A world designed by Leah Ring would be a cavalcade of color. You can see it in her Los Angeles home – which she shares with her artist partner, Adam DeBoer – her clients’ interiors, and in her product design (including the acrylic vessel from which she pulls this week’s questions). Leah Ring’s world seems like a window into a more exuberant future – and in this week’s DMTV Milkshake, she shares how even the most monochromatically minded among us can transition to a brighter space. “I think you can introduce it in really small ways that really make a big impact,” she says. “It could be as small as a welt on a pillow in a super weird, bright color like chartreuse,” she says. “Maybe you want to keep your walls white, but like what about painting the window trim a bright cobalt? Think about introducing it in little ways if you’re afraid of color – that can have a huge impact and will make the space feel so much more thoughtful and custom.”
Also in this week’s Milkshake, Leah shares her not super secret source for excellent, budget-conscious furnishings: “I use Etsy all the time – I joke that I am the queen of Etsy because I spend hours on it,” she says. “I find the best stuff on Etsy – both vintage and small makers that maybe don’t have the resources to have a shop elsewhere. And you can get amazing rugs from Morocco and Turkey – it’s really my go-to source for finding weird, quirky vintage, and one-of-a-kind pieces at good price points.”
We also chat about her big reveal for the second half of 2021. “I bought a tiny house – sort of like a compound of buildings out in Yucca Valley, right next to Joshua Tree,” she says, calling them a “total, total fixer upper, which is what I wanted.” She closed on the property in January and has been working on it since. “It will hopefully be done this year,” she says. “It’s been really, really fun to have a project where I can experiment with a ton of weird concepts that I’ve been wanting to try – there’s no client to tell me no, or to reel me in. It’s really my baby. As a young designer, it’s so hard to share that – it’s the chicken and the egg; you can’t get those sorts of clients without showing the work, but you can’t get that work without the clients. So I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to design my own house to really showcase that for the world. And then hopefully get clients that want weird, crazy things going on in their house.”
If you fit the bill, tune in.
Diana Ostrom, who has written for Wallpaper, Interior Design, ID, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets, is also the author of Faraway Places, a newsletter about travel.
Milkshake, DMTV (Design Milk TV)’s first regular series, shakes up the traditional interview format by asking designers, creatives, educators and industry professionals to select interview questions at random from their favorite bowl or vessel. During their candid discussions, you’ll not only gain a peek into their personal homeware collections, but also valuable insights into their work, life and passions.
