December 21, 2025Five years after relocating to the Seattle area from Los Angeles, up-and-coming designer Maggie Smith is taken with her new hometown’s welcoming creative community and laid-back, outdoor-oriented lifestyle. But she does wish it offered a few more local sources for quality vintage furnishings, a key ingredient in her spare yet character-rich interiors. “I love layering contemporary spaces with a more rustic, lived-in element and the texture that you get from vintage pieces,” she says.
That approach also defines the work of L.A. designer Vanessa Alexander, whom Smith credits as her mentor and biggest influence. Smith spent six years at Alexander’s firm, and after moving to Seattle, she continued to collaborate with the veteran tastemaker.
Over the past couple of years, however, her focus has shifted to solo projects for her own firm. Still, she clearly inherited aspects of Alexander’s style, notably a penchant for warm minimalism and neutral palettes, as well as the abundant use of wood and stone and an affinity for sculptural lighting and distinctive mid-century furnishings.
“After doing this for a while, you build a Rolodex of classic furniture makers that I definitely did not have early on,” says Smith, who does much of her vintage hunting online, often on 1stDibs. In fact, she sourced multiple pieces on the site for one of her first solo projects: the renovation of a 1950s house in the Benedict Canyon section of Beverly Hills.
The owner, Stephanie Ritz — a partner at William Morris whose clients have included Diane Keaton, Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel and Kristen Stewart — had been living in the modest 2,200-square-foot, three-bedroom residence for more than a decade when a mutual friend introduced her to Smith. The two felt an immediate connection. “There was an X factor of chemistry and taste, and we had a bit of a mind meld,” says Ritz, recalling that she and Smith would always agree on the best choice among the options the designer presented.
At the top of Ritz’s priority list was opening up the entertaining areas. Smith responded by taking down a wall that had closed off the kitchen, creating a continuous, free-flowing space that encompasses the dining and living areas as well. She also added glass-and-steel doors to enhance the connection with the back garden, and she raised the low, eight-foot-high ceilings, most prominently in the now-vaulted living room, which gained more than five feet at its central peak.
From there, the decorating scheme was all about balancing Ritz’s desire for cozy cottage vibes with Smith’s elevated, earthy minimalism. In the living room, that meant pairing a cushy V-shape sofa with a chic mid-century Marco Zanuso lounge chair acquired through 1stDibs dealer ma+39. Smith accompanied these with pieces exhibiting a variety of organic textures, including a coffee table with a tree-stump base and a rustic side table made of logs from Bruksmann, another 1stDibs dealer. Underneath, she laid a nubbly handwoven wool rug by Atacama Home, which partners with makers throughout Latin America.
The house lacks a proper foyer, but the area along the side of the living room nearest to the front door fills in as the entry. Here, Smith used a pewter-hued mohair to recover a tufted settee Ritz already owned and surrounded it with vintage pieces, including a pair of Hans-Agne Jakobsson sconces and a richly patinated Japanese Tansu cabinet, both sourced on 1stDibs. “Maggie found a way to create the sophistication we wanted while making everything incredibly comfortable and livable,” Ritz says.
In designing the newly open kitchen, Smith drew inspiration from the one in designer and celebrity cook Athena Calderone’s former Brooklyn home (made famous on her media platform EyeSwoon). Ritz had long admired the space, so Smith devised a version with blue-painted base cabinetry and countertops of Calacatta marble, which she also used for the wall-spanning backsplash and the cantilevered shelf above.
The designer inserted her own space-defining touches, such as a 1970s Danish abstract painting from the Nashville gallery Eneby Home — one of her favorite 1stDibs sources — which adds a chromatic splash above the breakfast nook. Over the island, she suspended a reedition of a Florian Schulz brass pendant light, the subject of a rare debate between the two women. Ritz was resistant but eventually yielded to Smith’s urging to “trust me.”
Anchoring the dining area just off of the kitchen is a vintage oak Italian farm table — another acquisition from Eneby Home — dressed up by a suite of elegant, suede-upholstered Sergio Rodrigues chairs. “I’m a huge fan of Brazilian furniture,” says Smith.
