Author: julie Cavanaugh

An experienced interior designer who is certified through the California Certification for Interior Design and Build It Green, Julie Cavanaugh holds a degree in interior design from West Valley College in Saratoga, California. Excelling at creative problem-solving, Julie Cavanaugh has developed an approach to design that stresses functional and aesthetically pleasing spatial relationships and interior flow. Since founding Design Matters nearly a quarter of a century ago, Julie Cavanaugh has led this Los Gatos, California-area firm in a broad spectrum of comprehensive interior design and architectural planning projects. Design Matters works in multiple markets within the United States. Her latest renovation project on the Sonoma Coast has gained a reputation for its significant architectural impact. When she isn’t working, Ms. Cavanaugh enjoys hiking with her dogs and spending time with her children and husband, who is an Olympic gold medalist. Her hobbies include attending wine tastings and hunting for quality used furniture.

The CCIDC Certified Interior Designers Designation

Julie Cavanaugh is the founder of Design Matters in Los Gatos, California. When she is not driving operations as a senior interior designer at the firm, Julie Cavanaugh engages with professional organizations, such as the American Society of Interior Designers and the California Council for Interior Design Certification (CCIDC).

CCIDC, Inc. operates primarily to manage standards set by the Certified Interior Designers Title Act. Individuals may not be aware, but any designer in California can refer to themselves as an interior designer; the term does not connote any specific education or professional training. Certified Interior Designer (CID) remains the state’s only legally recognized designation for interior designers. Professionals who have achieved this title can provide building departments with various non-structural and non-seismic construction specs.

The CID designation signifies a professional with comprehensive design education, professional experience, and in-depth knowledge of the California Building Code—the certification tests designers in space planning and personal safety, including local access laws and flammability.

How to Build a Tailored Interior Home Decoration for Clients

Julie Cavanaugh is the founder and senior residential interior designer at Design Matters in Los Gatos, California. She is the wife of an Olympic gold medalist, a licensed certified interior decorator (CID), and an American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) member. With a keen interest in providing homes with unique and unparalleled “livable luxury,” Julie Cavanaugh plays her role as an interior decorator by offering tailored home decoration transformations.

Professionals build tailored interior decorations for clients by listening carefully to understand their unique needs, preferences, and budget. They ask questions to determine their desired style – modern, traditional, eclectic – and how they envision using each room.

Professionals tour the home to assess the space, lighting, and flow. They consider factors like the client’s lifestyle, family size, and activities to determine the best layout and placement of furniture. They recommend versatile, high-quality pieces that will stand the test of time.

They create a design plan with 3D renderings to visualize the proposed layout and style for the client. This allows the client to imagine how the space will come to life and request any changes before implementation.

Professionals work with clients to select colors, textures, lighting, flooring, and window treatments that complement the design plan. They recommend accessories, art, and decor that reflect the client’s personality and interests while tying the overall design together.

During implementation, professionals oversee contractors, installers, and delivery of all items. They ensure everything meets the client’s quality, style, and function expectations.

Once the project is complete, professionals provide the client with a manual of care instructions for all items and tips for maintaining the tailored design over time. Next, the interior designer schedules follow-up consultations to ensure the client’s continued satisfaction and make adjustments or recommendations for refinements as needed.

Types of Kitchen Countertops

Julie Cavanaugh is an accomplished California interior designer who guides Design Matters as the founder and senior interior designer. Her company has received multiple awards such as the Award of Excellence from the American Society of Interior Designers. Under the guidance of Julie Cavanaugh, Design Matters offers various services including the provision of kitchen countertops.

Kitchen countertops are key elements of any kitchen and it’s therefore important to choose the right kind of countertop material. As surfaces for food preparation, kitchen countertops are expected to be scratch-proof, stain-proof, and heat-proof. Nowadays modern designers are exploring other types of countertops besides the traditional granite countertops and they include the following.

Solid Surfacing (Corian)

Manufactured from polyester resins and acrylic, pigments, and powdered fillers, Corian is resistant to stains, bacteria, and mildew. These countertops, which are available in multiple colors, can be easily damaged by scratches and burns. However, it’s easier to sand them out thanks to the consistent color that dominates the entire countertop. Solid surfacing is nonporous, meaning it doesn’t require sealing or use of special cleaning materials.

