The Final Layer: An Architect’s Reflection on Interior Design

The room is quiet. The smell of sawn wood has faded and the punch list is complete. Our team has moved on to the next project and my client have gone off into her kitchen to grab us some water. Off to my left, sunlight glides across the floor just as I imagined it would. The air feels soft, settled. It’s evident the house has taken her first real breath.

It’s always a little emotional, this part. As my eyes flit around the space, I remember the early days of design work — those sketches scribbled on tracing paper, the meetings filled with possibility, the quiet hours spent shaping something that didn’t yet exist. I knew what this space could become, but sitting here now I’m realizing: she’s become more than I hoped.

This is no longer just a house I designed. It’s a home. 

In architecture, I pour myself into the structure of a space: the rhythm of walls and windows, the language of light, the silent logic of space planning. I design with the future in mind—how people will move, gather, rest, and live. I give the project its bones, its posture, its voice.

But the interior designer gives it its soul.

Where I imagine flow, an interior designer imagines feeling. Where I carve out space, they pour in the warmth. The alcove I designed to hold a bench, just off to the right, is now dressed in rich velvet and topped with a pillow that looks like it was woven with the very same fibers of this family. The powder room I nestled into the staircase as a quiet convenience is now a tiny jewel box — unexpected and unforgettable. It’s as if the space I raised has chosen its own outfit for the world and it wears it beautifully.

I couldn’t be prouder.

I’ve learned over time that the most successful projects are ones where the interior designer isn’t just brought in at the end, but welcomed from the beginning. When we design together—side by side, idea by idea—something greater emerges. The rooms aren’t just functional, they’re personal. They don’t just make sense, they create senses.

I hear ice falling into a glass from the kitchen, but before my client returns, I note it isn’t the ceiling height or the window placement that strikes me first—it’s the atmosphere. There’s a calm here. A confidence. A rightness. And that alchemy, that harmony of function and feeling, is only possible when architecture and interior design move in step. 

I often say that architecture is the vessel, but it’s interior design that fills it with story. The finishing details are what take a carefully crafted form and coaxes it to life creating memory and meaning.

So I sit here, not just as an architect, but as a witness. To collaboration. To creativity. To the beauty of seeing something you’ve built become more than you imagined—because someone else came in, saw its potential, and finished the story with intuitive intention.

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Harmony is the in-house architectural designer and founder of Creative Concierge, the design department within Creative Building Concepts where she specializes in creating custom residential spaces with timeless character and thoughtful detail. When she’s not sketching floor plans or walking job sites, you’ll find her mentoring and teaching young, aspiring designers through class and application. She lives just outside of Carlisle within a private plot in the woods, among her beloved gardens with her husband, their three kids and two rambunctious border collies.