How to Decorate

Ili Hidalgo, architect, interior designer, and co-founder of the Atlanta-based firm Terra Cotta Design Build, joins the podcast to demystify the often intimidating intersection of architecture, interior design, and construction. She explains how keeping all three disciplines under one roof allows her team to row in the same direction, ensuring that beautiful designs are actually buildable and stay aligned with realistic budgets.

The Design-Build Advantage: When the architect, designer, and contractor are on the same team, every design line drawn is tied to a specific construction cost, preventing runaway budgets. Ili stresses that clients must be completely honest about their budgets upfront so the team does not accidentally over- or under-deliver on the initial design.

Hidden Construction Costs: Clients are often surprised by the overhead expenses required before the "pretty" things are even ordered. A significant portion of a budget goes to demolition labor, dumpster dumping fees, site containment (to prevent mud runoff fines), and tree removal or recompense funds.

Renovation vs. New Construction: Renovations can sometimes be more expensive than starting from scratch because the labor involves both undoing and redoing. A good architect will evaluate zoning requirements, future floodplains, and your home's equity before finalizing whether to renovate or build new.

Where to Splurge: Always invest in the hidden systems of the house (plumbing and electrical) and in architecture that respects the neighborhood's fabric. For interiors, splurge on high-quality furniture frames that can be endlessly slipcovered or reupholstered over the years.

The Invisible Magic of Circulation: The unsung hero of a great home is how you move through it. Logical room adjacencies, sensible sightlines, and practical switch and plug placements (like hidden appliance garages in the kitchen) make a home inherently comfortable without you ever noticing why.

Exterior Colors: Moving away from the trendy white brick with black mullions, Ili favors deep, moody jewel tones for exteriors—like a rich teal she recently used on a Victorian home in Candler Park, or dark greens and charcoal grays.

Surviving Construction: Because supply chain delays are a reality, Terra Cotta utilizes a 5,000-square-foot warehouse to order and hold materials before demolition begins. They are also building a new studio in Decatur that will feature rooftop apartments specifically for clients to live in during the most intrusive phases of their home renovations.

You can keep up with Ili's upcoming projects—including a new resort community in North Georgia—on Instagram at @terracottadesignbuild and at terracottadesignbuild.com.

If you had to choose between a moody charcoal gray or a deep jewel tone for the exterior of your home, which would you lean toward?
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The How to Decorate podcast celebrates its 10th anniversary and nearly 500 episodes of design advice, interviews, and decorating dilemmas. Hosts Caroline, Taryn, and Liz reflect on their favorite conversations, the evolution of design trends over the last decade, and the most memorable lessons learned from top industry professionals.

Memorable Design Lessons

Bunny Williams highlighted that successful design relies more on technical scale and function than aesthetic budget, offering advice that applies to any home.

Melanie Turner shared her practice of creating annual vision boards to map out her business and personal goals, resulting in an incredible home and career.

Architects like Gil Schafer and Stan Dixon changed the hosts' perspectives on how architectural scale directly dictates the feeling of a room before furniture is even added.

Kathy Graham provided approachable, humorous tips for floral arranging, encouraging hosts to mix in unexpected objects like a Barbie doll for fun.

Decorating Dilemma Themes

Common listener challenges include managing double-story entryways, executing window treatments, and blending different styles in a marriage.

Solutions frequently center on nailing the proper scale, understanding design rules before breaking them, and introducing softness through rugs and drapery.

A Decade of Trends

While stark black and white aesthetics dominated a decade ago, the design world is currently shifting toward warm hues, rich textures, and brown as the new neutral.

True timelessness is less about chasing specific colors and more about curating a space that functions perfectly for your specific lifestyle.

What was the most significant change you made to your own home's design over the past ten years?
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Alton LaDay and Olivia Westbrooks join the podcast to discuss Alton’s new book, In the House: Celebrating America's Leading Black Interior Designers. The book profiles 33 of America's most talented black interior designers, tracing both contemporary talent and historical pioneers. Alton, a veteran marketing director and PR firm owner, was inspired to write the book during the 2020 lockdown to highlight positive success stories within the design community. Olivia, an interior designer and host of Hallmark’s Home is Where the Heart Is, is one of the featured designers in the book.

Key Takeaways from the Episode:

Focusing on the Individual: When selecting the 33 designers, Alton required them to have nationally published work but prioritized their personalities and personal stories. To emphasize the people behind the designs, every designer in the book receives a full-page headshot.

A Vast Array of Styles: The designers in the book are intentionally not listed alphabetically. This layout mixes up the design styles—from traditional to modern, neutral to colorful—to keep the reader engaged and demonstrate that black designers are not a monolith.

Unconventional Paths to Design: Many of the featured designers discovered interior design as a second career, transitioning from corporate roles or law. One designer was a highly successful attorney on track to become a partner before leaving to go back to design school.

Finding Inspiration Early: Olivia discovered her passion for design as a child by watching Christopher Lowell on the Discovery Channel in the 1990s. Her mother enrolled her in a weekend intensive program at the Art Institute of Houston, eventually leading Olivia to earn a degree in interior design from LSU.

Historical Pioneers: The book also touches on the history of black designers, such as Harold Curtis Brown. Brown is considered the first documented black interior designer, known for his work on the Saratoga Club and Hotel Navarro in the early 20th century, though it is believed he later had to pass as white to continue his career in the 1930s.

Inspiring Future Generations: Olivia notes that the book serves as a vital historical record and a tool to show future generations what is possible. By showcasing such diverse talent, the book keeps the door open for aspiring designers and normalizes the presence of black designers in top national publications and show houses.

