An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Giving your living room a fresh coat of paint can really transform your space. Whether it’s a fresh coat of white or opting for a bold accent wall, it can make a huge difference.
As part of my series on the “5 Things You Can Do To Help Your Living Space Spark More Joy”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brittany Farinas.
House of One is a multifaceted Miami-based interior design firm, specializing in curated luxury residential and commercial projects. By prioritizing creativity and an exceptional client experience, CEO and Creative Director Brittany Farinas is known for guaranteeing that every client experiences The Art of Living With Style. With their promise to deliver a distinct style of seamless luxury living, HO1 creates fluid interiors through elaborate spatial planning and FF&E selection. Making it their mission to design spaces that tell a story and exceed the expectations of their clients through high quality 3D visualization, HO1 strives to create stunning, experiential properties while encouraging their clients to become creative collaborators.
At House of One, no design is ever the same. Brittany and her team are able to showcase this through custom furniture design, which is what the firm is most known for. Having designed some of the most notable interiors in South Florida and with works featured in AD Pro, Domino, Vogue Living, The Wall Street Journal and Haute Residence, to name a few. House of One has carved and solidified their place as one of the fastest growing and most influential firms in the interior design sphere.
Thank you so much for joining us in this series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
My mom worked at El Dorado Furniture for 15 years. I spent most of my childhood there, roaming the showroom, and hanging out in the sales office. I completely overlooked interior design as a career and my mom never tried to push anything onto me — she always encouraged me to be free-spirited and to express myself through any avenue I wanted to. After high school, I went to Florida International University for nursing school and quickly realized that’s not what I wanted to do. I’ve always expressed myself through different arts — so, after doing extensive research, I realized that I wanted to pursue real estate and interior design. I worked at a prominent commercial real estate firm while studying interior design at the University of Miami. During that time, I got the opportunity to work on my first residential design project. From then, it’s been a domino effect and I’m so happy I chose this path because it’s what I am most passionate about and couldn’t imagine my life any other way.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
The most interesting story that happened to me since I started my career was one of my clients, who is like family to me, purchased his first home in 2019, which we worked on and sold it fully furnished once we completed it, which was never part of his plan. During the renovation process, we always admired the house on the corner of his street. He surprised me one day when he told me he sold his house and bought the one on the corner. We were convinced this was going to be his forever home, and we designed it with such great attention to detail. Well, it turns out…He just sold this home, again fully furnished, and now relocating to another, which we will work on together. Each home just gets better and better every time!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I was working on my first project, we selected a white paint color — but only swatched it in some of the areas in the home. After the entire home was painted, there were areas that looked completely pink. After going through that, we now swatch paint in every room of the project, because paint always has a funny way of changing colors depending on what is reflecting in the room.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
We’re working with a non-profit organization at the Lindsey Hopkins Technical College, run by Karen Fryd and Diana Venturini. They have converted two rooms into a prom room, where they invite unprivileged kids to come once a year to have a full prom shopping experience. They can take home a full outfit with shoes and accessories. We are redesigning the space with more of an elevated boutique feel. They also have a shop where they invite families to come in and be able to shop school supplies, food, clothes, and shoes all at no cost. We are excited to reveal this project next year- and grateful to be able to give back in their community through the power of design.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote at the moment is: “Where your focus goes, energy flows.” This is such a powerful quote because being able to stay focused in the present moment is so important when becoming inspired for a project, or when having to manage the day-to-day project management aspect of the design process.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I’m very grateful for one of my mentors, who was my boss where I worked in commercial real estate. He taught me a lot about how to deal with clients, how to provide top quality customer service, and how to be patient.
Thank you for that. Here is the main question of our discussion. What are your “5 Things You Can Do To Help Your Living Space Spark More Joy” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
- Giving your living room a fresh coat of paint can really transform your space. Whether it’s a fresh coat of white or opting for a bold accent wall, it can make a huge difference.
- Accessorize! One of the biggest pain points I see in the design industry is understating the need for accessories. A fully accessorized space is what is going to allow one to appreciate the other furniture elements in a room and what ties everything together.
- Throw pillows are a terrific way to bring color and warmth into a living room. We love hand-picking our fabrics and turning them into pillows to make a space feel custom and beautiful!
- Good lighting is important to have in a living space. We design our living spaces to have functional lighting and mood lighting. Nothing worse than having a living room that is either too bright or too dark and not in between.
- Layering is important to make a space feel cozy. Whether it’s layering a monochromatic scheme of pillows, throws, and accessories or wood, stone, and other materials — this is what is going to give your living room that visual interest.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would say let’s start to treat our on-site workers better. I feel that oftentimes they don’t get the proper credit for making a project happen. They are the execution of our designs, and a sizable portion of our population is construction and on-site workers in Miami.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this, especially if we tag them 🙂
Kelly Wearstler! I look up to her in so many ways. She is such an icon and has inspired me to take more risks, and to own being myself. I would love to be able to chat with her.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Instagram: @Brittanyalexa_ and @houseofone_
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational!
Brittany Farinas of House of One: 5 Things You Can Do To Help Your Living Space Spark More Joy was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.