What Gives a Home Depth?

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it actually means for a home to have

 depth.

Not just to look considered. Not just to be well put together. But to have that quality you feel immediately when you walk into certain spaces — a sense that the room has layers to it. That there’s something underneath the surface worth staying for.

I think depth in a home is built from two things. And you need both.

The first is the designed layer. Light, space, texture, colour — the four elements I come back to again and again, in almost every project I’ve ever worked on. Not as separate decisions but as things that work together, that speak to each other across a room. The way a rough linen catches afternoon light differently to a smooth cotton. The way a room with good negative space feels quieter, more considered, than one that’s been filled to capacity. The way warm texture can do what colour sometimes can’t — create a sense of comfort without demanding attention.

When these elements are working well together, something happens to a room. It starts to feel connected to something larger than itself. To human experience, somehow. The kind of space that reminds you, without quite knowing why, that people have always needed warmth, light, softness. That these aren’t decorative impulses — they’re something older and more essential than that.

But here’s what I’ve come to believe just as strongly. The designed layer alone isn’t enough.

A room can have beautiful light and considered texture and still feel oddly thin. Like a stage set. Present but not inhabited.

What’s missing is the personal layer.

The objects that carry something with them. A cup you’ve had for years. Something inherited. A plant that found its place on a windowsill and has been there so long it’s become part of the room’s character. These things aren’t decoration. They’re evidence of a life being lived. And a room that has them — that holds them well — feels entirely different to one that doesn’t.

This is where I think a lot of people get stuck. Because the personal layer can easily tip into clutter. Into sentiment overriding everything else. Into a room that feels busy and heavy rather than warm and layered.

The difference, I think, is curation. Which is really just a more considered word for editing.

It means being honest about what you’re genuinely connected to versus what you’ve simply accumulated. It means giving the things that matter proper space — not cramming them in alongside everything else, but letting them breathe, letting them be seen. A single object on a shelf that means something will always do more for a room than ten objects competing for the same attention.

And it means understanding that the personal layer and the designed layer have to support each other. The light, the space, the texture — these create the conditions in which your personal objects can really land. Get the designed layer right and suddenly the things you love start to look like they were always meant to be there.

That’s what I’m always working toward. Not a room that looks finished. A room that feels like you. Deeply, honestly, quietly like you.

And the good news is that this is a process. It can be learned, worked toward, arrived at gradually. It doesn’t require starting again or spending more. It just requires understanding what you’re actually trying to create — and then making every decision in service of that feeling.

That’s what I’ll be teaching properly in the Bedroom Blueprint. Not rules, but a way of thinking. A sequence. So that the decisions start to feel less overwhelming and more like they’re building toward something.

I'll be sharing more about it with you here first, before anywhere else.

 Atlanta x