The Interior Collective

Celebrate a decade of IDCO Studio with 10 days of 30% off site-wide. Use code DECADE30 at www.idco.studio today to lock in your savings.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with someone I've really been looking forward to getting to know — Sean Anderson.

Sean grew up in rural Mississippi, where his mother encouraged his love of art long before he ever thought of it as a career. He never went to design school. He started in Memphis in his thirties with a small circle of loyal clients and word of mouth, and he's said that he considers every day in this industry an education — that every install is still his final exam.

Since founding his namesake studio in 2013, Sean Anderson has grown into offices in both Memphis and New York. His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Milieu, Garden and Gun, and Departures. He's been named to the 1stDibs 50 and the Wallpaper 400. And this fall, he's releasing his debut monograph with Rizzoli, Interior Narratives — with a foreword by architect Jeffrey Dungan, text by Sam Cochran, and photography by his longtime collaborator, Haris Kenjar.

We are getting into all of it today. What it actually took to build a two-city practice from a standing start in Memphis. The creative partnerships — with an architect, a writer, a photographer — that shaped this book and his business. And for every designer who has a book on their vision board, the real, unglamorous path to publication from the inside.

Seans Andersons book, Interior Narratives, is now available!

Celebrate a decade of IDCO Studio with 10 days of 30% off site-wide. Use code DECADE30 at www.idco.studio today to lock in your savings.

Tiffany Piotrowski is back, and this time we are digging into her studio’s 100 image exercise.

This episode relies heavily on the video portion of it, as Tiffany generously shows us physical examples of what she’s explaining. If you are not already watching this on Patreon or YouTube, pause, and head over there. Subscribing on Patreon gets you access to not only the full video conversation to this and all episodes, it also gains access to 2 additional episodes per month, exclusive to Patreon subscribers. Supporting the podcast directly is what makes it possible to keep this show running, and we have a lot more of it coming.

Tiffany is the founder of Tiffany Leigh Design, a full-service studio based in Barrie, Ontario, known for its English-inspired interiors, layered materiality, and a deeply thoughtful approach to understanding what home means to each client.

Tiffany is a close personal friend, and in one of our industry group texts, she mentioned this concept of a 100 Image Exercise. Immediately I knew we needed to record a show about it. In her process, Tiffany has developed what she calls a Dream and Scheme Meeting, a structured first meeting with every new client that goes far beyond the standard questionnaire. It has four parts, it happens in person at her studio, and it is designed to surface the things a client would never think to write down.

One of the centerpieces of that meeting is the 100 image exercise, something she learned from Melissa Oholendt of Oho Interiors and has since made her own. Today she is walking us through the whole thing, and she is doing a live demo on camera.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with someone whose career trajectory is genuinely one of a kind in this industry.

Britany Simon grew up around construction, the daughter of a residential developer in Arizona. She earned a degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in business and interior design, and spent years working in some of the top design firms in the state before landing her big break on HGTV. 

After gaining national recognition as a runner-up and fan favorite on Design Star, she went on to appear on multiple design-focused television programs, developing a strong media presence alongside deep technical expertise. In 2015, she launched Britany Simon Design House, which she has since grown into a highly respected boutique studio known for its elevated client experience, strong internal systems, and thoughtful approach to scaling a design business.

Today we are covering what those years on set taught her about delivering under pressure, and how those same instincts became the foundation for a client process that protects her time, her margins, and her relationships. We are going step by step, phase by phase, because a well-structured client experience is the difference between a busy studio and a profitable one.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with Claire Staszak, founder and principal of Centered by Design, a full-service residential interior design studio based in Chicago specializing in the design and restoration of historic homes.

Claire came from journalism and marketing before she came to interiors, and that background has shaped everything about how she has built her firm, including how she thinks about showhouses. Most designers treat a showhouse as a client opportunity, but Claire treats it as a brand investment with a measurable return. She has done both local and national showhouses and built a team that helps make it all happen.

Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Domino, Luxe, and the Chicago Tribune. She has a studio and showroom in East Lakeview, a second design annex on the North Shore, a wallpaper collection with Isidore Leroy, and a debut book slated for Fall 2027.

Today we are getting into the real costs of a showhouse, the brand partnerships that make them financially viable, what local versus national showhouses actually produce for a studio, and what every designer should be thinking about before they say yes to the next one.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio.

Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with Nicole Fisher, founder of Nicole Fisher Interiors, a residential design studio now based in New York City.

Before Nicole was designing homes, she was dressing Lady Gaga.She started her career in fashion, working as a stylist under Brandon Maxwell and Nicola Formichetti. That level of intentionality around detail, character, and originality didn't leave her when she transitioned into interior design. It became the entire foundation of how she works.

And that foundation has never been more relevant than right now. Because we are living through a moment in this industry where AI tools, algorithmic feeds, and the sheer volume of visual content being produced are creating a kind of aesthetic gravity — a pull toward the same. And the designers who are going to thrive in that environment are the ones who built something so specific and so genuinely theirs that no algorithm could have produced it.

Nicole is one of those designers. She's been named to Luxe's inaugural NEXT list, featured in Architectural Digest, and after ten-plus years of building her firm in Hudson, New York, she's moving her studio back to the city where her career began.

In this episode, we're talking about all of it. The fashion years, what that world taught her about building a visual identity, how she thinks about originality as a business strategy, and what designers need to understand about protecting their creative point of view in an era of algorithmic sameness. This is a conversation about creativity as a competitive advantage.