FEATURED
Cover Story
In 2012, HGTV’s Grace Mitchell launched her
website A Storied Style, which encapsulates
both her creative design work and her personal
philosophy, “Start with your story.”
Jan/Feb 2020 | Residential Tech Today 45
GM: Sure. I think I have a very good
understanding about how a home needs to
function for a family. So of course when I’m
working on these projects, I’m constantly
thinking about the family. The people who are
on the show fill out a very in-depth five-page
questionnaire that I have created for them. And
so I pull from the questionnaire. I sit down with
them; I basically invite myself to dinner
sometimes. “Can I come hang out with your
family and can I look in your closet? Can I see
how your home works?” Taking that time to get
to know them helps me figure out what they
really need. Sometimes even more than what
they say. So for the most part, really for the
project, I take most of the inspiration from the
family. But what I take from my own life is just a
lot of practicality.
I want my spaces to be beautiful, of course.
But, I’m a mom of four, and I work and I know
that it’s challenging to keep everything together.
So, I’m thinking when I’m doing a kitchen,
“Okay, where’s the mail going to go?” I’m
thinking about all those things that I know are
important to me in my own life and what I need
to make my home run smoothly. I’m really
drawing from my own life, but it’s all about their
story. When it comes to what I think the
function needs to be, I’m just drawing from
what I know for my own family.
RT Today: What advice would you give to
an aspiring home renovation enthusiast?
GM: I would say people can easily crowd their
mind when they’re trying to gather inspiration
from everyone else’s home. And I think sitting
down and thinking about where you’ve been,
what’s important to you, places that you’ve
visited that you just loved the feeling of, and
honing in on what really speaks to you in a
home. Maybe it’s, “Oh, I loved this about my
grandmother’s kitchen.” Or, “I loved this
element of my parents’ house growing up.” Take
all those things into consideration. That’s how
you can craft a home that you love more than
looking at, scrolling through random pictures.
Of course, you can see, “Oh, I like those colors.”
There are certain things, but I feel like if you try
to write down and take it from yourself, what’s
really important to you about your home and
build from there.
Sometimes I even ask people to write down
what they want their home to feel like, because
people get so wrapped up in colors and, “Oh, do
I want this or do I want that? I don’t know.” But
if you can write down five characteristics of
what you want your home to feel like and then
measure up against that. “Okay, what if we did
your cabinets blue, does that fit in with these
characteristics to you? No. Okay, then scratch
that off the list.” Sometimes if you just write
down how you want it to feel, that can really
help you.
And then people, just about everyone who has
ever been on the show will say, “Oh, I don’t have
a story. We don’t really have a story.” No one in
this world thinks they have a story for some
reason, but everyone does. And that’s really my
job to pull it out.
One of the most recent episodes that we did, it
was so darling because the husband was looking
around and he said, “Well, I really do have a
story, and it looks so good.” I thought that was
really great. And that’s what I want is, when I
leave a home, I don’t want to look back and say,
“Oh, Grace Mitchell did this.” I love to look back
at a home and say, “Wow, this looks just like the
Mayos, or this looks just like the Rices.” And I
feel like when we leave, that’s what we’ve done.
And that’s just so… it’s a really special thing to
be able to do, to contribute to someone’s life like
that. x