Sister Parish has always been a design inspiration to me. I have kept this quote of hers for years in a prominent place, to remind me how down to earth she was. I have always strived to follow her advice, follow my gut, and my “eye”. I may not use color as strongly as she did, but I am a big believer of using things you love in your designs, and not worrying so much about “matching”. 

“It is only my eye that has helped me. I am still hopeless with that thing called a scale ruler. I love color, but that comes very naturally to me. From the beginning, I never followed trends. If I was aware of them, I didn’t care, for I believed as I do now, that rooms should be timeless and very personal. And I certainly don’t have a “look”-just a mishmash of everything that somehow, by instinct, usually turns out to be a warm, imaginative, ‘living room’. 

-Sister Parish 

(image is of a Parish influenced room by another of my design idols, Bunny Williams. Bunny is an alumni of Parish-Hadley Design. Image courtesy of the book Sister Parish Design-a design essential!)