https://www.facebook.com/1148011155341088/

G R A Y H A U S, Lake Oswego, OR (2026)

09/02/2026

You guys, I started a Substack a little while ago and then did a very me thing: I wrote the first essay, published it, and told almost no one about it... except bri_ussery, of course.

I think part of that was because sharing something a little more personal felt vulnerable. And part of it was the story I immediately attached to sharing it—that suddenly I needed to know what this was going to become. How often I would write. What I would write about. Whether I was now a person who had a Substack. 😉 I’m really trying not to do that.

I’ve always had a pretty deep interior life and a well of curiosity about people, relationships, creativity, growth, why we are the way we are, and what makes a life feel meaningful and true. I’m also someone who will happily skip the small talk and find myself three layers deep into a conversation with someone I met twenty minutes ago (hi! Kristie Carter).

A lot of those thoughts have mostly lived in my own head, in conversations with my sacred crew, or as part of my own personal journey. And lately I’ve felt a real pull to give some of them somewhere else to go.

That’s what drew me to Substack. A place to follow what’s on my heart and mind a little further. To get curious. To write about the things I’m working through, noticing, questioning or learning without needing all of it to fit neatly within the context of my work or into an Instagram caption.

I know home and design will find their way in because they’re such a big part of how I see the world. But so will creativity, relationships, motherhood, entrepreneurship, spirituality and whatever else I find myself wanting to understand more deeply.

I don’t really know exactly what it will become, and I’m trying to let that be the point. So I’m sharing it now, imperfectly and a little late.

There are two essays waiting there, including a new one about something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: the difference between a life that looks beautiful and one that actually feels beautiful to live.

Come find me there if you feel inclined. xx

08/20/2026

Some of the words a client used to describe working with us, lately. We didn’t write any of these. We just tried to listen closely enough to earn them.

Photo | Pablo Enriquez

08/17/2026

I’ve always been drawn to beauty.

Not because I think life should be perfect, but because I’ve noticed how it changes the way I move through the world.

Moments of sensory beauty, the warmth of sunlight filtering through the trees, the texture of a flower beneath our fingertips, the scent of the garden, can gently interrupt our brain’s fixation on stress and uncertainty.

Beauty calls our attention back to the present moment.

It doesn’t erase what’s difficult or solve our problems, but it reminds us to notice what’s here, too.

I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to creating beautiful homes.

Not because beauty is the goal. But because beauty helps us come back to ourselves. It invites us to slow down. To notice. To become present again.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never believed that beauty is superficial. I think it’s one of the quietest ways we care for ourselves.

And it’s the same thing I’m reaching for in every home I design. Not perfection. Just enough beauty, in the right places, to help someone come back to themselves the moment they walk through the door.

Photo | Kris LeBoeuf | 🇵🇭 Photographer

08/14/2026

I’ve been thinking lately about how every room in a home supports us differently.

A kitchen nourishes us. A dining room brings people together. A living room welcomes and invites us to linger.

And a primary bathroom... I think its greatest purpose is restoration.

It’s one of the few places in our day where we’re invited to slow down. To begin the morning with intention. To wash away the day before climbing into bed. To spend a few quiet moments with our own thoughts.

To me, luxury is creating a home that supports the rituals of everyday life.

Design | Grayhaus Interiors
Build | TAYLORSMITH
Photo | Pablo Enriquez
Styling | Kira Corbin

08/08/2026

Postcards from Maine.

I’ve been coming here almost my entire life, and somehow it still feels almost exactly the same. The familiar rhythm of a small town. The same lake, the same mountains, the same places we return to year after year.

There’s something deeply comforting about a place that barely changes while you do. And something particularly special about watching Poppy swim and play in the same lake I did when I was her age.

So much of what home means to me is wrapped up in this place — familiarity, memory, belonging, the feeling of returning to something that has always known you.

Even after all these years, Maine still feels so much like coming home.

07/24/2026

Theres something unexpectedly emotional about photographing your home. Not because it’s perfect, but because it asks you to pause long enough to really see the life you’ve been living.

For years, this house has quietly held us.

Quiet mornings with coffee.
Dinner parties with friends.
Poppy growing up.
Miles asleep in all his corners.
Quiet afternoons in the garden.
Ordinary Tuesdays.
And extraordinary moments of grief and gratitude.

This week, we simply documented it. I didn’t bring in trucks of furniture or fill every corner with borrowed pieces. Nearly everything you see has been collected slowly over time, inherited, discovered in antique shops, made by artisans whose work I admire, or simply lived with long enough to know it belonged.

Of course we steamed linens, arranged objects, and clipped roses from the garden. But the story itself was already here.

What surprised me most wasn’t seeing a beautiful house. It was realizing I was looking at an honest reflection of what matters most to me.

It gave form to what I value most—beauty, simplicity, belonging, craftsmanship, slowness, connection to nature, and a deep reference for home as a place that quietly holds our lives.

