Not gonna lie, I’m totally fangirling over Leanne Ford, whom you may know from her HGTV show Restored by the Fords. She’s a super cool designer with a super cool attitude. Everything she touches and puts together is cool and chic and I just can’t get enough. I’m so excited to share our Q&A for the April Designer Spotlight!!

I had seen her work in recent years and then she and her brother starred in Restored by the Fords, where they renovated people’s houses in their hometown of Pittsburgh. I fell in love immediately because of her sense of style, her quirkiness and the fact that HGTV is finally reinvesting air time in straight up design. The first season just aired and, if you haven’t seen it, I highly suggest you find a way to watch it.

Even though she is mega busy and popular, I scraped up the courage to reach out to her and see if she’d be interested in doing a Q&A. She said yes immediately and called me when she had a 15-minute break in her schedule to answer some questions. See? I told you she was super cool!

Q. You were first in fashion and then moved into interior design after you renovated your first house, a schoolhouse in Pittsburgh (as seen in Country Living magazine). How did you maneuver that transition?
A. I totally did the schoolhouse. I learned as I did it. My first client was a local jewelry line that was a high school friend of mine and they asked me to design their office. I said, “I’ll do it, but just be warned, I have no idea what I’m doing.” They were really easy and patient and they knew this was new for me so they let me learn as I went along. I’m still learning. Every client I’m taking on, I’m still learning and usually it’s through messing up.

Q. Has there ever been a mess up that you couldn’t get out of?
A. No, it’s more just kind of time. There’s just something you have to fix. Luckily, I’ve never done any mess ups that involved lots of money. There’s always a support team with me. There’s engineers, architects, contractors, and they can keep you in check, which is good. There’s never anything big. There’s just little stuff that will take time for me to adjust.

Q. So how did you actually get into interior design?
A. I was in fashion for 15 years and after the schoolhouse, people started asking me to do their projects. It was such a natural evolution because it’s just creation. It’s how you put things together, thinking through things differently. It was totally a natural move. What I love about design is that more people could enjoy it for a longer period of time. You make an outfit, you paint a picture, it’s done. When you make a beautiful interior project, then it lives a longer life.

Q. That’s a beautiful way of looking at it. What do you love most about it?
A. Loving it all. When you’re done with a project and the client is happy, it’s the best. You give them their keys back and let them go into their happy home. My favorite thing is to say “Wait ‘til you wake up tomorrow.” It’s so fun to wake up in your new house. That’s always kind of been my favorite part, seeing them happy. I don’t need to live in it. I just like creating it.

Q. What I really love about your work is how you take old buildings and modernize them all while respecting the building. How did you hone that style and is it tricky?
A. It’s easy for me, but I know it’s a tricky thing. Everyone on the planet, we all have different things that we’re good at. We all have different ways that our brain works and my brain just works so spatially, I would say. I can walk into a room or house and I can see it done already. It’s not even a thing. So then the process is just to get it to that place. I don’t know why or how it happens, but it happens. My thing is, and the show’s a great example, all of these homes either have character or you have to add character. That’s my starting point. So when you walk into a home, you say what’s the most interesting thing that I want to see here? Where do I play? And then from there, you can make your plan of the modernization. The house is really important to salvage and save character but, at the end of the day, the homeowner is more important. They need to love their home. It needs to be equal for them, how they need it. It’s a total puzzle and I like puzzles.

Q. How was working with HGTV?
A. It was amazing. We had an amazing producer, Mary Beth Anderson, and an amazing director, and they were so lovely to work with. We had such a nice time, you really forget about the cameras. Your true personality is coming out whether or not there’s a camera there. Nobody can pretend to be what they’re not for that long of a period of time.

Q. How are you handling the experience?
A. We’re totally just riding the wave. I told the network I was a designer when you all showed up and I’ll be a designer when you’re gone. I’ll be creating something my whole life. My whole career has been saying yes and seeing what happens and comes along.

Q. What’s next for you?
A. Now we’re going to do a season 2 and we’re doing 14 new episodes. We’ve already started casting and we have a bunch of houses that we’re already starting to work on. There are really fun houses in Pittsburgh.

Q. Any last words?
A. If you want to do interior design, I say go do it. If we’re called and drawn to it, then we have to do it.

Leanne Ford’s work is something I’ll be excited to see for years to come. I hope you agree! Check her out on Instagram and her site.

To see previous Designer Spotlight Q&As, read here.

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