn, who cites maximalist maven Summer Thornton as a current design-world favorite of hers.
Melanie Turner Interiors
Melanie Turner embraced a moody atmosphere and jewel tones in this bar in a Queen Anne–style house she revamped in Tampa. The walls and ceiling dissolve into a midnight-blue mural, painted by Bethany Travis, depicting a tall tree canopy and puffy clouds.
Munna stools covered in a floral velvet gather at a honed-eucalyptus and Calacatta Viola–marble bar. The lounge ambience continues with plush armchairs by Oly Studio and Douglass Workroom sitting around a metallic Arteriors bistro table.
“Especially surprising is how a mix of seemingly busy patterns adds interest and layer without feeling overwhelming,” Turner says. She cites John Saladino as a lasting influence: “His work feels timeless and deeply personal — there’s a restraint and quiet elegance to it that I’ve always admired.”
Gramercy Design
A bedroom by Gramercy Design in an Upper East Side pied-à-terre leans into sumptuousness with a custom bed sporting an arcing velvet headboard and built-in nightstands and reading lights, not to mention the lacquered walls.
A Stéphane Parmentier for Giobagnara Orion chandelier is suspended overhead, and a playful Luigi Massoni for Poltrona Frau Dilly Dally vanity brings compact whimsy to one corner.
Led by Kyle O’Donnell, the New York firm is known for crafting emotion-centered interiors. “I find clients are asking me more and more to create a mood or a vibe rather than a style,” O’Donnell says. “We talk about how they want to feel in the space, and then I work backward from that.”
LC Studio
For a pool house in Rye, New York, LC Studio’s Lance Scott and Cecily Waud conceived a great room that opens and closes to the elements. The palette takes its cues from the soft-blue shutters on the property’s 1920s Spanish Revival main house. “The vision here was to create a new indoor-outdoor entertaining space for year-round use,” Scott says. “The doors slide completely away to allow an open-air feel.”
Cardinal-hat pendant lights by Lutyens Furniture and Lightning hover like mini flying saucers above a sectional sofa upholstered in light-blue chenille. Reinforcing the space’s playful, collected spirit are a custom resin cocktail table by Atta Inc, an Anat Schiften ceramic floral centerpiece and a Carlos Otero lamp, the last two from Hostler Burrows.
Underfoot, zellige tiles in aqueous hues form a pattern “inspired by the floor in the living room at the Rothschilds’ Château Mouton,” Scott says, adding that “Renzo Mongiardino’s and Peter Marino’s residential work” have influenced him overall.
