Salt Lake City-based interior designer Susannah Holmberg designs thoughtful, unique spaces for all of her clients. While we were always fans of Susannah’s work, when we saw her use Hawkins New York products in this incredible Park City project, we needed to get the lowdown on how this beautiful, warm space came to life. But first, because we’re wonderful hosts, we wanted to know more about why Susannah moved to Salt Lake, how she approaches each of her projects, and whether or not she knows the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (Spoiler: she doesn’t, but she does know one of their hair stylists).
Introductions
With a BFA from Barnard College in NYC, and an MFA from MICA in Baltimore, Susannah’s education in Fine Arts is a major part of her design mindset. According to Susannah, “think[ing] of them as installations, to a certain extent,” gives her the sense of practicality in design that she was lacking before she started working with interiors. Now, she’s a veteran in the interior design industry, with 12+ years of experience tacked onto her Fine Arts schooling.
Susannah has lived in Salt Lake for over 10 years with her family, and no plans of returning to New York City.
“We had a baby and were gonna go back to New York. And then I was like, ‘that seems exhausting. Let's just go somewhere pretty.’ [We were] just, feeling like living somewhere pretty random, making that life change, and we've never looked back.”
With a stunning portfolio of work all around Utah, it’s difficult to single out just one project within (take a peak at these photos and you’ll understand). But at the heart of our conversation was her Jeremy Ranch project in Park City.
Heading to Jeremy Ranch
Designed for clients who wanted to have a space that was functional and aspirational at the same time, Susannah and her team infused this space with warmth and texture, featuring our Terra mugs (used for styling the space) and our Almost Shapes wallpaper.
Speaking of wallpaper, well… it wasn’t even an option for many designers until a few years ago. Today, every design magazine proudly front-paging articles like 23 Mesmerizing Wallpaper Rooms, but in the mid 2000s and early 2010s, wallpaper was still a design faux pas. We’re obviously celebrators of the fact that wallpaper has become stylish again — inspiring many DIY-ers and professionals to embrace the paper of it all — but for Susannah and her team, who purposefully ignore the trend cycle in their creations, wallpaper has always been a part of the conversation.
“We’ve been using it forever,” says Susannah. “There's so many cool options that are really nice textured color or textured neutral, or [with] a pattern. It's really just kind of another element. “
And this is where our Almost Shapes wallpaper comes in.
Hello, Hawkins
When designing this space, Susannah was confronted with the unique challenge of integrating her client’s glossy, black piano — that is, in fact, used by the homeowners’ children and not just for show — into the aesthetic of the rest of the home and the intended design. Like the piano itself, the resulting space surrounding the instrument is dynamic, yet timeless.
“We actually were looking at a few of your different wallpapers. And just kind of landed on this [Almost Shapes] one. I felt like there was a cool conversation between the [wallpaper] and the blue velvet couch [the client] ended up deciding on.”
“I would say that it was certainly a design challenge,” she remarks about the piano. “But, I think the wallpaper really made it. It was so necessary to make that space feel intentional throughout.”
While this project can certainly stand on its own, the photos of this home in Susannah’s portfolio must be given their time in the spotlight (and not just because it features one of our favorite HNY mugs).
“That [Terra] mug is actually mine,” she notes, laughing. “We didn't hire an outside stylist, I just did it with someone on my team who has a background in styling. Just kind of like, randomly throwing stuff in sometimes makes up a cool image. And I think [styling] is also where some of the visual art comes in.”
A master class in using wallpaper to rise to a design challenge, we highly recommend checking out the rest of Susannah Holmberg’s Jeremy Ranch project, as well as the rest of her work.
If you’re feeling inspired by the wallpaper renaissance, or, like Susannah and her design team, you never left wallpaper behind, peruse our Hawkins New York wallpaper collection. And, as always, keep us in the loop by tagging @hawkinsnewyork in any photos so we can “Ooo” and “Ahh” over what a great job you’ve done.
