Keianna Rae Harrison-Williams is the lead interior designer and remodeling team principal of HER Home Design LLC. A multi-faceted business, HER Home Design LLC is made up of three different components: Her Home Design, HER Home Design BUILD LLC, and HER Home Design Boutique. Whether you are looking for affordable interior design services, expert home staging, or the perfect accent chair to liven up your space — HER Home Design should be your first stop.
Indy Maven spoke with Harrison-Williams to find out more about HER Home Design LLC, how the business came to be, and all the exciting services the team provides.
CAN YOU TELL US HOW HER HOME DESIGN STARTED?
Her Home Design is our flagship company, and we started that company back in 2009. The other principal in the business is my mom, Ann Blake. My mom and I were doing staging and interior decor back in 2009 on a part-time basis, and we would go into these homes that we would stage and I would notice that the wall color wasn’t right or the floor color wasn’t right or the bathroom was in the wrong place. I would make recommendations to the realtor or to the client about changing things, and that turned into a love of interior design.
Around the same time, I was flipping homes with my children’s father, and I would just go to his house as they were building it, and I would tell the guys to move all the walls and move the bathrooms or move the front door — and it would always work out well. He was ultimately like, “Hey, you need some kind of design degree in order to be just moving around these walls, ma’am,” and so I went back to design school and I received an associate degree in interior design. So, we expanded the firm from home staging and hired our first credentialed interior designer back in 2017.
Our first employee is now our studio director, and the evolution of the company happened naturally. We were designing projects that looked great on paper and looked great on screen, but when the contractors that we were using built them, it didn’t look how we wanted, and we got frustrated. So, you know that saying, “When you want something done right you’ve got to do it yourself?” We started doing it ourselves, and we hired our own contractors and our own installers. We would have our own people install the designs that we developed so that we could ensure that things came out exactly how we wanted. We became a design/build firm out of necessity to control the quality, appearance, and aesthetic of the final project.
We hired some contractors and worked on a couple of projects, and it didn’t go quite the way that we wanted it to because we needed a little bit more experience in the construction industry. So, we got trained by the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) to remodel homes. We went full steam ahead with our own crews in 2019 (and going into 2020 when the bottom fell out of the world), and we have been going ever since. HER Home Design Build LLC came to life, and we now have an architectural designer on staff. We design projects on paper, we create construction drawings, and then we build the product.
YOU ALSO HAVE A RETAIL STORE, RIGHT?
Yes! My mom, who runs the staging division, is such a talented stager that she kept selling all of our furniture with the houses we staged — people would buy the house and they would want the furniture, too. So, we started buying furniture wholesale, and before we knew it, we were a full-on retail store.
Today, we sell furniture, home décor, home accessories, cabinetry, flooring — everything you need to make a house a home. You can get it all at HER Home Design Boutique at affordable prices.
WHERE ARE YOU LOCATED?
We are fortunate to have a new building, and it is located at 5502 W. 73rd St. off of Zionsville Road on the northwest side. That building allowed us to have a design studio and a full retail store, so we now have a brick-and-mortar retail store open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
EVERYTHING YOU DO SEEMS TO TURN OUT BEAUTIFULLY, BUT ARE THERE ANY PARTICULAR AREAS WHERE YOUR TEAM ESPECIALLY SHINES?
Kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, flooring, and paint — those are all things that we do really well.
We are also certified stagers and staging is a game changer for selling homes. People can’t imagine what their stuff looks like in an empty space, and so we always tell people that, “You have eight seconds to make a first impression when a buyer opens that door, you have eight seconds to make an emotional connection to them, so what do you want to do with your eight seconds?” We go in and stage a home so that a buyer opens that door and immediately falls in love and the house sells fast. That is our bread and butter and where we started, and it is the basis for how we got to where we are today. So, call us for home staging!
WHO IS YOUR IDEAL CLIENT?
Our ideal client is a mom who thinks that she can’t afford interior design or remodeling. We love to delight and surprise a mom who’s like, “My kitchen is too small, and I can’t work in here; I need new cabinetry, I need new appliances, I need new flooring and I just can’t make it work.” We love the feeling of the magic and the sparkle in their eye when they see that not only can they have what they want, but it is affordable, beautiful, and functional for them.
Throughout this process, our goal has always been affordable luxury, affordable interior design, and affordable services. “Affordable” tends to be a swear word to most marketing people, but we think there really is a market for folks who have $20,000 for their kitchen remodel!
I have a heart for that population, and I really wanted to be able to help a mother who needed a new kitchen but didn’t have $80,000 or $90,000 to spend. I wanted her to have a new kitchen, so we put the materials and the labor together. Numbers were difficult when we were paying retail for everything, so we became a store and we started to procure our own materials from flooring to cabinetry and cabinet handles to lighting and everything that we needed to build a house. We just got it for ourselves and sold it to our clients at 20-30% above wholesale so we could keep their projects affordable.
DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR PEOPLE ABOUT WHERE THEY SHOULD START IF THEY’RE THINKING ABOUT MAKING A CHANGE TO THEIR HOME?
The first thing that I would recommend anyone do is hire a designer. A lot of times when people buy their homes they go directly to a remodeler or a construction firm, and that’s not the best step. A designer is going to be able to design a space, they’re going to listen to your needs, they’re going to come and see what you’ve got, they’re going to make recommendations that are functional for your space but also beautiful, and they are going to create drawings so that you can give those to a contractor. Unless you choose HER Home Design, where we do it all for you at once! We can do the whole shebang, so we’ll design it, build it, and decorate it, and when you get ready to sell it, we’ll stage it and sell it and then start all over with you again. I want to be a client’s designer for life.
RELATED: 5 WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESSES WITH PICKS TO LIVEN UP YOUR HOME
This story was created in partnership with HER Home Design LLC.
Stephanie Groves is an Indy Maven editorial board member and contributor who needs all the home design help that she can get.
All of our content—including this article—is completely free. However, we’d love if you would please consider supporting our journalism with an Indy Maven membership.
