Designers find the fun… NEWSLETTER / December 2025 KIND WORDS: “I love you ladies. Honestly – if I see your name attached, I’m going to try and work your client in – you are THE BEST to work with!”– Julie Bielenberg, award-winning journalist 
MAD FOR PLAID “Social media has been flooded with the term ‘Ralph Lauren Christmas’ since even before Halloween, so it’s safe to say we’re going to be seeing a ton of the look,” writes Country Living in its “5 Christmas Decorating Trends [that] Will Be EVERYWHERE in 2025.” To illustrate the Americana-leaning style, CL turned to a Montana Paradise Valley cabin (pictured) by Kibler & Kirch owner and creative director Jeremiah Young (a second article on “How to Get the Look” included more Kibler & Kirch examples). And while the layered tartans, lush greenery and rustic details may be TikTok trending, plaid-and-patina-loving Jeremiah has been bringing his timeless approach to the holidays for decades. And now, everyone can shop his trad-and-true aesthetic at his Billings Kibler & Kirch home store. (Photo: Audrey Hall) 
VOTES ARE IN The kudos keep coming for Yvonne Jacobs, with her Jacobs + Interiors winning a best interior designer honor in the Vail Daily Best of Vail Valley Awards, a community-driven poll that allows residents and visitors to recognize and support the Valley’s best-of-the-best businesses. At the same time Yvonne earned LUXE Visionaries status in the new issue of Luxe Interiors + Design, celebrating the magazine’s 20th anniversary. “Design that resonates with both place and people is born from curiosity, courage and a deep respect for the stories spaces can tell. Yvonne Jacobs channels this philosophy into every project,” LUXE writes in “Inspired By Nature And Driven By Connection: The Vision Of Yvonne Jacobs.” Yvonne’s secret: a make-it-fun approach to design for clients – and interiors rich with texture, personality and comfort. 
FOREVER IN BLUE JEANS Aspen Design House’s always bespoke interiors often take cues from clients’ fashion choices, a smart way to access a homeowner’s innate personal style – and a natural for the firm’s UK-born founder and design director Denise Taylor, who studied fashion at London’s prestigious Central St. Martins in her uni days. For a multigenerational compound in Aspen’s Roaring Fork Valley showcased in the November/December issue of Mountain Living in “Modern Homestead,” Denise channeled the homeowners’ propensity to go casual in jeans when at the ranch into a palette woven with shades of denim blue. “They are very outdoorsy people,” she tells the magazine, noting that the blue also reflects the color of the sky. (Photo: Dallas + Harris) PR TIP OF THE MONTH Check Your Stats The (hopefully) quiet lull between Christmas and New Year’s can be a good time to review and reflect on marketing efforts for the year. As we’ve mentioned many times, your website is your most important sales tool – the information source that can transform interest from a magazine story we’ve placed, for instance, into outreach from a potential client. Intrigued, they check your website, look at examples of your work, read what your firm is “about” – your philosophy and approach – maybe check out team members’ bios, and get in touch. (We’ve also said this before, but make outreach natural with easy-to-find contact info. And we’re not fans of the “online contact forms” that feel impersonal. Your business is a personal one – communication should be with a person.) Okay, so you take a few minutes to audit your website and you feel like you’re doing everything right. Maybe you’re even posting a regular blog or newsletter to enhance your visibility with the Google search algorithm. But are you receiving and monitoring results with a monthly web performance report? Whoever manages your website should be able to quickly and easily set you up to receive a monthly report that breaks down web usage into useful numbers like new users, referrals (for instance a magazine story that shows up digitally often includes a link that refers visitors to your website – you can see how many visitors it brings and the averages of how many of your pages those visitors look at and how much time they spend), and how many people reach your website by direct search (the sign that you’re successfully getting your name out there for people to search) or organically (from general searches like “Wyoming interior designers,” for instance, that bring up your website in response, showing the Google algorithm is working in your favor). Monitoring your web stats on a monthly basis is a good way to check trends: Are new users growing? Is Instagram referring people who stay engaged for a decent amount of time? Did direct searches rise significantly after a high-profile magazine story? Having numbers to compare across time can help you make smart decisions. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. |
