CEO Roundtable: Interior Design

Springfield Business Journal Executive Editor Christine Temple discusses interior design topics ranging from the color of the year to fostering relationships with design clients. She’s joined by Joyce Buxton, director of interior design at Buxton Kubik Dodd Design Collective; Patrice Frans, director of interior design at Kinetic Design and Development; and Kathe Kristek, senior project manager at Sapp Design Associates Architects.

What follows are highlights from our podcast guests, edited for length and clarity.

Christine Temple: I’ve been dying to ask you all about Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2026, which is basically white. I wondered, what does that say about design moving into 2026, and what were your reactions to that choice?
Kathe Kristek: Well, my first reaction … we’re saying white, but you visualize a white that could be a different color of white that Patrice is envisioning, or Joyce is envisioning, and I’m envisioning. So neutrals come and go, and I think that’s what the white is. You know, it can be a cool white, it could be a warm white, and to me it was a cool white. So I think that crisp color and everything, those crisp designs, are staying.
Joyce Buxton: I think we’ve had color of the year as white for about six years now. I mean not officially, but you think about the spaces that you see: It’s a lot of white. We’ve had white for a very long time, and there are many, many shades of white, depending. What white means to me is it’s the background, and you can put art on it. Your furniture pops out against it, even people, you know, there’s no distraction of a big mural behind you. If I’m looking at you, I can see you. White is a very good – it’s like the lady’s black dress. It’s the equivalent of that. If a space is really beautiful, if a woman’s really beautiful, she doesn’t need a lot of adornment. It’s a challenge. Let’s make sure the space is worthy of white.
Temple: Wow. I’m liking it more now that I’m hearing your description.
Patrice Frans: For a long time, or the past few years, we’ve kind of seen more moody colors be the color of the year. And I think that that was kind of coming out of COVID. That was that kind of hard time where people are maybe having some harder times. So sometimes the colors play into what’s going on in the economy. And so I’m thinking of white, I’m thinking of freshness and peacefulness. You’ll see that maybe in some interiors. We’ve seen a lot of moody rooms, and I think we’ll always kind of continue to see that. But think nice, fresh, bright color will be nice.

Design motivations
Temple: What drew you to interior design, and what keeps you motivated still?
Buxton: I’m an oddity. Well, my joke is probably a guidance counselor gone astray. Probably that’s my quick answer to that, but my real answer is: I declared this major as a freshman in college, and put on blinders and graduated in 1981, which was not a good time to, double-digit inflation, and not a lot of people in hiring interior designers at that time. So again, I kind of blame my guidance counselor, but what keeps me motivated is, I love my job. I love that I get to have kind of go behind the curtain and understand what makes for a good law office, what makes for a good dental office, what makes for a good school? I love to kind of feel like I’m on their team. And at the core of what we do is solve problems and try to solve problems in a creative way that maybe is not obvious to others, and that is very satisfying. And I’m the good guy, you know, I’m not someone that has to deliver bad news. It’s when somebody who is either moving or growing their business or building new, and so that’s part of forward momentum. And what I didn’t know I would find so satisfying is every project has a beginning, middle and end. And I love the beginning, I love the middle, and I also love the end, where you can step back and go done, and then again, start over, beginning, middle, end, and again, beginning, middle, end. I just love that about my job.
Frans: A lot of what I get enjoyment out of is just seeing the end product and seeing the client, especially if it’s someone that they’re designing their own building, it’s so excited. And you’re just thinking, you’re just doing your job. And they’re like, “Wow, this is the most amazing thing.” They get so excited. And then once they move into their space, it works for them. And so just kind of seeing that end result is what I get most excited about, and that just keeps me going.
Kristek: I started in accounting, and I was like, I don’t know if I want to do this every day, although I still do really love spreadsheets. But then someone said, “Well, you know, you can walk into a room and tell what it’s going to look like,” you know, “You could see a different vision.” So that’s how I switched to interior design; I thought it was just selecting finishes. Took my first commercial design class, and I thought, “Oh, I love this.” You know, it has the creativity, it has the budget, it has the timeline. And I think, like – I don’t think, I know – what keeps me going are the relationships. Getting very involved with the client, with their vision, with their goals, and seeing the whole process, solving their problems, asking them what their challenges are coming up with those solutions and growing a relationship with them, and really developing lifelong friendships with almost every client that I’ve come across. I really enjoy that, the relationships.

Excerpts of the conversation by Deputy Editor Gregory Holman, gholman@sbj.net.