Portrait by Matt Rose
Early in her career, in Delaware, interior designer Kristen Levy had a job that kept her creative side underground. “When the city cleaned and resealed water mains, my company was contracted to draw the process, street by street,” she says. “Since there are thousands of streets with thousands of water lines, it was pretty tedious. But it helped me stay current with a drafting program that was important in helping me to secure future jobs.”
Since she left the “design purgatory” of that time and relocated to Asheville, Levy, the mother of a toddler and an infant, spends her work days in the light, planning lovely and well-analyzed environments, both for new builds and for renovation projects, residential and commercial.
In 2016, she became the lead interior designer with Asheville’s ID.ology Interiors & Design, owned by Laura Sullivan.
So, as a kid, you never dressed up your Barbies or cut their hair, like everyone else.
I sure didn’t [laughs]. I’d set up their houses, make them perfect, and walk away — my work was done; there was no need to actually play with them. I also made elaborate shoebox houses for my dolls.
Did this accompany other artistic pursuits?
I always loved to draw and paint, and my dad was a creative director in the advertising world. He and the rest of my family always encouraged me to make art. By the time I hit my teens, I was always rearranging my bedroom. It became my design lab.
Why interior design?
I grew up in the era of McMansions, which I thought were pretentious and lacked soul. Everything felt so disposable in the early 2000s, and I just couldn’t get behind that. I love history — Colonial Williamsburg always inspired me — and I was drawn to antiques. I became obsessed with design because I wanted to create beauty that would last in the world. I wanted to bring back the craft.
Was design school what you expected?
I attended Philadelphia University’s interior-design program, and had no idea what I was in for. I didn’t know how much architecture and math would figure in my training. At one point I thought, what have I done? Of course that training comes in handy now; it’s still satisfying to be able to eyeball a measurement and find out you were dead on.
First design foray?
I’d assumed I’d start with residential, but I attended a friend’s wedding and met a woman who had worked for [the apparel company] Free People in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, a wonderful historic complex where the abandoned naval buildings had been gutted and beautifully renovated for [high-end retail spaces]. This meeting led to an amazing opportunity designing the Urban Outfitters store there. I left my stable city job, knowing that in six months I could be jobless. Luckily that didn’t happen. After that I did more Navy Yard projects for Free People and Anthropologie. It was so satisfying to breathe fresh air and an urban aesthetic into these historic buildings and highlight their incredible architectural details. I worked with a great team. From there I did an Urban Outfitters project on Broadway in New York City, and eventually I worked with international teams in Germany and London.
Any style advice for those acting as their own designers?
Don’t be nervous about mixing up styles and eras. We’re seeing wonderful design mashups now and I encourage everyone to bravely curate and edit the possessions they love and incorporate them with new pieces that might be stylistically very different. It can work — it just has to be done thoughtfully.
Tell me about your two professional certifications.
Many of my Boomer clients want their homes to be the last places they’ll live, instead of assisted living. My “Aging in Place” certification means I can design a home to accommodate clients at any level of mobility — there should be zero clearance on the main level, wider doorways to accommodate wheelchairs, and easy-to-manipulate cabinet and door handles, for instance. “Wellness Within Your Walls” is a multidisciplinary approach to making your home as safe, livable, and toxin-free as possible.
Is there a design trend that you’ve seen enough of?
Well, the layering of neutrals and mixing of irons, woods, and natural elements is popular and beautiful, but I also love an unapologetically bold, maximalist room, [for example] a crushed green velvet sofa paired with indigo walls and wainscoting and a huge gold pendant light. Bottom line, though — your home should reflect you.
Kristen Levy, lead interior designer, ID.ology Interiors & Design, 1056 Haywood Road, Asheville. For more information, call ID.ology, at 828-252-4403 or see idologyasheville.com.