March 8, 2026If there were an award for most meteoric rise in interior design, Minneapolis-based Anne McDonald would, at the very least, be on the short list. Seven years ago, she was a stay-at-home mom to two young sons, with experience selecting fixtures and fittings for her dad, a new-home builder, when a friend embarking on a house renovation asked for help choosing paint colors and tile.
Shortly after, another friend solicited her assistance tweaking a 1960s rambler. When that home was published in a local shelter magazine, “I thought I had reached the pinnacle,” McDonald recalls.
Then, Elle Decor featured the first design project she undertook from end to end: a Scandinavian-inspired house on Minnesota’s Sunfish Lake. The recognition, says McDonald, came “as a shock.”
She insists she didn’t mean to start her own business. But now, only a few years later, she is running a busy four-person studio out of a historic redbrick warehouse in Minneapolis’s hip North Loop. The firm has more than a dozen completed projects in its portfolio, including Victorians, Colonial Revivals, Craftsman bungalows and other vernacular styles for which the Twin Cities are known.
McDonald also didn’t imagine that her growing practice would attract the notice of more national media, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Adding to the acclaim, Architectural Digest named McDonald to its New American Voices list in 2024, and that same year, Introspective featured her glamorous revamping of a redbrick Victorian manse in St. Paul.
The secret to her success? “I try to infuse every project with the same ethos — warmth and a sense of groundedness — and I always tie the house back to its neighborhood and a sense of place,” says McDonald, who imbues her soulful interiors with luscious color, kitting them out with impeccably chosen, largely vintage furnishings.
A case in point is this once-dour 1920s Minneapolis Mediterranean Revival house, which she recently made “soft and sweet” for an all-female household comprising a recent divorcée and her two teenage daughters.
McDonald filled the home with a freewheeling array of finds ranging in style and period from antiquity to Postmodernism.
“She had just bought this house and wanted to make it hers. It was a freedom thing,” McDonald says of her client and friend, fashion designer Michelle LeBlanc, founder of the boutique women’s wear brand Mille. “She was thinking of L.A.’s iconic Sunset Tower Hotel, a nineteen-twenties Art Deco–meets–Old Hollywood vibe — feminine, opulent and playful.”
The two-story home, on a petite lot, has all the characteristics of a classic Mediterranean: a stucco-clad exterior, red-tile roof, metal-framed windows and thick plaster walls with wide arched openings between rooms.
“The guts of it were gorgeous, but it wasn’t sexy,” McDonald says. “It had a dark-stained-wood kitchen with a huge awkward island. It needed cosmetic upgrades and lighting and a proper primary suite.”
That suite proved the architectural heavy lift. McDonald designed a new wing, attached to the back of the house, with a bedroom, bath and walk-in closet. She linked the addition stylistically to the original structure with Venetian plaster walls and classic Mediterranean rope-style moldings.
Architecture sorted, McDonald played up “the drama, softness and femininity” in the bedroom with a sculptural velvet-upholstered headboard from George Smith, a vintage Danish Banana sofa covered in gold damask and a carpet of blush-colored silk. She did the same in the sybaritic pink and aubergine bath, hanging swagged drapes as an enclosure for a marble tub with outrageously bold veining.
Nearly all the furnishings are vintage, with the exception of some of the upholstered pieces. The living room’s inviting seating includes a skirted corduroy Nickey Kehoe sofa, a mohair-covered daybed and a pair of floral-covered channel-back George Smith armchairs. Vintage enters the mix in the form of a standing screen with appliquéd Gucci wallpaper, a petite 1970s Italian bar and a French bronze neoclassical table sourced from 1stDibs. Underneath is an extremely shaggy, camel-colored rug that spans the entire room.
Throughout the house, items tend to be draped, tasseled or skirted, including the dining room’s Jugendstil brass-and-silk chandelier by Adolf Loos, which McDonald found on 1stDibs and mounted above a round stone table encircled by chrome-legged mid-century modern chairs.
The guest bedroom has a fairy tale ambience, with panoramic enchanted-forest wallpaper from La Maison Pierre Frey, a lush golden bedspread and pink swagged drapes over arched windows
The house’s feminine vibe continues in the kitchen. Once-gloomy cabinetry now glows pale pink, and dark countertops have been replaced with Calacatta Rose Noir marble. A dainty pink-painted custom island of McDonald’s own design occupies center stage, with a seafoam-colored Murano-glass chandelier dangling above. Two vintage wood pieces serve in lieu of additional millwork: a tall Art Nouveau cabinet for the display of pottery and glassware and a French buffet used as a bar, above which hangs a 1970s Italian mirror discovered on 1stDibs.
McDonald took a light-hearted approach to the front yard, which accommodates outdoor lounging and dining. A vintage European dining set of curlicued wrought iron is accompanied by skirted chairs, while generously sized tufted seating in graphic black and white beckons beneath a jaunty green-and-white striped umbrella.
One thing that’s clear from McDonald’s body of work is that she’s found her metier. “Even when I wasn’t doing design, I was thinking about how people settle and what makes them feel safe and seen,” McDonald says. “My path has been scattered, but the stars are aligning now. I absolutely love what I do.”
