Chloe Redmond Warner is a joyful person. It comes through when you meet her. She lights up when she sees you and makes you feel like you’re the best part of her day. Her humor and enthusiasm shine in her writing, which you can enjoy on her Substack RAD Minimag or in her glittering new book, This Must Be The Place: Homes With Atmosphere. On bedroom design, she wrote, “Did you know some colors make people feel energized and hungry? Burger King did the research on this and their selections are the opposite of what you should choose for your bedroom. No reds, no yellows, don’t do high-contrast, don’t make it smell like beef.” It also radiates from her interior design work at her Berkeley-based firm Redmond Aldrich. An unhappy mind could not create a room like this or a design brief called “Little Women on Acid.”
Chloe calls her firm “a purveyor of aesthetic intelligence” or “AQ.” There’s so much cultural emphasis on IQ and EQ, but I’m with Chloe on her quest to bring AQ into the conversation. Life would be pretty dull if there weren’t people with a strong AQ.
For Chloe’s book launch—copies are now out in the wild!—she kindly took time to answer my questions about her own home renovations, and to dive into the tension that designers face in reconciling with their own homes versus their often more lavish client projects.
On that note, chime in to this week’s Chat (or in the comments below) if you have any insights on the when and how much to renovate.
I feel a little bit shy talking about my own home. Like, I shouldn’t share until it’s better: a perfect reflection of my inner life that also, tastefully, reflects every single thing I am capable of. Ha! That amount of pressure probably isn’t serving me sanity-wise, but it did give me pause when Amanda first asked me to contribute. When I thought about it, though, I realized a big part of what I believe in is the quest. I believe it’s worth paying attention to what makes you happy, to make an effort to improve your surroundings and that will improve your life. It doesn’t have to be all at once. I sense if it did happen all at once I would find something else to improve.
Our living room. (Photos courtesy Chloe Redmond Warner)
When I started my firm, the first project published was my newlywed apartment, and I remember feeling a huge sense of alignment between my home life and my work life. Fast forward 15 years and now the projects we do for clients have outpaced what I’m able to do for myself, and I don’t always feel aligned when I come home at the end of the day. Some of the choices I made when we moved in now feel deranged to me: I went ham with decorative painting, I basically bedazzled stock paneled doors, I had a corny chevron pattern applied at the back of the bookshelves I look at the most. I hate these choices now, but because I know how much work and money it takes to bring things up to snuff, I just ignore them! Other choices are so good I feel sorry my clients will never get to have them: the tension between the vintage wicker lounge chair that sits in front of my sofa and two huge Landon Metz paintings, or the kooky pair of side tables with built-in plant holders. These things are wonderful but were unplanned. They are the result of accidents and scrappiness and a tiny bit of laziness, and those traits just don’t come to work with me. ...
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