Decorating & Design
May 19, 2021
Take A Peek Inside Ali Budd Interiors’ Fashionable Head Office
Designer Ali Budd’s new office is packed with daring design decisions: a bubblegum pink kitchen, a lavish powder room with a cool cubed marble vanity and a main work area energized with leopard-print wallpaper. It’s a perfect reflection of the unique style Ali Budd Interiors has become known for. The space was created after Ali’s nine-person team — whom she regards as friends — suggested it would be strange for the president of Ali Budd Interiors not to have a room of her own.
“Our whole vibe as a company is unoffice-y,” says Ali, who balanced work and life by adding a stylish nursery for her baby, Jemma, who turned one in April. And before Covid, her two older children, Joey, 8, and James, 6, would meet their tutor after school in the office, an arrangement Ali loved. “When you run a business, it’s challenging to dedicate time to your family and to the business,” says Ali. “They meld together, and I purposefully created space here for both parts of my life.”
She moved from her old office, just a few blocks over, when the team outgrew the space. “The second I walked in here and saw how big and bright it was, I loved it,” she says. The 2,300-square-foot former warehouse is located in Toronto’s Castlefield Design District. Many of the major design retailers — Elte, Stone Tile, Kravet, Kohler and Home Société, to name a few — are close by. “It’s very easy for us to pop over to them or vice versa, plus I live 10 minutes away. We signed a lease quickly.” She renovated it over four weeks and the team made the move in December 2019.
Scroll down to tour this stylish and hardworking office!
Ali at the entrance to the office, which is marked by a seven- foot-tall marble wall. When travel opens up again, there could be clients flying in from Miami (where the company is decorating a palatial waterfront house) or New Jersey (where it’s building an opulent pad by the ocean), so having a slick office is crucial. “How can we work in luxury interior design and have a hideous bathroom?” says Ali. “How can we ask clients to invest if we don’t?”
Open ductwork, honed concrete floors (they were so good she left them as is) and black factory windows were a great shell for her design scheme.
The sample library has everything to pull a house together. Bins are bursting with fabrics, and there’s also wallpaper, tile and hardwood flooring samples. “I’m most proud that our portfolio is diverse,” says Ali. “We don’t do the same house over and over again.”
“We’re big into collaboration,” says Ali. “The whole team finds images and samples they love, then we pin them up as inspiration.”
“How many offices have leopard-print wallpaper?” says Ali.
The “living room” is a spot to hang out with clients or the team. The neon sign is one of Ali’s favorite sayings.
The kitchen is pretty in pink. “We wanted something bold we wouldn’t have the opportunity to do in a residential setting,” says Ali.
Ali had a fun, graphic desk custom made and topped in Nero Marquina marble to contrast the soft, ombré wallpaper.
When Ali’s daughter Jemma is older, her nursery will be turned into an office.
“We did a classic powder room that feels like it could be in a house,” says Ali. Sultry charcoal wallpaper makes the Calacatta Nero marble vanity pop.
Alex Lukey
House & Home May 2021
Ali Budd