By Barry Wise Smith
Marianne Strong grew up in Nashville a nascent designer. “I loved design growing up. I was that kid who constantly rearranged her room,” Strong says. “My parents were very supportive and encouraged my creativity. They gave me free reign to paint and do what I wanted to do.
But Strong also knew that she wanted to own her own business. She went to business school at Ole Miss, graduated with a business degree and set about figuring out her next step. After waiting tables in Colorado and the beach, she landed in Memphis and got a job at BPI (Building Products Incorporated) as the marketing person for their flooring product lines. “That’s where I truly fell in love with design,” she says.
A few years later, Strong moved to Birmingham with her then boyfriend (now husband) for his job, and Strong decided to go back to school at Samford for a design degree. While there, Strong went to work for designer Jenny Edwards. “My best education was working for Jenny,” Strong says. “I saw how a business was run, and she was incredibly supportive of me opening my own business. For a while, I was working for Jenny and doing my own side projects. We’re still very close.”
After two years, Strong left Samford to start her business in 2007. And almost 20 years later, Strong is still a student of design. “Here I am almost 20 years in, and I still learn something new almost every day,” Strong says. “Our processes and the way we do things change every year. There’s so much to learn, and things are changing all the time. I love it and wouldn’t do anything else. I feel lucky we get to do this.”
Strong started out working from home her first child before moving into an office in Highland Park and hiring her first employees. “The business grew organically,” Strong says before she hired Teresa Cole, whose background in graphic design made her a natural fit for Strong’s business.
When asked to define her design style, Strong says Curated Eclectic because “We like everything, there’s not a lot that we can’t work with.” Strong loves that each of her project looks different but sticks to the same principals of bold color and lots of texture. “When people see a house that we’ve done, I don’t want them to look at it and think ‘there’s another Marianne Strong Interiors house’ because it looks like every other one,” she says. “We love clients who trust us to take their style and elevate it and who let us have fun. We love color and pattern, we love wallpaper. We don’t want to do the same old thing every time.”
Focusing primarily on family homes, Strong does occasionally take on light commercial projects and finds them very interesting. When Strong did the interiors for the original Carrigan’s Public House, she loved the challenge of a public space. “We love a commercial project thrown in every now and again,” she says.
When asked about other memorable projects, Strong immediately recalls an early kitchen renovation in Vestavia Hills, where she is a resident. “One of my most memorable projects is a Vestavia kitchen that I did well over 10 years ago,” she says. “We chose a deep green-blue color for the cabinetry with custom brass and wood shelves. At the time, no one was going this—it was all white kitchens back then. But the homeowner trusted me and saw my vision. We put a picture of the kitchen on Pinterest, and still to this day I get at least one message every week asking me about that kitchen. Today it doesn’t’ seem that different from what’s out there, but at the time it was truly one-of-a-kind.”
It’s this trust from clients that continues to build Strong’s business. “Probably 90 percent of our business is either repeat business or word-of-mouth work from friends of clients,” Strong says. “We love when clients give us input but give us free reign to do what we do.” Cole agrees, “We’re good at pushing the envelope.”
So, while Strong didn’t always plan to go into design, she’s very glad she did. I love it and wouldn’t want to do anything else!”
Marianne’s Top 5 Style Picks:
- We love to contrast soft, feminine things with a masculine aesthetic—plaids, deep colors and rich leathers
- Rich materials—real wood, natural metals, marble
- Patterns—we love bold fabrics and wallpaper
- Furniture that’s classic and built to last
- We love color—color should be embraced!
