Project Spotlight: W Design Collective Office

Beautiful design is often accomplished through the small, thoughtful details—something Utah-based interior design firm W Design Collective understands entirely. Their new office, a lively yet refined space containing a host of discerning designers, is filled with intentional tile details from the entry’s custom mosaic floor to standout trim moments in both bathrooms.

We chatted with Marianne Brown, Founder and Design Principal of W Design, to hear about the inspiration behind this elegant space and how her and her team brought it all together. Keep reading for the full interview!

Meet Marianne!

Hi Marianne! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and W Design Collective?

I am Marianne Brown, owner and principal designer of W Design Collective, a custom interior design firm based in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was born and raised in Salt Lake and am feeling very fortunate to be a part of the growing design community here in Utah. W Design Collective has been around for 12 years and has grown from a team of just myself for five years, to a team of 16. I am married with three daughters and find a lot of fulfillment in motherhood combined with being a business owner - it’s a crazy combination that makes for a busy life, but so fulfilling.

When did you first become interested in design? How did you get your start?

I started W Design in 2012 after remodeling my own home and discovering a hidden passion and talent for design. My educational background is in Political Science and I worked as a project manager in advertising, but as I tell many, the job of being an interior designer tends to find you, rather than the other way around.

I would also say that my grandmother initially inspired me. She had excellent taste in decor and I loved visiting her in Washington D.C. and seeing all of her great antiques and beautiful plates. She was a very classy woman and believed in manners and decorum and I think what inspired me was that even though her life was messy in a lot of ways, she created beauty and order in her home by taking pride in her space and in hosting her family. It communicated love. That’s what inspires me most.

Can you tell us about your design process? What is your favorite part?

My design process always starts with a story. What story are we going to tell through the design of my client’s home? Who are they? Where did they come from? Creating a sense of place, of personality, of connection.

As far as my favorite part of the technical part of design, I would say it’s the beginning and the end of a project - the architecture phase and the styling/install phase. There’s nothing worse to me than a bad floor plan and use of space. I would work for free just to save people from bad architecture plans if I could. The styling phase of the project is where a lot of the homeowner’s personality gets displayed and really pulls it all together. It’s also the phase of the project where a lot of design fails in my opinion, so it’s a difficult and deeply satisfying phase.

Let’s talk about your gorgeous office space! Is there a story behind this project you’d like to share? What type of look or aesthetic were you going for?

Thank you! In a lot of ways I feel like I’ve been planning for this office from the first day I started working. It’s located down the street from my personal home, in the town I grew up in, and it is the workplace to 15 amazing women that I always imagined working with one day and have now manifested into existence.

We are just leasing the space but we wanted to invest into it, particularly in the interior, to look and feel like a high-end residence/boutique hotel (a project that I’m trying to manifest into my future as well). We spend a lot of time in our office as we are a very collaborative firm and don’t have any remote co-workers, so having a nice space that will uplift and inspire us to do our best work was important to me and all of us. It’s also a fun space where we could showcase some fun details that our clients are sometimes afraid to incorporate into their residences, like our beautiful mosaic entry floor.

The mosaic floor is stunning. What drew you to mosaic tile for this application? How did you land on the design and colors?

One of our lead designers, Maddie Kiene, led our office project and came up with the idea by pulling mosaic tiled entrances from hotels and commercial spaces in NYC and surrounding areas and we loved the look. I would say at least 30 percent of our business is on the East Coast so even though the style might not be quite “local” to our Utah location, it is meaningful to our business and also a beautiful/timeless look.

There are two beautiful bathrooms in this space that have two-toned wainscoting. Can you tell us the inspiration behind each bathroom?

We draw a lot of our design inspiration from historic homes and you see a lot of this two-toned tile wainscoting in historic homes and we felt it was fitting. Also we were very inspired by the color offerings of Fireclay - particularly your reds, yellows and blues. We don’t see these colors in a lot of the tile lines so we wanted to make sure to take advantage of the uniqueness of Fireclay.

Both bathrooms feature standout trim. How did you decide on your trim choices? What do you love about working with trim?

We fell in love with the yellow round trim - it almost looks like pieces of candy - so playful but not cheesy. We also love a tile baseboard and trim. Tile trim can take a “typical” subway tiled wall and elevate it to a custom and richer look with little effort. The shapes of Fireclay’s trim pieces in particular is what really drew us to them. The stepped profile of the blue trim and the rounded detail of the yellow trim is unique and creates depth and interest in a unique way.

Do you have a favorite tile moment from this project?

The yellow trim has my heart. I really like how we repeated it right above the baseboard pieces as well. It adds just the right amount of character and whimsy and looks amazing with our Harrison Stripe wallpaper.

Which of our tiles would you love to use in future projects?

All of them - truly, and most definitely the mosaic tiles from our entrance. Because of the handmade nature of Fireclay’s mosaic tile and the face-taped-in-house sheets, the mosaic tile had a bit of character, which made for a better install process. With machine placed mosaics, you often see the individual sheets once they are laid and if the spacing is just a hair off it can be extremely noticeable which then requires a higher labor cost, but with Fireclay’s handmade nature there is a natural variation to the spacing, allowing you to roll with the character and the install turns out much better. Also, the colors. I can’t emphasize enough how amazing the range of colors is especially when it comes to mosaics.