Laura Hodges is passionate about her two greatest accomplishments—being a mom and running a design firm. They weave together like a beautiful tapestry—each satisfying on their own, but even more beautiful when intertwined.

Her business, Laura Hodges Studio, a boutique interior-design firm, and Domain by Laura Hodges Studio, her home décor shop, share a storefront along Catonsville’s Main Street—not far from where Hodges lives with her husband and two sons.

Hodges was born in northern England (to a British mother and Jamaican father) and lived there until she was five—you can still catch a slight accent when she speaks—but grew up in Montgomery County before heading to New York for college to study business, followed by the New York School of Interior Design. Hodges interned for award-winning designer Jamie Drake and worked as a design assistant for Thomas Jayne of the renowned Jayne Design Studio. “But I always knew I wanted to do my thing,” she says.

That entrepreneurial spirit was kicking in, even when she was a design novice. One of Hodges’ first solo projects was a client she found on Craigslist. The woman was looking for a trade—someone willing to help design her Manhattan apartment without charge, but in return the designer would have free rein.

“I could get my feet wet with her,” Hodges says. “She gave me complete creative freedom and the freedom to not worry about getting things wrong or all the liability when someone is paying you.”

They crafted a headboard together and shopped the local flea markets. She loved working one-on-one with a client outside the design firm. “I definitely want to do this on my own,” she remembers thinking. The end result was a happy client. Twelve years later and “we’re still friends,” she says.

In 2011—while living in Jersey City—Hodges had her first son. “I wanted to stay home with him for the first few years,” she says. And the baby made her realize she “wanted to be closer to family.”

Having grown up next door to her grandparents, she wanted the same for her children, and so the family moved back to Maryland—this time, Baltimore County. A second son followed, and Hodges relished her days as a stay-at-home mom. But she still had that interior designer itch, and the need to start creating again was strong.

“I didn’t want to jump straight into it,” says Hodges. But as her younger son started preschool and she was able to carve out more time, she dipped her toe into small projects here or there. “My first design project in Baltimore was from a mom’s group on Facebook,” she says.

Someone had requested a recommendation for an interior designer. A friend replied with her name. And soon she realized her limited free hours—nights and weekends when her husband was home and able to watch the kids—were actually an asset.

“Sure, I can meet you on Saturday at 2 p.m.,” she would say. Clients felt like she was being super accommodating. She’d piece together 15 hours a week she could dedicate to her part-time gig. (Plus, some evenings staying up until 2 a.m. and lots of weekends.) Not only was her availability influenced by being a parent, her design style was, too.

“I’m always thinking of the lifestyle of our clients, not just the aesthetics of the design,” says Hodges. “As a mom myself, I’m very aware of the practicalities of design planning, whether it’s the importance of organization, the durability of fabrics and finishes, or the ins and outs of balancing home life and work life.”

She also started to realize that interior design is not only about selling someone on your designs, but about selling them on yourself.

“You have to stand behind what you are coming up with and pitch it to them and make them see it in the same way you are seeing and imagining it,” she says.

Part of that is with renderings and drawings, she notes, but the other part is just being a good listener and knowing that your role sometimes extends beyond designer.

“There’s the sales part and the psychology part of it,” she says. “You have to have a really good connection with your clients. They have to trust you fully—because you’re spending all their money,” she adds with a laugh. “You’re also part marriage counselor because spouses want different things…you’re the middleman who has to make it all work.”

Two years ago, Hodges’ husband, Tim, left his job to come work with her and handle the business and operations side of the company so she could focus solely on clients and design. “We treat it like a third child,” says Hodges of their business.

Working with her husband is also a bonus for their clients, says Hodges. “I tell them, ‘You’re going to get a lot more time out of us.’”

It’s not unusual for Hodges to wake up in the morning and immediately ask her husband, “Do you remember the desk we ordered? Is it on the way?” she says. “He’s like, ‘I’m brushing my teeth—can you stop?’”

