Six Iconic Female Interior Designers in California to Celebrate

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California is a design diaspora. It’s home to everything from the eclectic Hearst Castle to the Painted Ladies in San Francisco to midcentury desert modernism in Palm Springs to experimental hillside homes in Los Angeles. The state has never produced (and will never produce) just one kind of interior design. The state boasts radically different architectural histories, climates, and client expectations, and its designers reflect that complexity. Some practices grow into global brands. Others focus on deeply personal, completely individual residential work shaped through collaboration and long-term relationships. What connects them is not a shared aesthetic but a shared influence on how design is practiced, discussed, and disseminated across the world today.

From Kelly Wearstler to Staci Munic, the designers featured below represent different generations, business models, and creative priorities, yet each woman has made an enduring impact on both this state and our industry. Whether in multidisciplinary studios working across hospitality and product design or residential firms focused on storytelling and client experience, their work demonstrates how California continues to function as a testing ground for ideas that ripple through the wider industry.

Six Iconic Female Interior Designers in California to Celebrate

Kelly Wearstler

We simply cannot discuss interior design in California without uttering Kelly Wearstler’s name. Kelly Wearstler has spent decades shaping what “California luxury” means in both professional design circles and mainstream culture. Her Los Angeles studio works across interiors, architecture, industrial design, curation, and creative direction. She founded the company in 1995, and it has grown into a multidisciplinary team of roughly fifty people working across many project types and scales.

Her own description of the practice centers tension and contrast. The studio talks about “elemental dichotomies,” and that language makes sense when you look through her portfolio. Material and form drive the experience. Color, surface, and shape feel structural instead of ornamental. There is a constant push and pull between the graphic and the organic, the architectural and the tactile, the contemporary and the vintage.

Of course, Wearstler’s influence also extends beyond the studio’s client work. She has built a “global brand” in her words, including collaborations with major companies and a large public-facing product presence. This kind of mega-expansion usually weakens authorship and dilutes the brand. In her case, it has strengthened name recognition and kept her point of view at the center of the business. Wearstler shows that California design far exceeds the ease or informality that many reduce it to. It can be layered, complex, and historically rich. It can be maximalist. It can be textural and unexpected. Her interiors argue for California as a nexus of cultural synthesis rather than stylistic simplicity.

Amber Lewis of Amber Interiors

Amber Interiors is a full-service studio based in Los Angeles. The firm takes on ground-up builds, gut renovations, and furnishing-heavy projects. Their work includes residential projects and boutique commercial spaces, and the team emphasizes close coordination with architects and builders from early planning through installation.

Lewis has become widely known for interiors that feel layered and livable. She often uses vintage and eclectic pieces. Textiles and natural materials are mentioned frequently in her own framing of the work, and she describes her projects as “aspirational yet functional.” She also describes the ideas as “heritage-inspired,” with an interest in spaces that can handle real life without feeling precious.

Her business has grown well beyond a single design studio. She runs Shoppe Amber Interiors, has published two books, and maintains an editorial platform. She has also developed product collaborations across furniture, rugs, lighting, and other categories with brands including Anthropologie, Loloi, Four Hands, Visual Comfort, and Etsy. And yes, the DesignDash Community met with Amber at a High Point party a couple years ago. She was genuinely lovely.

Noz Nozawa

Noz Nozawa speaks with a distinctly contemporary voice within California residential design, one grounded in a distinct point of view yet resistant to stylistic repetition. She founded Noz Design in San Francisco in 2014. Since then, it has evolved into a full-service studio that works across residential, hospitality, and retail projects throughout the Bay Area, Lake Tahoe, New York, and beyond. Working from San Francisco, she approaches interiors as collaborative constructions shaped through dialogue with clients rather than predetermined aesthetic doctrine. Color operates structurally across her projects. It organizes circulation, establishes hierarchy, and clarifies spatial relationships instead of functioning as decorative afterthought.

Her interiors often juxtapose saturated palettes with disciplined planning. Custom furnishings appear alongside vintage pieces, yet composition never feels accidental. Earlier experience inside large architecture and multidisciplinary firms informs that precision, and her academic background in economics alongside art history suggests an analytical framework beneath the visual richness. Proportion matters. Placement matters. Decisions feel considered even when the atmosphere appears relaxed.

Nozawa frequently speaks about the psychological role of home; she frames interiors as environments tied to wellbeing rather than displays of status. That perspective aligns with the studio’s broader ethos, which emphasizes transparency with clients and collaborative problem-solving throughout the design process. The firm’s community involvement and status as a woman-owned, POC-owned business further situate her work within San Francisco’s civic and cultural landscape rather than outside it.

Industry recognition is wide-ranging for Noz and her team. Noz Design has appeared on the 1stDibs 50, Architectural Digest’s New American Voices, House Beautiful’s Next Wave, and Sunset Magazine’s Best Designer of the West, with projects regularly published in major design and lifestyle publications. Nozawa’s work suggests that individuality and rigor are not opposing forces. California design, in her hands, accommodates personality without sacrificing technical control or professional clarity.

