Interior Design Excellence Award Recipient Caroline Gidiere

For Caroline Gidiere, the spark that led her from leaving a tenured career in law to becoming an interior designer actually started by watching a close friend who had lost her job with a large design company decide to go out on her own.

“She was going to ADAC and starting to get clients,” says Caroline, Owner of Caroline Gidiere Designer in Birmingham, Alabama. “I was able to see someone do that from the beginning.”

At about that same time, Caroline had just built her house, and friends and colleagues began asking her for help with choosing design aspects like paint colors or how to decorate for an entry hall in their homes.

“I have some good friends who I helped design the living room, dining room and entry hall, and I was just doing it for free and helping because I loved it,” adds Caroline.

She found herself spending more and more time doing something she really loved. But at the same time, this new passion was coupled with a very intense and difficult season at work. Her husband was traveling quite a bit for work, and she was trying legal cases all over the Southeast.

“It was just a horrible pressure cooker,” Caroline recalls. “But in the background, I had this passion.”

That’s when her husband pulled a fast one on her and applied for and got all of her business licenses completed for her. He placed the paperwork in a green folder and put it in a box under the Christmas tree that year.