Philippa Radon Design Crafting a Whole New Hue

By Amanda Larch

A true Brit at heart, Philippa Radon can do anything with a good cup of Earl Grey in hand. “Everything works better with a cup of tea,” she says.

An interior designer and stylist with more than three decades of experience, Radon owns a full-service design firm, Philippa Radon Design, and opened a studio at Lee Street Studios in Lewisburg two years ago, where clients often can pop in to look over fabrics and textiles, create mood boards and overview projects.

She has lived in the U.S. for 35 years and still runs her studios in California and Western New York, in addition to her newest home base and location in Lewisburg, though she’s never forgotten her London-born roots. Coming from larger locales to move to the Mountain State with her husband Peter, Radon says, to her, the designs here feel considerably more English and connected to her heritage, making her feel more at home.

“As I’m a shorter time here than anywhere, I’m definitely finding my feet with everything,” Radon says. “But I like to think with my London roots and East and West Coast contacts I can bring a diverse, more authentic European twist to this market.”

Philippa Radon Design has clients at The Greenbrier, and working at the resort with its legendary historical references—what she calls transitional traditional—Radon has an intuitive knack for knowing what clients want.

 “A lot of people coming into The Greenbrier now are looking to remodel the older homes, and there seems to be an overall general trend for younger people to be moving out of urban sprawl into state likes West Virginia, which influences what we’re looking at design-wise,” she says. “Traditional with a contemporary flavor and twist to it, giving an older home a fresh and more current flair that inherits the past with consideration to today’s aesthetic style.”

Radon is also embracing the focus on the ‘quiet luxury’ lifestyle and tailoring a home’s functionality to its inhabitants, with glamorous and carefully curated spaces that are a huge part of ordinary day-to-day living, like laundry rooms, dog wash stations and kitchens with more updated equipment that can be streamlined or boast a classic vibe, as well as defined creative art spaces and yoga, meditation or relaxation zones, she says.

“This is really honoring our home, our time and our interests in an experiential manner within the space,” Radon says. “Part of our design role is to unearth what the client really needs and explore all of the possibilities, of how to get there - those wonderful  ‘what if’ discussions that open up every doorof creative thinking.

Color is another large part of Radon’s work, as she has trend forecasted for herself and various companies over the years, and she even had her own paint line soft launch in February in collaboration with C2 Paint, a Buffalo, New York based, family-owned paint company. Certainly, designers have an eye for color, though Radon’s eye is even more succinct, precise and poignant.

Radon has synesthesia, meaning she perceives color in a heightened sense. This, combined with her great passion as an artist and designer for color and textiles, makes her work rewarding and worthwhile. “Color is always the starting point for me on a project,” Radon says. “It’s the catalyst for all that follows. I love working with color, finding a fabulous textile or wallpaper that we feel initially at the studio is right for the project and the client falling in love with it so we can leapfrog from there.”

With her unique perspective and impressive experience in the design world, Radon says color trends now seem to be shifting away from grays into a new neutral palette of softer pinks and stone and putty colors as well as some of the infamous ‘Dorothy Draper’ bolder turquoises, apple greens, and pinks.

“Color and textiles are definitely what I love putting together and delivering to the client, then weeding out what they’re drawn to, what they gravitate to,” she says. “Because we must always remember that at the end of the day, they’re the ones living in their home, not us, and it needs to resonate and connect fully for them.”

The golden rule with a designer, Radon says, is to never show your client something you don’t want them to choose. At her studios, after the first few meetings, Radon and her staff have a selection process they’ve perfected to prepare for what they show a client; that way, clients feel the choices they’re making really connect to them and suit their property, lifestyle and functional needs.

Clients are sent, and urged to complete, what Radon calls ‘The Brief,’ which is tailored to help build a profile for them. It’s all about knowing the details: from color preferences, shapes, patterns and allergies to the three things they would grab and rescue, pets and family accounted for automatically, if their house were on fire.

“Our homes are like these living organisms and extensions of who we are. They’re not just about stuff and pretty trinkets and baubles,” Radon says. “They’re really about connecting, supporting and giving us this strong foundational palette and tether that we can grow and learn with, and from that, evolve as we do.”

Details add layers and interest, and Radon says she has the best private black book for client services in the region, including furniture refinishing, drapery, upholstery, wallpaper and more, as well as organizational and styling services with her skilled and fanatical team, whom clients can hire to sort their spaces, something that’s always needed when moving into a remodeled or new space, she says.

“I am a firm believer in supporting the network and the community that you live and reside in; that at the end of each client project, the client feels it transcended the side of commerce; and that relationships and respect were formed through what we do because I have a great respect for people’s homes where it’s our sanctuary,” she says. “So we respect that their privacy is kept and that we’re allowed in to craft and create and beautify.”

Constantly pushing the creative envelope in terms of color, design and global resourcing, Philippa Radon Designs expands clients’ horizons in the design world. Compared to Los Angeles or New York, our state may seem to have limited options and resources, but Lewisburg is centrally located to larger areas like the Carolinas and D.C., so Radon hasn’t lost out on anything, she says; at the same time, her studio utilizes local artists and craftsmen as much as possible.

“I think a client comes to us because there’s a sense of trust that we can provide something to them they cannot do or feel they have the confidence or ability to do on their own,” Radon says.

Radon and her staff oversee production, check on deliveries, shop, style, housesit, resource art, install and complete whatever is needed from furniture to fragrances.

“A constant in-house endeavor of finding resources and suppliers to bring to our clients that they wouldn’t know of otherwise often has us venturing a little further afield, sometimes into some often curious situations, to get the best,” she says. “Plus, we keep our fingers on the pulse of design and have a wealth of current design and style information. It’s our passion and obsession.”

Like my writing process, Radon and I compare her work to putting together jigsaw puzzle of different components. “And that intrigues me,” she says. “Definitely that’s my favorite part of it, and that’s the most creative part, too. Once things are selected, we then go into the implementation, which is like any business, it’s the nuts and bolts and the business side of everything, but as critical as all other parts.”

“We’re like directors and producers in a way,” Radon tells me. “We have to find the story, nurture it, pull out all the things about it and explore it deeper and deeper.”

Aside from interior design, Radon offers another unique service: life coaching. She first began to venture into life coaching more for herself than anything after hitting a wall in her work years ago, and now Radon specializes in transitional coaching because she recognizes the correlation between home, design, change, relationships and our overall sense of wellbeing, she says.

“With the right mentors, it’s an interesting, revealing and reflective journey and training process,” she says. “I often have to ask my design clients to do the same sort of thing, and so I wanted to expand my skills in this arena. As a designer we are brought in to make impactful, sustaining changes, which stem from a variety of situations, like a move, a career or health change, a growing or empty nesting family, grief (and) uncertainty, all of which bring a new set of emotions into the mix.”

Going through advanced life coaching training gave Radon an additional set of professional tools to work with. “I work with people, I value and connect to the importance of home, and any way to expand on that for the betterment, be it in a creative capacity or more personal understanding of someone’s needs, as a listening, guiding professional, is my role.”

“Home, and everything that great sounding word reflects and means to each of us, is the driving force behind what I do,” Radon says.