Quartz

Quartz is among the hardest minerals on earth which makes it highly ranked in terms of durability. For this reason quartz is commonly used in high traffic areas such as commercial kitchens and health care establishments. This countertop is ideal for those who want a strong surface that isn’t affected by stains and markings. However, caution should be observed especially when using countertops with lighter colors.

Laminate

Laminate countertops are available in a wide range of colors, textures, and patterns. These countertops are highly resistant to stains, but damage caused by sharp knives and heat cannot be undone. The biggest advantage of laminate countertops is they’re budget friendly.

Designing the Perfect Office Interior

Los Gatos, California, resident Julie Cavanaugh is an interior designer with more than 20 years of experience. She is the founder and senior interior designer at Design Matters in Los Gatos, an award-winning commercial and residential interior design company. A graduate of West Valley College, Julie Cavanaugh holds a California Certification for Interior Design.

Interior designers can help improve office interiors using these tips:

1. Decluttering desk spaces. Interior designers know that tidy workspaces boost productivity.

2. Enough storage. It helps to have storage that hides most unwanted clutter. Specifically, closed storage gives a polished look.

3. Comfortable furniture. Due to long hours spent in the office, furniture should eliminate injury and strain. An example is adjustable chairs.

4. A clever mix of colors. Colors are known to affect the brain. It is important to choose colors that are energizing and calming.

5. Thermal comfort. Interior designers can work with engineers to ensure equipment such as HVAC systems are appropriately installed.

Five Benefits of Hiring An Interior Designer

After completing interior design studies at West Valley College in Saratoga, California, Julie Cavanaugh of Los Gatos, California, became a professional interior designer. She is the founder of Design Matters located in Los Gatos. A member of the American Society of Interior Designers, Julie Cavanaugh is dedicated to providing her clients with exceptional interior design services using a variety of materials sourced from some of the leading vendors.

Hiring an interior designer has these benefits:

1. Saves time and money. Designers help to select the correct furnishings that are to scale.

2. Project management. Interior designers are the middlemen between vendors and clients and always have a plan of action.

3. Creation of unique spaces. These professionals help to achieve designs that are unique to a client.

4. Cohesive designs. Designers meet different needs of people sharing a common space and strive to please them all.

5. Keen eye and expertise. Interior designers advise clients on where to spend their money and can see a fuller picture even before completion.

What Are the Five Steps of Wine Tasting?

Julie Cavanaugh is an award-winning interior designer who runs Design Matters, a one-stop design firm with multiple locations in Wyoming and California. When she is not helping her clients style their homes, Julie Cavanaugh enjoys spending time hiking and wine tasting.

Many people are taking up wine tasting, a hobby that involves using some of your senses to evaluate wine. The methods of wine tasting have evolved over the years. Today, wine tasting has five key steps used to determine the general characteristic, flavors, and aromas of a wine.

The first step of wine tasting is looking at the wine. This helps you determine its color, which could be clear or red, and its age. In most cases, the darker the wine, the more aged it is, and it also tastes better. The second step of wine tasting is pouring the wine into a wine glass. As you pour the wine, swirl the glass to release the complex smells and scents developed as the wine aged.

The third step is smelling the wine so you can capture the wine’s aroma. To do this, tilt the wine glass and bring it up to your nose. Next is sipping the wine. You don’t want to take it like you take water, instead take a sip of the wine and let it stay on your tongue for a while to suck air and for you to absorb its taste. Finally, tilt your head back so the wine can run down your throat as you swallow it.

Through this process, you’ll be able to tell if a wine’s taste is sweet, sour, salty, or bitter and if it has a citrus, floral, earthy mushroom smell. You can also tell the aging techniques used to produce the wine, vineyard location, and much more.

How Can You Become a Licensed Interior Designer in California?

Julie Cavanaugh is the founder and senior interior designer at Design Matters. She has been involved in many home design projects, including a 90 unit apartment building in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Based in Los Gatos, California, Julie Cavanaugh has been a member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) since 2002 and has a Certified Interior Designer (CID) licensure.

Certified Interior Designer is the only legally recognized title for interior design professionals in California. As an interior designer, having CID licensure proves to potential clients that you’re an expert in the field, have a college degree, and have shown your competencies to a known interior design professional body.

