comfort of design..

Popular US Decorator Discusses

The Comfort of Design

Phobe Howard was 38-year-old stay-at-home mother when she decided to start decorating. Years later, she began taking private clients and her first project landed on the September 2006 cover of House Beautiful magazine.

Today, Howard’s name is widely recognized in the design world and her work has become synonymous with Southern style: rooms so comfortable and inviting they make you want to sit down and stay a while. She has been featured in countless shelter publications, including Elle Décor, Southern Accents and Traditional Home and images of her soft, pretty spaces turn up almost weekly on design blogs. She and her husband, Jim, also an interior decorator, are owners of eight home furnishings stores in four Southern cities: Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach, Florida, Atlanta and, as of next month, Charlotte, North Carolina.

It all started when Howard, now 51, suggested to her husband that they open a store. Her idea was a place to showcase Jim’s design work (he designs the spaces, lays out the rooms, and selects the flooring and lighting) and to show customers how to property place furniture.

“It’s all about helping customers figure out the mysteries of scale, proportion and balance,” Howard says. The result was a high-end home furnishings shop that opened in 1996 in their home town, Jacksonville. They name the store Mrs. Howard (www.phoebehoward.net). “It was an instant hit,” she says.

Phoebe Howard’s design for the home has become synonymous with US Shoutern style,

with rooms so comfortable and inviting they make you want to sit down and stay awhile.

Washington Post Photos/Josh Gibson

Five years later, they opened a more modern and moderately proceed shop, Max & Company (named after Phoebe’s son).

Mrs. Howard is more classic and traditional, with upscale furniture, upholstery, rugs and antiques, the offerings at Max & Company are more casual and affordable to appeal to a younger crowd.

“Max & Company is like walking through a beach house,” says Howard is like walking through a grand Southern home.”

For nine years, the self-taught decorator used the store as a training ground and the experience eventually led to her taking on clients of her own. “That’s how I taught myself how to decorate,” Howard says. “When you sell off the floor, you have to fill that space fast.”

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