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Kathryn M. Ireland

Kathryn M. Ireland is based in Santa Monica and brings a distinctly transatlantic sensibility to California interiors. She is British-born and describes her practice as rooted in “sympathetic restorations” alongside high-profile residential work, including projects for Hollywood clients. She also has public recognition through Bravo’s Million Dollar Decorators, which broadened her audience beyond the design industry.

Ireland is explicit about what she likes. Bold color matters to her. Pattern, texture, and what she calls “the beauty of imperfection” matter too. Her own language about “grand European style” paired with “cool California chic” is a useful shorthand for understanding Ireland’s style, even if it’s a little glossy. It’s interesting to see the polish and formality of European design without its stiffness, and the relaxation of American design without being too casual.

She has also built a substantial product and manufacturing arm. Her website points to textile collections, woven collections, and upholstered goods, with production kept in the United States. She has authored seven books, including A Life in Design tied to the 30th anniversary of her design and textile business. Publication presence is extensive. She is frequently featured in major magazines and is repeatedly included on the ELLE Decor A-List, with additional recognition from The Hollywood Reporter.

Pamela Shamshiri of Studio Shamshiri

Pamela Shamshiri co-founded Studio Shamshiri in Los Angeles in 2016. Her background includes production, art direction, and set design, and that training can absolutely be seen in the studio’s attention to atmosphere and composition. The firm works across residential, commercial, and hospitality projects, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Its portfolio includes restorations of homes by architects with major historical value, including A. Quincy Jones, Rudolph Schindler, Myron Hunt, and Buff and Hensman. It also includes ground-up work with contemporary firms like Marmol Radziner and Johnston Marklee. Outside residential commissions, Studio Shamshiri has completed boutiques for Los Angeles designers and retailers, plus the Maison de la Luz hotel in New Orleans.

Before Studio Shamshiri, Pamela was a founding partner at Commune. Commune received a National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum for work completed between 2004 and 2015. Studio Shamshiri is located in the Thomson Building, a 1920s Hollywood landmark that the team restored in 2017. The studio talks about archival research, traditional building methods, and local craft. It also emphasizes non-toxic, natural materials and a broader interest in wellness and environmental responsibility.

Staci Munic of Staci Munic Interiors

Staci Munic Interiors is a full-service design-build firm based in Chicago and Palm Springs. The studio works coast to coast, and Staci describes her aesthetic as a blend of “big city edge” and “resort lifestyle.” She also positions the work around listening closely to clients and translating their goals into spaces that feel vibrant and cohesive.

The firm highlights its network of builders, architects, artisans, and specialized trades, which is of incredible value to clients embarking on design-build projects. Staci also discusses the emotional side of residential renovation. She notes that changing a home can feel overwhelming, and she frames her role as helping clients make decisions while keeping the investment “top of mind.” Clients want a beautiful home, but they also want fewer sleepless nights, which is what Staci’s team delivers.

Her personal background is unusually varied for the industry. She describes herself as both an entrepreneur and an educator. She is bilingual, holds an undergraduate degree in business and hospitality management, and also has a master’s degree in education. She has bought, remodeled, and sold nine homes herself, which informs the way she talks about project stress and decision-making; clients can relate to her in ways they might not other designers.

Professional affiliations and recognition abound, including ASID Affiliate status, a monthly contributor role for the River North Design District blog, features on Houzz TV Live, participation in Palm Springs Modernism Week, service on Monogram’s Designer Council, board membership with the Palm Springs Modern Committee, and a Southern California Luxe Red Award Winner in 2021 for Outdoor Living Spaces. And for our readers specifically, she’s also part of the DesignDash Community, which means that we are extra proud to celebrate her!

Final Thoughts on California Interior Design

Taken together as a collection, these designers illustrate why California resists a single stylistic definition. Geography alone makes that inevitable. Coastal cities, desert landscapes, historic enclaves, and rapidly evolving urban centers demand far different responses, and the designers working here have never agreed on one visual language. Instead, they share a willingness to experiment, to borrow across disciplines, and to build practices that redefine design.

As shown above, California design allows for contradiction. It accommodates maximalism and restraint, historical reverence and forward-looking experimentation, global influence and deeply personal storytelling. The women featured here demonstrate how authorship can expand without losing clarity of vision, and how regional design can shape conversations far beyond state (or country) borders. California interiors might be regularly restricted to “relaxed,” “cool,” and “minimalist.” But in truth, the state is a laboratory, not a factory, for design.

Written by the DesignDash Editorial Team
Our contributors include experienced designers, firm owners, design writers, and other industry professionals. If you’re interested in submitting your work or collaborating, please reach out to our Editor-in-Chief at editor@designdash.com.