There are spaces that feel quiet and almost monastic. Others that feel warm and deeply lived in. There are worn edges, stacks of books, flowers from the garden, traces of Poppy, and spaces intentionally left empty because they don’t need to be filled.

That rhythm—the movement between stillness and life, simplicity and richness—is what makes this house feel like home.

As an interior designer, it’s easy to believe our work is about creating beautiful rooms. This week reminded me that what I really care about is something much deeper.

Helping people create homes that reflect what matters most to them.

Homes that don’t ask them to become someone different.

Homes that gently invite them back to who they’ve been all along.

🤎

07/17/2026

Before a home has walls or light or furniture, it has materials. The materials you choose will be touched every day. They will age alongside the people who live with them. They will either grow more beautiful with time or quietly diminish.

I always begin with natural materials. Stone, marble, linen, wood, plaster. Things that came from the earth and carry the memory of it. Nothing synthetic. Nothing that will look exactly the same in ten years as it does today.

From there it’s a conversation between light and dark, tone and texture, pattern that whispers rather than announces. Every selection has to earn its place in relation to the whole. Nothing is ever selected in isolation.

There are thousands of materials available at any given moment. Countless options at every price point, in every finish, from every corner of the world. The work is not in finding them. The work is in knowing which ones belong together, and which ones to leave behind.

Distilling all of that into a palette this quiet, this resolved, this calm. That is what discernment looks like for me.

Materials tell the story of a home before anyone has lived a single day in it.

Photo |

07/14/2026

This is one of my favorite kinds of spaces to design. Not the ones that photograph dramatically, but the ones that get used every single day.

This window seat at Southshore was designed around a single ritual. Our client starts every morning with a cup of tea and a she needed somewhere to be with it. Somewhere quiet, overlooking the trees, unhurried. There is a ledge built into the design specifically to set her cup on. You can’t see it in these photos, but she feels it every morning.

Details like this don’t come from a questionnaire. They come from conversation. From a client feeling comfortable enough to share the small, specific, seemingly insignificant things about how they actually live. I always tell clients at the beginning of a project: be as candid as you are comfortable. Because the more openly they share, the more deeply we can design.

This level of intimacy is what I work toward with every client. Creating the conditions where they feel safe enough to share the small true things about how they live.

Those are the details that change everything. Not the grand gestures. The small, true ones that say: someone really listened. Someone really knew me. Someone built a home around the way I actually live.

That is always what we are always working toward.

Design |
Architecture |
Build |
Photo |
Styling |

07/09/2026

Collaboration with our project partners is at the heart of everything we do.

When we receive drawings from an architect, we see it as the beginning of a conversation. Our role is to bring the interior perspective, asking how the plan can best reflect how our clients actually live, how they move through their home, what they need to feel most like themselves within it.

This guest suite at Southshore was one of those conversations.

The original plan had a standard closet on the wall adjacent to the window. Working through the space together, we saw an opportunity to do something more meaningful there. A built-in wardrobe. A window seat framing the Japanese maple just outside. A quiet, serene corner for guests to arrive into and feel held.

That shift freed up square footage on the other side of the wall in the guest bathroom. We were in a meeting with our clients, working through the logic of it, when someone said: what about a sauna?

It landed immediately. Our clients are deeply focused on their health and wellness so a sauna felt less like an addition and more like something the house had always been waiting to have.

I think I designed it in about an hour. Because when something is right it doesn’t resist.

This is why we stay open during the process. The best things in a home often arrive in the space between what was planned and what becomes possible.

A reminder to leave room for the inevitable.

Design //
Build //
Photo //
Styling //

07/08/2026

Reflecting on yesterday’s partial install for some longtime clients.

Beautiful homes aren’t built because every step is easy. They’re the result of hundreds of thoughtful decisions, quiet acts of care, and a team committed to seeing every detail through.

This project experienced an unusual number of product-related challenges along the way. Yet standing in the room yesterday, watching the afternoon light fill the space, I was reminded of something that is true of every project we take on:

Our job isn’t just to design beautiful homes. It’s to quietly carry as much of the process as we can so our clients don’t have to.

The work you see is the millwork, the furnishings, the flowers, and the collected details.

The work you don’t see is the conversations, decisions, vendor calls, problem-solving, and advocacy that happen behind the scenes so that, one day, a room simply feels effortless to live in.

Yesterday, our client told me how much she loved experiencing the evening light in the room for the first time.

That moment is why we do this.

Because getting to witness the moment a project stops feeling like a project…

…and starts feeling like home…

will never stop being my favorite part.

G R A Y H A U S

09/02/2026

08/20/2026

08/17/2026

08/14/2026

08/08/2026

07/24/2026

07/17/2026

07/14/2026

07/09/2026

07/08/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Hotel

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request