Greetings, SideDoor designers!
We’re continuing our designer spotlight series with our next featured SideDoor user, and we have a ton of great stuff to share with you this month!
If you’re new to the series, each month we’ll be highlighting a different SideDoor designer so you can get to know our family of users and learn about how they’ve found success using the platform. We hope this provides inspiration for your own continued success in your design businesses!
To close out each month, we’ll put on a conversational Q&A format SideDoor University hosted by our featured SideDoor superstars.
This week we’re excited to introduce North Bend, Washington based designer, Milissa Morgan-Ching, founder of the pacific northwest design firm, Salt + Pine.
Ready to dive in? Here’s our conversation:
CONVERSATION
SideDoor: Hi Milissa! We’re so excited to introduce you and your work to our SideDoor community. First up, we want to know who you are. Tell us a little about yourself, your design business, and where you call home.
Milissa: I grew up in Massachusetts, but I live about 30 minutes east of Seattle, Washington in a really beautiful community called North Bend. We're kind of in the Cascade Foothills, just not all the way up at the pass. It's gorgeous, you step outside and you look around and there's just mountains in every direction. Very beautiful.
SideDoor: Wow, you couldn't have gone farther from where you're from!
Milissa I know, yeah, it was a crazy journey getting here, but this is definitely home for me—this valley that I live and work in, my friends, my clients and all the people I call extended family—it’s all just so special to me.
SideDoor: So give me a little background on your business. How did you get started? Was your background in design?
Milissa: So I went to college for business, both my undergrad and my graduate degree, and the whole time I was there—because I'm such a creative—I was like, I feel like I need to pivot. So I started dipping my toes into things that were more interesting to me! By the time I was done, I kind of had the best of both worlds: this really strong business background, and then this super amazing creative background to catapult me off into the world.
SideDoor: That’s amazing! I love that you followed your gut and went after something not just practical, but that actually inspired you. So when did the business start?
Milissa: Well, I kind of fumbled through those first years where you're trying to find yourself, understand the industry, and go where you think you need to go. But I just stopped one day and was like, This is so silly, why am I grinding my hours trying to figure it out for somebody else when I can do it for myself?
So that's when the business happened! And that really catapulted me forward into what I'm doing now, which is predominantly renovations with a bit of new build construction guidance and furniture selection as well.
SideDoor: That’s so cool. Can you tell me about your business name, Salt x Pine?
Milissa: Yeah! Well, first of all, I had people asking me if I could work on their homes back East, and because I had friends and family there, it makes it easy for me to do that. So I was like, what name would tie in my overall design aesthetic, and resonate with both communities? So “salt” is representative of the coastal communities and oceans, and “pine” is representative of the Evergreen State and the mountains.
SideDoor: Wow, I love that. I thought the name was super cute before, but now that I understand the origin, it’s even more fitting! So we’re curious, how would you describe the clientele you work with and what kinds of services do you offer to them?
Milissa: I would say my typical client is going to be someone who has purchased a house in our area that was built circa late 2000s—so we get the occasional glass blocks or really funky layouts, a lot of the outdated browns and oranges that were very signature for that time. It's usually a whole first floor situation, and then that naturally leads to them becoming furnishing clients because now they have this beautiful new palette we've designed for them, but their furnishings were attuned to work with the old house look.
So that's the bread and butter of my clientele! Larger scale home renovations and then, naturally, most of them turn into furnishing projects afterwards—which I love because I love getting to continue to work with the same people, and our clients are genuinely amazing! I just adore them.
SideDoor: I love that. It’s such a natural progression from renovation client to furnishings client. Amazing! So, when it comes to design or style—what would you say makes you and your work unique?
Milissa: I tell people that when they work with me as they're designer, I always start from what I would consider a very neutral base: they're gonna see lots of texture and warmth. I like high contrast when I can—so I like using those bright whites and then integrating black in terms of iron doors or stuff like that.
My signature style very much revolves around neutral, natural colors with lots of texture, but then bold pops of contrast to bring in some drama. Then from there, we'll refine it with the client and integrate things like additional colors, patterns, wallpapers or wall treatments, and then arrive at their final design from there.
I definitely find that this little recipe is such a great starting off point for any design because there's so many elements that can stay through the whole process, and I think it gives clients almost like that safety net.
SideDoor: I love the idea of having a form to work from that you can then tailor to your clients specific wants. So last up, just for fun, what’s a fun fact about you, maybe that has nothing to do with design, that you’d like to share with our community?
Milissa: So I have a group of mom friends, and we do this annual moms and sons camping trip. There's six boys (now eight) who have been together since daycare at three months old, and we've all stayed close friends. It's as crazy as you can imagine it would be!
When someone asks, what is that like? I say, remember the book Lord of the Flies? Like last year, it was seven year olds running around in the woods with their lanterns and sticks, and they're jockeying for who's in control of things. They fight and they have fun and it's awesome—core memories!
SideDoor: Thanks so much for sharing some of your experience with us, Milissa! We’re excited to talk more soon and get a look into how you utilize the platform in your projects. Talk soon!
Next week we’ll be taking a look at project in which Milissa used SideDoor in a big way, so stay tuned for that!
If you want to follow along with Milissa’s design work, you can find her website here, as well as her social media profiles on Instagram, and Facebook.
And watch out for our schedule announcement of the SideDoor University episode with our very own featured designer for this month, Milissa Morgan-Ching. We can’t wait to learn together!