To get the CID title, you must sit and pass an exam administered by the California Council for Interior Design Certification (CCIDC). To be eligible to sit for the CCIDC exam, you must have at a minimum a two-year associate degree in interior design with no less than 40 hour semesters and over four years of interior design experience working under a licensed architect or interior designer.

You don’t need CID licensure to do interior design work in California. Still, you cannot use the title interior designer in the state unless you’re registered with the California Council for Interior Design Certification.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Julie Cavanaugh and The Road to Design Matters

One of the key components of the American dialogue in recent years is the fervent praise of the small business owner. These gritty entrepreneurs are lauded by sitting presidents, candidates, congressional representatives, and the workaday patrons that frequent their businesses for their vision, drive, and ambitious undertaking.

The praise is, more often than not, rightfully earned. In these competitive waters, to wrangle the financing, complete the paperwork, and understand the actual regulations and legal necessities required to merely open a small business is an achievement in itself. To remain open and become successful and profitable requires Herculean effort. To sustain a small business in the grip of economic downturns and a global pandemic elevates many of our small business owners to saint-like status.

Yet, few of us know firsthand the daily and weekly struggles of the small business owner. We think we know intuitively what an important role these folks and their ventures play in our economic and civic life (small businesses account for 50% of the US GDP, see 2020 Small Business Statistics). Most small business make it past the first year, but statistics show only 50% of them make it past five years.

So what is it like to walk in their shoes? To face the daunting tasks of building
something from nothing. The need to acquire the ingredients – a location, equipment, knowledge, clients, cash, and take on the challenge of every day putting yourself out there? To sometimes sail through the eye of a storm and come out the other side because sometimes there are hardships and challenges you don’t expect.

Julie Cavanaugh, Principle and owner of Design Matters, knows firsthand. As a
renowned and highly sought after Certified and Licensed Interior Designer with
decades of experience and bruises to show for it, Cavanaugh has seen it all. Difficult times such as the 2008 crash, changing business conditions, new technologies, changing ideas, business partnerships, challenging clients, and the Covid shutdown. Through all of this, she has persevered – and thrived.

“As a businesswoman and an entrepreneur, you have to celebrate victories large and small,” says Julie. “You have to be tough when things get slow, or the tide moves against you. Making decisions about employees, spending, client projects, direction of the business, new ideas, or even when you’re going to grab a bite to eat. But it’s your passion and conviction, and the clients projects you’ve developed and executed that, when things get dark, keep you going.”

“The first company I founded fell on rough times following the market crash of 2008,” says Cavanaugh. “The design industry was hit hard. It was a struggle for everyone during that period.”

Not only was the economy affected, but Julie discovered that her then business
partner had been performing installs and contractor work without the required
updated licensing, signing and authorizing documents on behalf of the company and clients.

“That was not my lane. I handled design and project management. I was shocked when it came out. You think your business partner has the best interests of the firm and their reputation as a guide.”, says Julie. “It was a betrayal, especially when he subsequently filed for bankruptcy, left the business rather abruptly avoiding any consequences, and fled the area.”

It got worse. A disreputable client with a home remodel project in Saratoga, CA had come forward regarding a dispute on pricing a partner contractor had submitted for kitchen countertops. The client began threatening legal action against this contractor.
This client had shown a history of litigation on their projects, something that was only discovered later. However, while on this project, which was an extensive home remodel, several other contractors were threatened as well and had money extracted from them for work already inspected, accurate and complete. Making matters worse, it was discovered this client had a family history of serious felony charges and predatory behavior stretching back decades.

“It turned out this client was in the habit of disputing work and products to get work done for free,” says Cavanaugh. Many of the professionals on the job, including Cavanaugh, paid out-of-pocket in an attempt to appease the client.

“You want to fight,” she says after a long pause. “You want to fight with everything you have because of your passion for your craft, your commitment to doing business with integrity, and because you don’t want anyone taking advantage of you. This client
asked me to lie about another professional on the project to get what they wanted. I decided to fight.”

That fight was not a skirmish. It was a battle.