One of the big changes they were able to accomplish was putting Domain online. When they got word in 2019 that Hodges was being named a “Next Wave” designer (AKA rising star) by House Beautiful design magazine and that the shop was also getting a mention, they knew they needed to take things from just brick-and-mortar to e-commerce as well. The timing was oddly fortuitous. That was December—three months before the pandemic hit.

Domain is a “small but very curated collection of fair trade, sustainable, beautiful
items,” says Hodges. It’s a “representation of our design aesthetic.” Having a shop in addition to her design firm had always felt like a “pipe dream,” she says.

When they found and bought the Frederick Road place, with its big picture window, it was initially as an investment property to rent out to another retailer, but Hodges fell in love with the space. “If not now, when?” she thought. After all, the timing was right. Her boys were both in school full-time. Her parents lived across the street as extra support, and business was booming. She decided to take the plunge.

“It’s no longer an investment—it’s now a life change,” her husband told her.

The shop and her new design office opened in 2018—the same year Home & Design featured Hodges as one of their “Designers to Watch.” Currently, Domain does more online business than walk-ins. “It’s been great and unexpected.” And she relishes calling her local vendors and telling them, “I just sold a piece of your art to someone in California.”

When COVID-19 first hit, business ground to a halt. Everyone was scrambling to get groceries and toilet paper. No one was thinking about a full-house renovation in Hodges’ signature style—warm, tailored, layers with an international feel from fabrics, colors, and textures.

Eventually, when things started picking back up, clients were still worried about finances. Calls ranged from, “We’re going to hold off” to “The budget is a quarter of what it once was.” Hodges understood.

“We’re a luxury,” she says. Someone isn’t going to buy cheaper drywall, she explains, but perhaps they don’t need a headboard made of the finest fabric. But as everyone settled into the long-term realities of the pandemic, she started getting calls.

“Well, if we’re going to be home, we want it to be nicer,” people said. Hodges was happy to do her part for the economy. And the way she saw it, work for her company also meant work for local upholsters and contractors, furniture makers, and electricians. “A lot of people benefit from all those projects.”

It’s been a stellar year, work-wise, and she’s excited to see what 2021 will bring.

“As much as we loved the growth this past year, I don’t actually have a desire to have a big company,” says Hodges. “I love doing the design. I love the technical aspect of it. Not just managing other people’s work—but getting in there and doing the drawings and meeting with clients, selecting fabrics, and coming up with clever solutions for design and storage issues, and designing custom furniture and cabinetry.”

Says Hodges, “We’re a small studio, we’re a small shop. Right now—we’re good just where we are.”

Perhaps you associate wallpaper with a historic Victorian home you once toured, or even Andy Warhol’s vividly outlandish rows of pink cows on a yellow background from the ’60s. But more likely than not, when someone says “wallpaper,” your mind goes straight to your parents’ home.

“My parents always thought all homes should have wallpaper,” says Catonsville-based interior designer Laura Hodges, who moved from England to Gaithersburg in 1984. “In their case, it was nothing fancy— they mostly employed a neutral-toned grass cloth that added texture,” says Hodges, who now runs Laura Hodges Studio. “It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor or refined or not, it was just the thing to do.”

The popularity of wallpaper seemed to wane in the latter decades of the 20th century, thanks in part to a trend toward minimalism, not to mention the cost and difficulty associated with getting the paper on and off the walls. “We went through this whole minimalist, Scandinavian aesthetic that leaned more toward white walls and less wallpaper,” Hodges says.

But there are definite advantages to going with wallpaper. For one thing, it helps create the illusion of a larger space. It can also add an undeniable stamp of personality to an otherwise unremarkable room.

For those and other reasons, some designers say it never went out of style for a certain tier of clients who had the money to pay for installation—and, of course, a designer with an eye to pull it all together. Still, the average homeowner began to veer away from fussy wall treatments.

“For the retail consumer, it came and went, and came back,” says Hodges, who adds that she started seeing it pop up again about 10 years ago. “Wallpaper used to have mostly traditional patterns, but recently the newer, more modern styles, including removeable decals, have made wallpaper more popular again.”

