To-The-Trade Episode Summary
Susan Jamieson of Bridget Beari Designs joined Laurie Laizure on To-The-Trade for Interior Design Community to talk about turning 35 years in interior design into a full design studio, a home store, a paint line, a wallpaper line, and a brand new book. The company name comes from her two rescue dogs, not her own name, and that was on purpose.
Susan says she gets called “Bridget” all the time and does not mind. She wanted the brand separate from her own identity from the start, even though she took criticism for the choice early on. Keeping the business name apart from her own gives her room to sell it, expand it, or step back one day without the brand disappearing with her.
Susan did not set out to become a designer. She started college studying economics, planning to become a stockbroker, and found the oversized lecture halls stifling. When her mother hired an architect and a designer to renovate her grandmother’s house, Susan sat in on the meetings at her mother’s place and immediately fell for the process. She switched paths, earned a design degree, and worked for another firm before starting Bridget Beari Designs on her own.
The Bridget Beari Paint Colors line grew out of a recurring problem: Susan could never find the exact color she needed, so she kept tweaking formulas until she built her own palette. A client suggested she package the colors, and that became the paint line. The same instinct led to a wallpaper line, produced through three different manufacturers for different grounds, including grasscloth and metallic finishes, and sold through showrooms in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and DC.
Susan makes the case for designers supporting other designers’ product lines, especially smaller ones. A small manufacturer will tweak a color, resize a pattern, or adjust a wallpaper scale on request, something larger brands rarely do. That flexibility also makes a product harder for a client to price shop once it has been customized.
Much of the conversation centers on her new book, Bridget Beari Color Rules, which started as a blog and grew into 70 rules covering color theory, inspiration, the psychology of color, LRV, and practical tips like storing paint and mixing finishes. Susan self-published the book through a printer in China to control both the price point and her own margin. She wrote it for homeowners first, but says designers use it as a refresher, and sees it as something a designer could gift a client early in a project to build shared color literacy.
Susan and Laurie discuss AI’s growing role in design and agree that it will not replace designers. AI-generated images consistently get scale wrong, and even a good rendering cannot manage the judgment calls, vendor relationships, and delivery work that make up most of a project. Clients want the work handled, not another task added to their plate.
Susan describes her client process as mostly listening. She starts with a walkthrough, proposes bold ideas early, and lets trust build from there. She points to a New York condo project for repeat clients whose usual traditional Southern style does not fit their new space, and how she and the clients, including their kids on the planning calls, are working out how much of their existing style should carry into the new place.
Susan also talks about her long history working in historic Southern homes, something she credits to growing up in one herself and studying art history in college. She is careful to note her firm does not work in just one style, and treats each client’s history and taste as its own puzzle to solve, whether that is an eco-friendly build in Mexico or a client’s request for a puja room.
Asked about her biggest business mistake after three decades, Susan points to overstaffing. Earlier in her career, she hired more people than she needed and absorbed the payroll, tax, and insurance costs that came with a bigger team. She has since scaled her design staff down to three people, with additional support for the retail and product lines.
On pricing, Susan moved from a purely hourly model to a mix of hourly billing for site visits and flat fees for full projects, with a time limit built into flat-fee agreements to prevent scope creep from eroding her margin. She and Laurie agree that project delays are almost always driven by client indecision, not the design work itself.
Susan also weighs in on show houses, calling them expensive but worthwhile for the photography, and unlikely to do again given the cost and time. She lights up when talking about seeing her wallpaper turn up in other designers’ projects, including a shipment that once went to Geraldo Rivera’s dining room, and encourages designers to send manufacturers photos of finished rooms to strengthen those relationships.
The episode closes with a quick round on Susan’s personal preferences: paint over wallpaper, historic renovation over a contemporary build, and green as her current favorite color, along with a look at what is next. She is developing a fabric line to pair with her wallpapers and will have a booth at High Point featuring the book, wallpaper samples, and new lampshade designs.
Learn more about Susan Jamieson’s work at Bridget Beari Designs or follow along on Instagram.
Pick up Susan’s book Color Rules on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4prA6Wc
Timestamp Guide
00:00 – Intro and catching up
01:29 – Meet Susan Jamieson of Bridget Beari Designs
03:03 – How the paint line got started
06:20 – From economics major to interior designer
16:55 – Why she wrote Bridget Beari Color Rules
19:24 – AI’s role and limits in interior design
21:43 – Her client process and a New York condo project
27:27 – The financial investment behind paint, wallpaper, and the book
33:34 – Seeing her wallpaper in other designers’ projects
39:53 – Her biggest business mistake: overstaffing
41:41 – How her pricing model evolved
47:37 – What’s next: a fabric line and a High Point booth
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