My New Gig at Homepolish!

Dear Santa,

Christmas came a little early for me this year. In the form of aTOTALLY exciting new job! Don’t worry, I’m still an interior designer. But now I’m also so much more! About a month ago, I accepted a job as the Creative Director for Homepolish LA. Okay, okay. I know you have a ton of questions.

“You have a job?”

“What’s a Homepolish?”

“You’re a human man?”

“Colorado legalized pot before California?”

“Christina and Gaga performed together?”

I know. It’s so confusing. Yes, I have a job. I’ve been working with residential clients for years, but now I’ll be heading up the operations for Homepolish LA. Homepolish is interior design for a new type of client. Whereas until now interior designers have been accessible only to the super-rich, Homepolish strives to make it accessible to a wider range of people. We do this by nixing mark-ups and making all fees completely transparent so clients know exactly what they’re getting. Thus far, Homepolish has been killing it in New York and now it’s time to expand to the West Coast. Here is what our LA homepage looks like:

I know. I love that photo by Zeke Ruelas too! What exactly does “Creative Director” mean, you ask? Well it mainly involves drinking lattes whilst walking with groups of incredibly attractive people, laughing with our mouths wide open. Other tasks include talking about Homepolish all the time and getting every single person in Los Angeles to use it. That’s all. So if you’re in LA (or anywhere else for that matter), use it! Or I’ll be killed.

The main reason I’m so excited about this job is that it’s one of the best ideas for a startup I’ve ever heard. I hear often how difficult it is for people to get help with designing their homes, how intimidated by the seemingly snobby world of interior design they feel, and how confusing it can be to figure out how much it’s going to cost. Homepolish solves all that because we are totally upfront about everything.

Additionally, Homepolish is a great resource for interior designers. I can’t tell you how many times I got requests from prospective clients being like “Hey I have $650 how can you help me?” For designers running their own practices, it’s really hard to turn a profit on such a small budget. If it were up to me I’d help everyone out for free, but then I’d be homeless and that would be lame and I’d have nowhere to put all my paint decks. I got requests like these all the time working for Emily Henderson and working for my own design firm. And they were a total bummer. Because we really did want to help everyone. Now designers can point people with lower budgets towards Homepolish, because we actually can get things done at lower price points. This prevents designers from feeling like snobby jerks and it prevents clients from feeling they can’t get any design help.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this new job. I get to do everything I love: design, write, hang out with my blogger/writer friends, plan fun events, think up crazy marketing ideas, talk to the LA design team (we have already assembled a team of AWESOME designers out here and I’m enjoying getting to know them all, one by one), and promote a revolutionary service I totally believe in. From my start at HGTV to working with my own clients and writing this blog, I’ve always worked to make design accessible to more people, to show that with some creativity, you can design beautiful spaces without spending millions.

So, thanks for listening to me rant about my new gig. And keep us in mind if you need any help designing stuff. You can get 50% off a consultation by entering “hommemaker” when you check out on the Homepolish website. So if you’re thinking about getting some help designing your home, check it out (it’s literally $40 so it’s not a huge commitment). That can your early Christmas present to yourself!

Love,
Orlando