Designer Jay Jenkins, president of Baltimore-based interior design firm Jenkins Baer, also believes wallpaper never really went out of style, but says the rules once associated with it have loosened drastically, which adds to its accessibility.

“The resurgence of scenic and panoramic wallpaper has almost completely changed the marketplace,” says Jenkins, who has been in the design business for 35 years. “Panoramic wallpaper was always strictly used in dining rooms for many, many years, and now the concept has blossomed to being used in bedrooms, hallways, and living rooms.”

Growing up in Rockville, Jenkins notes that many of his home’s rooms were papered—the foyer, dining room, and bathrooms, not to mention a foil orange and white striped paper paired with a brown shag carpet in his own bedroom. Nowadays, his personal style skews a bit more tasteful, with the designer using subtle papers in unexpected places such as dresser drawers, cabinets, and closets.

“I have a house in Easton, and all my closets are wallpapered,” he says. “Like, why wouldn’t you?” He feels that the bolder use of wallpaper and a more layered approach to patterns heralds a welcome change from the ubiquitous gray walls that have been trending for a few years.

“It’s part of the maximalism phase we’re all walking into,” he says. “That whole gray room is petering out behind us.”

Teddi Alyce Segal agrees. and is on the hunt for how to incorporate wallpaper both at home and in her work. She stages and designs investment houses as president and principal broker of Baltimore-based Honey House, “a strategy-based real estate and marketing collective” that specializes in the rehab of Victorian homes in such neighborhoods as Reservoir Hill and Bolton Hill.

She reports that she hasn’t seen much wallpaper in her line of work—except for the layers upon layers of old wallpaper found in the homes she renovates—but that she’s eager to start experimenting to see if modern buyers will bite when bold patterns grace the walls.

“I’m dying to use it in my projects,” she says. “I like to do stuff that’s very period appropriate. The wallpaper for these Victorians has a very specific flavor, and I sometimes wonder if the buyer will understand it and appreciate it. I don’t know the answer to that yet.”

One way she plans to find out is by using it in her own five-bedroom, three-story 1915 home in Reservoir Hill. Segal is considering wallpapers like Morris & Co.’s Strawberry Thief in indigo and mineral and a largescale version of Van Gogh’s “Almond Blossom” for an accent wall beside the staircase and in the small strip of her dining room wall above the wood paneling that climbs almost all the way up to the ceiling.

She likes that these patterns are Victorian-inspired, reflecting her style of period-appropriate but with a modern twist—and unlike the “tacky and busy” wallpapers she remembers from the 1970s.

Experts note that once you’ve decided to take the plunge into wallpaper and chosen a pattern that reflects your personality, the next step is figuring out how to accessorize without clashing. Hodges says there’s no rule of thumb, instead depending entirely on the wallpaper and the artwork. If it’s something simple like grass cloth or a clean stripe, most artwork would work just fine.

“Some wallpaper wants to be on its own,” she cautions. “Maybe you put up wall baskets or a mirror instead of some paintings. It’s just a case of making sure they don’t compete.”

Jenkins agrees, adding that it really depends on whether you want the wallpaper or something else in the room to be the focus. “If you’re using a scenic or panoramic wallpaper, everything takes second place to that,” he says. “That’s the important design statement you’re making. So you just have to make a choice.”

Photography by Jennifer Hughes

CUSTOM HOUSE

The increased availability of wallpapers in shops such as Anthropologie and online has certainly boosted the trend, but some fans of wall coverings prefer to completely customize their decor. That’s when a company like Holland and Sherry Wallcovering Studio in Owings Mills comes into play.

According to product manager Aubrey Dunn, that very ubiquity is what makes designers seek their custom wallcoverings when looking for something more unique and special.

“Right now, about 30 percent of what we do is completely custom, and that’s designing everything from start to finish,” confirms Cory Barber, creative director of wallcoverings. They are so customized that Barber often designs the tools to make new papers when they don’t have what’s needed to create a desired texture or effect.

“It’s a lot of repurposing, cutting things apart, and having the background knowledge of how paint application works,” he says. And before you ask, yes, it’s pricier than prefabricated wallpaper. But you can’t put a price tag on individuality.