Personal Triumphs: Alton shares the inspiring story of Tiffany Brooks, a featured designer who has balanced a highly successful career with severe health challenges, including a kidney and pancreas transplant after being diagnosed with diabetes at age six.

Also Mentioned in This Episode:

In the House: Celebrating America's Leading Black Interior Designers is available at major outlets and Phaidon.com.

Follow Olivia Westbrooks on Instagram at @oliviawestbrooksinteriors or visit oliviawestbrooks.com.

Watch Olivia on Hallmark Plus's Home is Where the Heart Is.

See Olivia's living room project on the Ballard Designs House Tour series on YouTube.

Please send in your decorating dilemmas to podcast@ballarddesigns.net so we can help you with your space! Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.
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Samuel Cochran, Global Features Director at Architectural Digest, joins the podcast to discuss his book, American Designers at Home. The book offers an intimate look inside the personal residences of 20 influential American interior designers, including Kelly Wearstler and Ken Fulk. Cochran explores how these professionals use their own homes as spaces to experiment and recharge, free from client demands, rigid timelines, and external expectations.

Specificity of Place: Rather than relying on red, white, and blue clichés, Cochran noted that modern American design is often defined by a deep connection to local architectural history and the surrounding environment.

The Freedom to Experiment: A shared American design ethos is the freedom to pull references from anywhere, honoring the past while maintaining the irreverence to break the rules, mix styles, and live with what you love.

Embracing the Journey: Many of the featured homes were born from transitional life moments and evolved slowly over years, proving that even for top designers, a home is a process of trial and error rather than a polished overnight success.

Ken Fulk (Provincetown, MA): Known for his polished, maximalist client projects, Fulk's personal waterfront home is a crumbling, weathered refuge where he preserves the historic house's peeling wallpaper and patina.

Roman and Williams (Montauk, NY): Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch’s home reveals a wild, time-worn connection to nature that contrasts sharply with the slick, romantic commercial spaces they are known for designing.

Jessica Helgerson (Paris): Helgerson embraced thrift and creativity in her small Paris apartment, hand-stenciling a bedroom mural and mimicking the building's basement millwork cutouts for her green kitchen cabinets.

Jean Liu (New York, NY): The Dallas-based designer created a quiet personal escape in a grand uptown Manhattan studio, utilizing the extra-thick walls of Joseph Pulitzer’s former Gilded Age mansion to create an acoustic refuge.

Markham Roberts: A masterclass in mixing styles, Roberts’s home is an eclectic, effortless mishmash that proves you have to truly know the rules of design history before you can successfully break them.

Cochran hopes readers walk away from the book remembering Dorothy Draper's philosophy that decorating should fundamentally be fun. You can follow him on Instagram at @samuelcochran and find American Designers at Home anywhere books are sold.

If you had the freedom to completely ignore timelines and expectations, which room in your home would you experiment with first?
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Elizabeth Lawrence, partner at the interior design firm Williams Lawrence, joins the podcast to discuss her first book, Decoration, co-authored with her partner Bunny Williams. The book functions as a collection of essays that groups rooms by stylistic similarities rather than presenting individual projects, drawing inspiration from vintage French design books. To encourage readers to slow down and step away from screens, the physical book features a photo-free, linen-textured cover and pages that alternate between matte cardstock and gloss finishes.

Rules of Scale and Floor Plans: While Lawrence believes most interior design rules can be broken, scale and a solid floor plan are the two non-negotiable exceptions. A strong floor plan serves as a roadmap that dictates the proper scale of the room's pieces, allowing you to confidently mix heavily carved antiques with clean, modern lines.

Shopping for Antiques: When out shopping, it is best to take a photo or a tear sheet of an item you love, even if it does not fit your current project, because you will likely find a place for it in the future.

Approaching Art: Art should be chosen for its personal meaning rather than simply to match a room's color palette. Artwork must be placed thoughtfully based on scale and medium, such as keeping delicate works on paper out of brightly lit spaces. Additionally, swapping out a heavy or dark frame for something simpler can completely transform a piece you thought you disliked.

Wall Brackets: Adding wall brackets to a gallery wall provides three-dimensional interest and breaks up the flatness of frames. Brackets can hold jars, plates, or sculptures, and they often add grounding symmetry to an otherwise asymmetrical layout.

Slipper Chairs: Small slipper chairs are versatile pieces that transition easily from a first apartment to a forever home. They can be placed in bedrooms for stacking books, covered in terry cloth for a bathroom, or used as supplemental seating in living rooms.

Chair and Ottoman Pairings: Pairing an upright chair with an ottoman creates a dedicated reading spot. This combination also provides a practical alternative seating option for guests who might struggle to get out of a deep sofa.

Hurricanes: A signature of Bunny Williams and John Rosselli, large hurricanes add necessary height and scale to coffee tables and dining tables. They also provide atmospheric candlelight, which can easily be achieved with modern remote-controlled, battery-operated candles.

Dining Chair Details: Because the outside back of a dining chair is the first thing you see when entering a room, Lawrence recommends embellishing it with custom embroidery, a ticking stripe, or a small check pattern.

Celebrating Artisans: Decoration features photography highlighting the chaotic, dusty workspaces of the craftspeople, painters, and upholsterers who make the designs possible. Lawrence notes that clear communication and pushing for custom samples lead to the best collaborations, citing one instance where a trusted artisan seamlessly reconstructed a three-foot lacquered jar that had shattered on a limestone floor.

You can purchase Decoration by Bunny Williams and Elizabeth Lawrence on Amazon via Rizzoli, and you can keep up with Lawrence's work on Instagram at @elizabethmlawrence and @williamslawrence.

What is one unusual antique or piece of art you have kept an eye on, even if you do not currently have the perfect spot for it?
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