Creating Spaces of Love and Refuge
Why Alumna Gail Davis ’11 (AAS) Is Passionate About Residential Design
Gail Davis. Photo: Matthew Septimus
Alumna Gail Davis ’11 (AAS), the sole principal of Gail Davis Designs, begins her design discovery with understanding her clients’ lives and psyches intimately. She places an emphasis on designing for African Americans. She views homes as refuges where people can be truly seen and loved, and where everyday life can become beautiful.
Since early childhood, Gail Davis has paid attention to beautiful objects and interiors. A space that made a huge impression during her youth was her grandparents’ home in Freeport, New York. Her grandparents lived in the North, but they were raised in Beaufort, SC, and she describes their home as culturally Southern. “I think of my grandparents on the front porch, pouring their sweet tea into crystal glasses. They had this tall, skinny house, and the layout of the furniture was so well thought-out,” Davis recalls. “They brought out their best china for Sunday dinners. I realize now, as a woman of color, that there was a special art to their breaking bread after church. It was in the home where your humanity was seen. You could come back home and be treated with dignity, after your dignity was shredded by white people.” This vision of the home as a refuge filled with “a sense of love and warmth,” and as a place that makes people feel safe and seen, has shaped Davis’ design career.
Despite her early love of design, Davis didn’t get much encouragement to go into the arts when she was growing up. She says, “I wasn’t great in school. In junior high, there was a counselor who told me, ‘You need to get a trade.’ I was told I should go learn to do hair and nails! It was never: ‘This is a creative person, maybe we should teach them to do arts.’”
Nonetheless, Davis had an eye, and this design sensibility led her into fashion merchandising as a first career. Though she worked on the business side, she always had a desire to do creative work, and home design held particular meaning for her. She began doing some small decorating projects in 2008 and discovered she loved it. In 2009, when she was in her 30s, she took the plunge and enrolled in the Associate in Applied Science in Interior Design program at NYSID. She says she was often the only Black woman in a classroom at NYSID, an experience that could be alienating.
Initially, Davis found the AAS program intimidating because she did not know how to draw. Very often, children of color are discouraged from seeing themselves as artists, as Davis was at many points in her life. She remembers, “That first Basic Drafting course was perhaps the most transformative course I took. I swear, one of my early drawings felt like a five-year year old did it. But then, our instructor, Mr. (Robert) Harding slowly and patiently taught me that drawing is not that hard. It’s the basic hand to paper connection that helps your mind really understand space.” Once she learned to draw, Davis grasped her own talent, and her confidence grew. She says, “That’s what was great about NYSID. They met you at your level and lifted you up. To quote Muhammed Ali, ‘The will is stronger than the skill.’”
Another NYSID course that had a tremendous impact on her was the Residential Design I studio. Her instructor was former NYSID faculty member Sharlene Ionescu, who according to Davis, was known as a challenging teacher who “drilled layout” and programming into the students. Says Davis, “Sharlene was a Canadian designer and architect of color. She was tough, but she was gracious enough to pull me aside one-on-one and acknowledge that ‘This world is already stacked against you. I will be hard on you, but you will succeed. Do your thing, and you will get it, you will excel.’” Davis adds, “When another person of color speaks to you with such transparency, it’s extremely empowering.” Representation matters to students at every age and stage of design education.
When Davis was in the second year of her AAS, she was looking for an internship and having trouble finding one. A NYSID classmate who worked at Bunny Williams Inc. told her about an internship opportunity. At the time, she had no idea who Bunny Williams was or what an honor it was to get an internship at such a storied residential design firm. She says, “Over time, I figured out who she was in the industry and how much she knew, and I felt honored to work for her. I sat quietly, worked hard, and learned from her.” She then went on to work for a brief stint at David Kleinberg Design Associates. She says, “From Bunny, I learned the great tradition of Sister Parish and Parish Hadley. At David Kleinberg Design Associates, I absorbed the tradition of Albert Hadley. I was exposed to traditional, modern, classic. I really paid attention. The most important thing I learned from these two great design firms is the elevation of design beyond what’s ‘pretty’ into what changes peoples’ lives.”
