Why Me
Our Mission
To create extraordinary spaces for ordinary people and destigmatize the act of hiring an interior designer.
Is this you?
- You don’t have money to waste.
- You like beautiful things, but don’t think you can afford them.
- You are allergic to the generic and mass-produced.
- You want to get and stay ahead of trends.
- You care about the triple bottom line (or at least your own).
- You can’t visualize.
- You have trouble making decisions.
- You have never implemented a renovation or design project before and don’t know where to start.
Why Interior Design?
Emily says “it’s because she wanted to pet lots of nice cats and dogs,” but the real reason is because it sits at the intersection of art and math, which really should be her home address.
Why You Want the Design Librarian:
Emily Stein
Owner
Emily, the mind behind Design Librarian, started her design career in 2005, at the tender age of 18, with very high brow tastes and absolutely no money. Her primary goal - then - was to fulfill her dream of wearing stiletto heels with a hardhat, but she quickly became obsessed with creating extraordinary spaces for ordinary people.
Simultaneously, she founded a nonprofit, built on the peer-to-peer lending model to teach access-limited youth how to invest in themselves and build self-sustaining income. She went on to mentor aspiring teen entrepreneurs, helping them tighten their business ideas before pitching to funders.
Design Librarian continues to give back with a percentage of their time dedicated to pro-bono design and community revitalization projects.
As a board member of nonprofit one of her missions was to to help LGBTQIA+ youth either aging out of the foster care system or who were displaced because of their identity, to find emergency shelter.
She has historically volunteered for a nonprofit that provided access to affordable housing to low income women and mothers.
She believes we all deserve to live in safe, happy, healthy homes that we are proud of.
19 years later, she has worked on everything - everything - apartments, condos, townhouses, dorm rooms, bachelor pads, bachelorette pads, a bridal studio, historic properties, restaurants, houses of worship, a funeral home, beach houses, mountain houses, mega-mansions, an aviary, and a dairy farm. Her projects have ranged from Vermont to Palm Beach, for people with famous last names, IMDB or Wikipedia pages, and for regular folks just like us.
Fun Facts: Emily is a retired competitive ballroom dancer (gold medal winning, she’d like to note) and currently undefeated at Just Dance in the Stein household.