See a Philadelphia Interior Designer Transform a Generic New-Build Home

Interior designer Rasheeda Gray knows all about taking risks. After 15 successful years as a vice president of marketing, she decided to pursue her lifelong passion for interior design. Now, the Philadelphia-based interior designer has turned her business and marketing experience into Gray Space Interiors, a thriving design studio with an impressive following and a growing list of satisfied customers. So when her latest client needed to fill a newly built townhome in the city’s historic Manayunk neighborhood, Rasheeda was the perfect pick.

Rasheeda's client was a transplant to Philadelphia and “had been in the home for less than three months when she called me,” she says. Living by herself, the client needed help to fill the 2,500-square-foot space, starting with the living room. Because newly built spaces tend to lack some of the architectural flourishes that characterize the older homes in a city like Philadelphia, Rasheeda went the extra mile to give her client's home some personality. As a result, the room is designed to strike a fine balance between bright colors and calm neutrals. The modern color palette plays off of some of the room’s more traditional furniture elements, creating a striking mix.

For Rasheeda, great design isn’t always about the new and shiny. For a client adjusting to life in a new city, it was important to keep some familiar pieces around. And building a design concept around pieces the client already loves is a great way to make the job even easier. “The open concept living and dining room area was one of the easiest areas in the home to design,” Rasheeda recalls. “We incorporated some of the client's existing pieces like the sofa and dining table while ensuring it was cohesive with the rest of the home.”

A coherent color palette is one of the most important steps in making sure that a room looks well-designed. But when there are more than three colors to contend with, tying them all together can be challenging. To connect the eclectic palette in her client’s living room, Rasheeda used two large colorful paintings hung over the sofa. The multitude of colors present in the two pieces incorporate nearly all of the colors present in the room, allowing the whole vignette to come together seamlessly.