No Regrets About Her Path to Design
By Lindsay Field Penticuff
It’s been a decade since Paloma Contreras “hung up her shingle” as Director of Marketing at Visual Comfort and started her own design firm—Paloma Contreras Design.
But her professional journey didn’t exactly begin within the interior design industry, even though she recalls being drawn to beautiful things and having an appreciation for design from a very young age.
“I just didn’t know that [interior design] was or that it could be a career,” Contreras admits. “My first career was actually as a high school Spanish teacher, and it was in that career that I realized I was feeling really creatively stifled and I wanted to pursue something else that would heed my creative soul.”
So around 2007, when Contreras’ teaching career was winding down and she was trying to find something to do that would feed her creativity professionally, she started an online blog—La Dolce Vita—and it sort of became her entre into the design universe. She “retired” the blog last year after 15 years.
“I became completely passionate about design and sought out as much information and knowledge as I could,” she says.
Contreras landed a job working as Director of Marketing for Visual Comfort, the lighting manufacturer, and helped launch their Aerin Collection.
After a few years with Visual Comfort, however, she still had a passion for designing for clients, so she took a leap of faith and founded Paloma Contreras Design, which is headquartered in Houston, Texas. This year marks her 10th year running the design firm.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Contreras recently and wanted to share it with you, our members. She tells us more about what inspires her, advice she has for anyone looking to change careers like she did and the process her team follows when working with a client. Enjoy!
Were you nervous or scared about changing careers?
“I was very excited to pursue my passion. I was also really scared, because I didn’t have a formal background or education in design and I was taking this really big leap. … But because of my blog, I had developed a lot of close relationships with people who had become mentors to me and who had been designing for much longer.”
Do you have any regrets about not pursuing a career in interior design earlier?
“I have no regrets about my path. I just wish I had realized earlier in my life where I was meant to be, because I absolutely would have pursued a designed education and would have absolutely gone to work for other people.”
Has travel enriched your design aesthetic?
“Absolutely! I have not been traveling as much as I once did, but travel feeds my soul in a way that few other things can. I think it’s really important to get out of our day-to-day routine and see different things. Traveling teaches you to see. It also teaches you about different architectural influences, different materials and different details, so for me, it’s always a super enriching experience.”
What’s your favorite place to visit?
“One place that’s been super pivotal and formative in my own work and my own experience as a designer is France, specifically Paris. The art center there and history there, all of those things—that’s where I learned to love antiques. It’s had a huge influence.”
What is your process for designing for a client? Is it a similar formula?
“We start with our onboarding process. There’s usually a discovery meeting, in which we like to meet in our office. It isn’t always possible because a lot of our projects are in other cities, but it’s amazing to be able to have a client come to our studio, meet with the team, walk through our design process and the different phases, have an opportunity to look through our library and pull things at random that sort of resonate with them and that they love, which helps us understand their aesthetic a little bit.
“We have a pretty extensive client profile that we work on with the client in the very beginning as well to get to know them. From there, in terms of the design itself, we start with furniture plans and floor plans. We start building our color pallet and color schemes, putting together the mood and vibe. We’ll present that to the client before we move on into the full design presentation with all of the finishes and furnishings.”
What/Who are some of your most significant influences?
“There are so many things that influence a designer’s work, and for me, specifically, and as cliché as it sounds, travel was one of those big things. I also love to revisit some of my favorite books and the works of iconic designers in the past who have had a big influence on me—Billy Baldwin, Albert Hadley, Frances Elkins, David Adler. You go back to the greats of the past, because if something is going to be timeless, to be able to see how that materializes is really important and helpful as a modern-day designer. … Your peers are also your influences. We’re all spending time on Instagram and constantly scrolling, so you see things that are beautiful and inspiring, and sometimes you can find a way to use that fabric or make that detail your own.”
How do you go about breathing new life into traditional pieces?
“The biggest key is creating a sense of tension, and that’s what adds a bit of freshness to an otherwise very classic or traditional interior. You can have the most traditional upholstery silhouettes and have antiques in a space. You can bring in all these things that are classic and have been around for a long time, but it’s that juxtaposition or tension that I really think makes a room special and makes it seem fresh. Usually, I’ll do that through the addition of an interesting or more modern light fixture, or modern, more abstract art, an interesting textile and unexpected color pallet. Those are all ways of making the classics feel new.”
Tell us more about your new book. When will this be available?
“The title is The New Classic Home, a Modern Take on Traditional Interiors, and was published by Abrams in October. It’s essentially an extension of my first book, Dream, Design, Live, in which we take a deeper dive into the concept of bridging the gap between the seemingly more modern elements and those that are super classic to create a home that feels both timeless, but of the moment. We talk a lot about how to achieve that.”
What have been some of your most significant obstacles?
“A big challenge for me over the years as my firm has grown, has been saying ‘no.’ When you’re young and early on in your career, you say ‘yes’ to whatever comes your way because you need the work and the images for your portfolio. My nature, and for more women especially, is to want to please and help everyone. After working with a business coach, I’ve learned to be strict and say ‘no’ to things that are not an absolute fit for our firm.”
With regard to social media, how do you choose what to post and share?
“It’s still really organic for me. I’ve done my own social media forever. I’ve never hired anyone to do it on the design side. I post about what am I doing that week, what am I inspired by or whether there is a color pallet that’s on my mind. … Occasionally, I’ll do some cool reels after a photoshoot or install. I do share a little bit of my personal life about my family and my baby. I don’t separate them, because my life is all-encompassing.”
What is your dream project?
“I’d love to do a small boutique hotel somewhere really cool and interesting, and be able to bring to life a vision, lifestyle and vibe or personality to a brand. I think it would be sort of challenging in a different way that designing a home. A home is all about the experience, but it’s so personal. Being able to create a tangible expression of a brand, what they stand for, what their vision is and how that translates into an experience for the guest, I think would be super, super cool.”
What more would you like readers to know about you and/or the firm?
“I have a lighting collection with Visual Comfort that came out last spring (2022), and we have more designs debuting at High Point Market in April. That’s a different way for me to express my creativity, which is different than when you’re designing a home. It’s been really fun to work on product design.”