You Do You

Mona Hajj, Mona Hajj Interiors

“We’ll see interiors with a more natural, effortless look that are beautiful and relate to the client, whether it is a well-traveled global interior or a simple lived-in interior. Less interesting are the staged and stylized interiors. They are more picture-pretty than livable.”

Plaster and Marble Sculptures

Katie Destefano, Katie Destefano Design & Owner of Curiosity…Intriguing Objects for the Home.

“Plaster and marble busts have been making a big comeback, as they add a lot of dimension and expression to a vignette. Try putting one in an unexpected place like your bathroom or closet to hold some of your accessories. If a bust still seems like too much, try a torso, hand, or even foot.”

Interior Greenery

Stephanie Bradshaw, Stephanie Bradshaw

“Plants, plants, and more plants. And bringing the outside in, not just with greenery, but natureinspired hues and warmer tones.”

Groovy Designs

Darra Sargent, Dear Darling Design Studio

“This year, we are moving away from all of the mid-century-inspired decor and moving on to a new decade—the ’70s. Think lots of oranges, yellows, and teals; macramé, rattan, velvet, terrazzo, fringe, and shag. All forms of design have been featuring ’70s-style shapes (half circles, half ovals, scalloped edges) and ’70s-inspired fonts. I think this year is going to be all about that hippie style, with a big focus on sustainability.”

Intermingling

Carmen Brock, Trohv

“Sustainable products are thankfully ever-present. It’s shifting away from being a trend and more toward a way of living long-term. This all seems to be co-mingling in a backdrop of minimalism, inspired by the declutter movement, a trend that I hope continues.”

The True Meaning of Home

Patrick Sutton, Patrick Sutton

“We have seen a strong shift toward decluttered, modern interiors filled with meaningful art and art objects—rooms that are fresh and forward-thinking while still warm and comfortable. People seem to be moving toward simplicity, quality, and a desire to make each moment of their lives memorable. And they look for their homes to reflect that desire.”

Marco Ricca

Greener Kitchens

Laura Hodges, Laura Hodges Studio

Sustainability in kitchen design is coming in strong for 2020. “We love Grohe’s new smart faucet that integrates filtered water, sparkling water, and tap water all into one faucet, eliminating the need for all kinds of plastic water bottles.”

Liveable Space

Kerry Leikus, Kerry Leikus Designs

“All white walls are out. It shouldn’t take most homeowners very long to see the obvious reasons why the white trend is less than desirable. Maintaining the pristine quality and allure of the all-white look can be difficult, especially if people intend to live in the space.”

Boho Out The Door

Quintece Hill-Mattauszek, Studio Q Designs

“We are going to start to see less and less of the free and flowy trend of the bohemian and Jungalow styles. Patterns such as Shibori, boho fringe, and woven rattans will step to the side to make way for a more tailored approach with a resurgence of upscaled vintage and retro pieces. Forget the throwaway pieces and look for the character and charm that can be modernized to fit your lifestyle.”

Colored Ceilings

Julie Lilienfeld, Athena Hoffberger, and Ryan Haase of Wishbone Reserve

“Painted ceilings are where it’s at. They make the room feel cozier and can hide a number of unsightly structural elements. Don’t be shy with your color choices. There’s lots of bright pops of color: magenta, cobalt blue, emerald green, sunshine yellow, and acid orange.”

Jewel Tones

Raina Smallwood, Cedar & Cotton

“What’s winning in 2020: deep, bold colors, specifically jewel tones. Hunter greens, deep teals, velvety plums, and even black are everywhere, and not just on our walls, but on house exteriors, kitchen cabinets, and sofas. Our homes feel more personal and lived-in, and that’s definitely a win.”

We’re all about spreading the love, offering sweet messages and thoughtful gestures to all the special people in our lives. But this year, we wanted to make sure we spread some love to, well, ourselves! Sometimes we all need a little nudge to remember to carve out some “me time,” so for this Valentine’s Day, we urge you to treat yourself to these much-needed self-care gifts.