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Qs and As with Jan When I meet a new client, I always… try to learn as much as I can about who they are and how they live. Because my job is to tell their story through their interiors, I listen intently and take lots of mental notes. For someone who wants a big look on a small budget… paint! It's inexpensive, easy and provides an instant transformation. It can create wild drama, provide relaxing calm or transform flea market finds into works of art. My biggest design mistake was... avoiding the color orange. It wasn't until I painted a kitchen wall a rich russet hue that I realized not all oranges fell into the realm of Halloween. My favorite room to design is... probably the family room/den. There is no greater satisfaction for me than to watch a client's face light up over the surprise of a room reveal in the space where they usually spend their most waking hours. My design career has been influenced by… designer Mark Hampton, whose beautifully appointed rooms always spoke of elegance, style and comfort; artist Carl Larsson, who captured early Swedish pastel interiors in his detailed watercolors and somewhat influenced my own "less is more" philosophy; and my mom, who taught me how to truly turn trash into treasure. I change my own interiors… frequently, especially since I've moved so often. Even when I stay in a house several years, I'm always redesigning one room or another. My favorite design style is… oh, my gosh, that's hard. I once told my husband that I needed a village of houses to satisfy all of my decorating desires. He just smiled. But that love of diversity is probably one of the things that makes me good at what I do. I enjoy it all. My personal dream house... is, without a doubt, a romantic cottage by the sea. It will have oodles of windows with sheer gauzy curtains to catch ocean breezes, a large screened porch with lots of comfy wicker furniture and a porch swing, a light and airy open floor plan decorated with whites and shades of blues and greens and a sizable cupola where I can climb at the end of the day to relax and watch the sunset. |
Jan Barker Lefevre, owner and principle designer of Design Detail Studio, LLC, is a certified Interior Redesign Industry Specialist who enjoys enriching people's lives by transforming their surroundings into enjoyable environments. As a young teen and member of a creative family, Jan excitedly unwrapped a new book titled, "Your Own Room: The Interior Decorating Guide for Girls." Almost immediately, she begged her parents for a a gallon of avocado green wall paint, a quart of black lacquer and a paintbrush to began transforming her small bedroom into a contemporary Tea House Room. The design bug bit hard and the rest, as they say, is history. Following four years of study with Hal Wurl and attending the Kendall School of Design, Jan experimented with painting, calligraphy and photography until, at the insistence of friends, she opened Details by Design, an interior decorating service in Michigan.
A move to Ohio in the 80s found Jan producing decorative painted furniture, designing original pillows and providing color consultations for friends, all while decorating multiple homes, including the restoration of an 1879 brick Italianate. Together with her brother, Tod Barker, the design duo forms Relative to Design. While the siblings each operate a redesign and staging firm independently in the states of North Carolina/Ohio and Georgia/Michigan, they are available to team for larger assignments.
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"I
certainly didn't know it at the time," Jan says, "but
I guess I could have written the script for the hit HGTV show, Decorating
on a Dime. Most of my friends were just starting families without
a lot of money for decorating, so my specialty of decorating on
a shoestring budget was more or less one of necessity."
In
1996, Jan and her husband followed their dream to move to the Carolinas.
Positions in the academic news field allowed Jan's creativity to
branch into journalism, marketing, graphic design, digital photography
and Web site production. She has owned the Web Production Division
of Design Detail Studio, LLC in Statesville, North Carolina since
2002.