New England Home, 5 Under 40, 2020 Winners

NEw ENgland Home Article
By Paula M. Bodah
Photography by Bruce Rogovin

Some little girls spend their idle hours dreaming about their perfect wedding. Stephanie King spent that time looking at magazines and fantasizing about the house she would live in when she grew up. “I knew I wanted to be an interior designer,” she says. “What I love about it is that it’s art that you live in.”

Her parents—an engineer father who makes furniture and loves architecture, and a mother who loved entertaining and, says King, “had every Martha Stewart book”—were her earliest influences. “My parents took so much pride in where they lived. It fostered that understanding that the place you choose to spend time in can be art.”

King started her career with a bang, landing a job, right after graduation from Syracuse University, at Slifer Designs, an AD100 firm in Colorado. “I went for an interview, and I was hired on the spot,” she recalls. “That’s a proud thing for me: each job I’ve had I’ve been hired during the interview. I love what I do, and I think that passion, the love and joy, come through in my interview.”

Eventually, the Princeton, Massachusetts, native made her way back east, working with Amy Lau Design in New York City and then, in 2012, joining Boston-based Heather Wells as her lead designer. King’s designs often begin with a quiet, neutral palette featuring black and white, which she then layers with texture, subtle color, and a decidedly bespoke nfluence. “I don’t like buying off the shelf or machine-made,” she says. “I love to see the hand in the texture of a fabric or a piece of carved wood. Everything has to have that layer of artisan quality.”

King’s work has been widely acclaimed and has been featured in Architectural Digest, Luxe, and New England Home.