PATTERN PLAY?   People are often worried that pattern play—that is, combinations of patterns in a single room or within a single sightline—will appear busy or clash. And it’s true: There is a right way and a wrong right to mix patterns in a room. Some patterns just don’t belong together. But a good interior designer knows how to mix stripes and florals and tartans and paisleys (for example) to achieve a cohesive, smart, personalized look. As designers, we consider scale and color, application and balance, to make patterns play well together. (See what we did there?) The result is often tr ..read more

As you embark on the enormous and exciting task of creating a custom home you love, you need three key players on your team: an interior designer, an architect, and a home builder. Interwoven in their mission but distinct in their roles, these three professionals are the people who take all the inputs you offer—from photos and descriptions of spaces you love to details about how you live and what you want from your home—and create a place tailored to you. Here’s how they do it: 1. ARCHITECT The architect, in consult with the interior designer, sites the home on the property and draws its space ..read more

You’ve hired a brilliant builder for your custom home project, and you’re thrilled: The firm’s portfolio is full of luxury homes that each reflect a different design sensibility, but all have exquisite details and a bespoke feel. Yes, your builder executed much of those details—and it’s likely (very likely) that an interior designer dreamed up the human-centric function and beauty of the spaces you love. You can think of a designer, a builder, and an architect as the trifecta of beautiful homes. At the heart of a designer’s job is understanding how a space influences the people who occupy it ..read more

WE OFTEN SAY IT BECAUSE IT’S TRUE: No textbook can immerse us in history and art like travel can. Travel saturates our senses and invigorates our minds and imaginations—as Duet principal Devon Tobin experienced this fall when she traveled to France with her family. Europe reminds many design professionals of the long, deep history of architecture and interior design. Perhaps the finest example is Paris’s famed Louvre Museum, which offers the richness of millennia of art history in the 15th-century former royal residence. “I stood in the middle of room after room in the Louvre and looked up and ..read more

Even if you’re a casual interior-design enthusiast, you’re probably familiar with the idea that powder baths are an area of the home where designers and homeowners often go for the boldest, quirkiest, or edgiest décor elements: the funky wallpaper, the statement mirror, the gorgeous jewel-toned paint, the art-like light fixture. Because the powder bath is necessarily self-contained, it can be its own little expression of the homeowners’ personalities without having to accommodate a lot of visual alignment with other rooms in the house. Here at Duet, we’re now seeing homeowners embrac ..read more

Nothing says, “We’re so glad you came to visit!” like a guest room that looks and feels inviting. Maybe you’ve never dreamed of running a B&B, but you can aim for that residential hotel-room aesthetic—a combination of pulled-together loveliness and cozy touches that make it easy for your guests to relax. Duet principal and founder Devon Tobin is a genius when it comes to fluffing up her guest room so that visitors know she thought of them well before they showed up. Here’s how she does it: 1. Pay attention to the furnishings. Don’t let your guest room become the “stop and drop” spot for di ..read more

Call it curiosity. Call it voyeurism. Call it fun: We just love to see how our fellow interior designers create spaces for themselves, when they have free reign to make a home or office their very own. If you too enjoy seeing the choices designers make when they’re the clients, we’re pleased to give you a peek at five great design moves we put to work at Duet’s new office: 1. Mix it up. We married pieces from different design eras—Art Deco here, midcentury there, a few Old World antiques thrown in—which is the key to giving spaces (yes, even offices!) visual interest. A variety of lines in the ..read more

We are delighted to announce a partnership with Warren Village, a Colorado nonprofit that serves unhoused and unstably housed low-income, single-parent families with a holistic approach to transforming lives. The organization provides affordable, transitional, private housing; parent services and advocacy, such as life-skills coaching, parenting classes, and financial counseling; and early education and child care and social-emotional support services though its Learning Center. Duet’s team–both from Duet Design Group and Duet Build–began our work in the Learning Center by unpacking enormous s ..read more

You start your day knowing that you’ve chosen a career in which you can’t plan for everything that will pop up. You probably like that, if you’ve been a designer for a while, even though you’re also likely Type A. Most of us are. You greet your team, check your email—all the usual things. Your first appointment is a Zoom call, a pre-programming conversation with prospective new clients. They’re eager to get to know you, and you’re eager to get to know them, too. Designing someone’s home is such a personal endeavor that you must have a natural connection with your clients. Designers end up work ..read more

When our principal Devon Tobin first started designing—about 15 years ago—the trend in luxury kitchen design was to orient the space around The Hood. You know the look: The kitchen hood was such a visual anchor with its steely, boxy existence that designers had to figure out how to balance the room with the other large-scale appliances. But over the last few years, we’ve seen a movement away from the hood as the central focal point in the kitchen. More recently, we’ve been working with architects to integrate the hood the same way we integrate appliances into the cabinet walls. The driving que ..read more