Davis had been taking small design jobs since before she started at NYSID in 2009. She had always wanted to establish her own firm. In 2011, she began devoting herself full-time to growing her own design practice. She says, “At the time, you looked at all the major firms and they were predominantly white. I was the only Black person who was not in a support role. I wanted to do luxury residential design for people of color, who are so often overlooked. I wanted to make sure they had a beautiful place to come home to after a challenging week.”
The offices and presentation spaces of Gail Davis Design are located on the third floor of Davis’ home in New Jersey. As such, her home has become something of a symbol for her design ethos. An immediate sense of warmth and welcome is very important to her, so she has paid a lot of attention to the front of the house and the entryway. Her favorite detail of her home is the graphic “A Love Supreme” wallpaper from Schumacher in her vestibule. “I love it because as soon as you see the wallpaper, it sets the tone. It reminds me a lot of my grandparents,” she says. She’s also repainted and refinished her front door multiple times, finally settling on Benjamin Moore’s Yellow Green. She says, “I’m all about the impact interior design makes on a person’s psyche. To live your best life, you should not wait to stay at the best hotel while on vacation because you can live like that every day. Residential design is about the elevation of everyday life.” She believes in “always having something that makes you happy in your line of sight.”
Davis is the sole principal and proprietor of her business, and she employs an accountant, a draftsperson, and a procurement manager, all virtually. Digital design has freed her up to work far beyond her New Jersey community. Because her firm is small, she’s very deliberate about the clients she chooses to work with, and her design discovery process is about getting to know them well. She’s currently at work on a total home remodel in Massachusetts and a master suite and bathroom blowout in Potomac. She says, “I enjoy being a small firm because I like the hands-on and I love the creativity of my project. I like handling the whole process for my clients.” At the time of this interview, she’d recently finished a phone call with a client in New York who had been intrigued about her vision for hanging the art in the home. She says, “I asked them to trust the process. I hired an art handler to hang all the artwork. Afterward, my client said, ‘Oh my goodness, this artwork is amazing.’ This made me so happy.”
HER Office by Gail Davis Designs. Photo: Mike Van Tassel
One of Davis’ favorite projects of all time was the re-model of a New Jersey home office for a co-pastor of a church, a wife who was taking over what was previously her husband’s office, and a person who gave an enormous amount back to her community. The goal was to bring a feminine element and the client’s own generous personality into a workspace that could accommodate group meetings and function as a dramatic backdrop for the client’s social media videos. The couple was so pleased with the outcome that they hired her to design the whole interior of the home, and the project, “HER Office,” was ultimately published in Elle Decor. For Davis, a close but professional relationship with the client is paramount. She says, “I feel like I empty my soul into projects. My work becomes a love letter to my clients.”
Gail Davis is an outspoken force for change in the design community. She started her popular podcast Design Perspectives, in 2019, not because it was a marketing strategy for her firm, but because, over dinner one night, friends told her she had a lot of insight into the design business and could have an impact. She has used the podcast, in part, as a platform to shed light on the experiences and accomplishments of designers of color. “Diversity is not enough,” she says. “I’m completely about promoting equality and inclusion. This means not just having a person of color on your panel or on your team, but creating an environment where they can have a real voice for change.”
Kaleidoscope Project show house bedroom by Gail Davis Designs. Photos: Frank Frances Studios
Change Is a Priority
In this article, Gail Davis spoke about being the only Black student in some of her classes at NYSID. Much has changed since 2011, but the leadership at NYSID believes that there is still a lot of work to be done to foster the most inclusive environment possible at the College. NYSID president David Sprouls is leading the College through an ongoing, multiyear Diversity, Equity & Inclusion evaluation and restructuring. “I want every student at NYSID to feel that they belong, and that their experiences matter in the context of the classroom and profession,” Sprouls says. “Interior design needs diverse perspectives, and we need every student to feel empowered to speak out and find role models and peers who have shared their experiences. That’s one reason why we are revising the curriculum, prioritizing the hiring of more BIPOC and AAPI faculty and staff, training our existing staff and faculty, and working on recruitment campaigns that reach students in communities traditionally underrepresented in interior design, whether they be high school students or career changers.”