Interior designer Amber Guyton wants Black women to see their homes differently. Through her brand, Blessed Little Bungalow, she fills her own space with Black faces and challenges the idea that interior design must be expensive, pretentious, or built to impress guests.
“Black faces in all the spaces,” said Guyton, an interior designer and the founder of Blessed Little Bungalow. “No matter what room you go in, you’re gonna see a Black face.”
She has a view about who a home is for, and it is not for visitors. “Your home should be like a love letter you write to yourself,” she said. The industry she works in does not always put it that way. “Interior design can be a very stuffy, overwhelming, pretentious thing,” she said, and she wants the opposite of that. “I want people to realize that their home belongs to them.”
The advice underneath it is less about taste than about use. “As fancy as my work looks, I’m about function,” she said. She starts with comfort, and she is not precious about how comfort looks. “Pillows are like adult stuffed animals,” she said.
The last thing she says is the thing that gets a person moving. “Just do the thing. Nothing is permanent.”