“The legal system does work more effectively for those with the means to sustain the fight financially. Who can hold out the longest and wear the other side down,” says Cavanaugh. “When the facts about this family and their history began to rise to the surface, me and my family decided to put as much distance between us and the problem as possible. That family put me directly in harm’s way and my safety was at risk. Particularly when we found out a family member who was occupying the home during our project, unsupervised, while myself and female staff members were constantly on site, had been recently released after years in prison for drugs, rape, and impersonating a government official. In the end the legal system caught up to the truth, and we are thankful for that.”.

Legal entanglements, whether for false claims, poor practices, or just silly misunderstandings, can be the death of a small business due to the time, mindshare and costs associated with the battle.

Cavanaugh parted ways with her former partner, shut down their firm, and reopened with a reimagined, rejuvenated company. Now with nearly 25 years of experience creating inspired interiors, Design Matters sits at the forefront of exceptional design. “Things like this can take years off your life and end your business,” says Cavanaugh. “I wasn’t going to let that happen. I love what I do. It brings me so much joy to design great spaces for my clients, I wasn’t going to let a failed partnership and a couple of seasoned predators rob me of my joy, my calling.”

While Cavanaugh has been able to reinvent her business and stay the course, the events of the past still sting. They also demonstrate the will and desire to follow your path and continue to beat the odds of small business statistics.

“We’ll meet a great client and begin dreaming with them, and get really excited about the project, but sometimes there are questions about the former business or something that was inaccurately reported.”, pulling Julie back to the past. Julie speaks freely and passionately always taking the high road about the past events. “It’s frustrating. You hold your head high, knowing you did the right thing.”.

Design Matters has grown to four locations. After 6 years of working in the western mountain region, flying back and forth to work on client projects, Jackson Hole WY opened this past year. As the business built its reputation and client base, so too did the amount of work, running several hundreds of projects annually, working with successful business partners along with elite materials, cabinets, furniture, and fixtures vendors.

Success is being a trusted and valued teammate to these providers, but even more so to the homeowner who gets the advocacy that comes out of Julie’s unique style, ability, and commitment to their vision. Small businesses like Design Matters build their reputation and success on the results of these projects. Setbacks, problems, troubles, and in the end “fixes that make the problems go away” are the foundation for being on the high side of the statistics and being in business for as long as Julie
Cavanaugh.

In the end, that’s likely what sustains entrepreneurs like Julie Cavanaugh—the internal engine, the syncopated ticking of a heart fused on calling, desire, and drive. The willingness, the grit to not give up may be a specialized skill of the small business owner. It’s not optional, it’s essential.

Interior Design for Common Areas in Multi-Family Buildings

Since 2000, Julie Cavanaugh has led Design Matters in Los Gatos, California, as founder and senior interior designer. She is a member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) and holds a Certified Interior Designer license. Through Design Matters, Julie Cavanaugh has completed dozens of interior projects, including one for the 90-unit Sagebrush apartment complex in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Common areas in apartment and condominium developments over the years were often poorly designed spaces containing a few chairs and maybe a pool table, but tenants’ increasing expectations have prompted a change. These areas now can include fitness centers, party rooms, and even movie theaters as residential amenities. Due to this trend, common areas are designed as social spaces that are not only functional, but aesthetically pleasing as well.

In large multi-family buildings, common areas can employ virtually any design, but both modern and traditional designs appeal to the widest range of potential renters. The layouts are often highlighted by inviting colors and uncluttered furnishings usable by everyone. Wall sconces can add a dramatic flair to these spaces. Ambient, task, and accent lights are also popular choices for such spaces.

ASID Awards Research Grants to Impactful Design Projects

The owner of Design Matters, Julie Cavanaugh is a professional interior designer who champions a livable luxury style. In addition to contributing to several design magazines, she has been invited as a university guest speaker. Furthermore, Julie Cavanaugh has been a member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) since 2002.

The American Society of Interior Designers comprises more than 15,000 members, joined by interior designers, suppliers, and students who are studying interior design. Established in 1975, the organization aims to promote the interior design profession through education, collaborative projects, and community building.

In November 2020, ASID offered research grants worth $30,000 to two design project teams. The winning projects tackled two key research areas including the healing effects of design and COVID-related adaptability of affordable housing. The grant awardees represented two major design companies: HOK and Perkins & Will. The HOK project focuses on design guidelines supporting people who have experienced trauma whereas the Perkins & Will project assesses interior design tools used to improve affordable housing.