The emphasis on earthy neutrals and sumptuous materials continues in the primary bedroom. The walls here, like those in much of the house, are finished in creamy plaster, the windows and doors are curtained in a soft linen, and a textured wool rug provides coziness underfoot. The custom bed sports a mohair-upholstered headboard and a vibrant handwoven Indian coverlet. Smith says the first piece purchased for the room was the vintage William Emmerson bench with curving bentwood frame and woven leather seat that stands at the foot of the bed.
“I don’t always get to use this many vintage pieces with clients,” says Smith. “Stephanie’s love for cozy reading corners, comfy furnishings and jewel-tone fabrics was balanced with my push for thoughtful architectural details and finishes that serve as the backdrop for the home. It was a great collaboration.”
Smith didn’t initially choose design as a career path. She grew up primarily in New Hampshire, near Lake Winnipesaukee, where her father worked as a carpenter and built the homes they lived in. Although her aesthetic is “worlds apart” from that of her more traditional parents, she says, her mom’s “knack for all things home and DIY and my dad’s can-do, build-anything mentality helped shape my crafty and scrappy design mindset.”
Smith studied film production at Chapman University, in Southern California, and after graduating spent several years working in movies on the business side, focusing on acquisitions and distribution and traveling to film festivals around the world. Ultimately, she soured on that field, which she found lacked creativity, and left to pursue an interest in interiors that she discovered while updating her own L.A. apartments.
Taking “a shot in the dark,” as she puts it, Smith applied for a position with Susan Jay, a designer in Pacific Palisades, who hired her to work in her office and sponsored her interior design classes at Santa Monica College. Jay, Smith recounts, “had so much experience, took me under her wing, taught me so much about just getting all the tools under my belt.”
She worked with Jay for three years, doing small design jobs for friends on the side, before leaving to join Alexander. “I knew I needed more experience working for a larger firm,” says Smith. “So much of my influence has come from Vanessa — leaning a little bit more masculine than feminine, a love of vintage. I really gravitated toward her easy-living and lived-in look.”
Smith’s version of that relaxed and refined West Coast style was big part of what attracted a couple in New York who reached out to her on her Instagram account to request a meeting to discuss a renovation project. Back in the U.S. after several years in London, they had bought a 7,500-square-foot, six-bedroom house upstate, in Bedford. Built in the 1990s in a traditional style, it was short on character. The couple enlisted Smith to remedy that, in part by bringing in more of the distinctive furnishings they are drawn to.
A good example is the family room, where Smith started by giving the fireplace a contemporary update, recladding it in crisp polished limestone. She then grouped in front of it a white-linen sofa from the clients’ already owned with a chunky wood coffee table by Dos GalloS Studio and a graceful Luteca X-form lounge chair with a woven fiber seat. A wall sconce exudes polished modernity. The space is refined but not precious.
Smith used a similar mix of textures in the den, just off of the entry. Here, she installed a chunky modern sofa recovered in heavyweight gray linen, along with a pair of vintage steel-and-leather Arne Norell chairs she discovered on 1stDibs, a reclaimed-wood coffee table by Dos Gallos and an industrial-luxe Tito Agnoli floor lamp, also vintage. Suspended above is an oversize round woven pendant.
“The clients and I both love a good woven fixture, and this one is elevated as far as they go,” says Smith. “It makes a cool statement.”
Choices unexpected in a traditional home amp up the personality throughout, from the dining room’s bold Tuareg rug from Mehraban to the primary bedroom’s rope-light sconces and iconic Wave chaise by Adrian Pearsall, another 1stDibs find, which Smith reupholstered in luxuriant sheepskin.
“I appreciate that these clients were completely willing to do the unconventional,” says the designer. She is now working on a second phase of updates to the house, which is turning into a long-term project.
Back in Washington State, Smith is wrapping up a redo of a two-bedroom cabin she bought for herself on Whidbey Island. “It has a dark Nordic-barn vibe,” she says. “And I’m trying to make a really cool story about the Pacific Northwest, incorporating indigenous Salish art and highlighting a ton of local fabricators and vendors.”
Her hope is that the cabin can serve as a kind of calling card to build momentum in the region. “Everyone in the design world here knows each other, and it’s a great group of people,” Smith says. “I hope I can bring something a little different.”
