There are designer-client relationships that unfold like storybook romances, with late-night texts, long lunches, shopping sprees, and impromptu trips to Paris. This was no such project—much to everyone’s relief. When McKayla Kingston and Arpan Podduturi, two busy tech executives, purchased an apartment in a historic Brooklyn building, they arrived with clear ideas and a sense of urgency. “We didn’t want to wait a decade for some place to feel lived-in and loved,” recalls Kingston, who came prepared with a meticulous dossier of reference images and notes. “It needed to feel like home as quickly as possible.”
Enter consummate professional Heidi Caillier, a Seattle-based talent whose moody twists on tradition caught the couple’s attention on Instagram and whose streamlined approach, they happily discovered, aligned with their own. “Our process is super condensed,” reflects Caillier, who in just 10 years has grown her practice from a one-woman show to a team of seven, with upwards of 20 projects on the boards. “We design everything top-to-bottom in one fell swoop.” Brainstorming is limited to one epic onboarding session, during which she and her clients go room by room in exacting detail. “Brass or nickel? Upholstered or non-upholstered dining chairs? Monoprint or pattern mixing?” muses Caillier, rattling off just a few or her many routine questions. Mind meld accomplished, she then devotes herself to developing the complete plans. “By our next meeting, everything is in place.”
And so it was just weeks after the couple contacted her that Caillier presented them over a video call with what would then become the final scheme for their home. “It was a resounding ‘yes’ to everything,” Kingston says of the designer’s nuanced array of furnishings and fabrics. “Trends accelerate, peak, and fade so quickly. We wanted a mix that would age such that you couldn’t date it to a specific year, even though it was all done at once.”
Good bones laid the foundation. “There was already enough detail that the rooms felt special,” Caillier recalls of the interior architecture, conceived by the AD100 firm Workstead as part of the building’s recent conversion. “All we had to do was layer on top of it.” True to that strategy, an airy foyer gives way to a visually impactful dining room, where a floral Fromental wallpaper serves as a bold backdrop to a 1950s Stilnovo chandelier, contemporary table, and vintage Henning Kjaernulf chairs. In the adjacent living room, by contrast, white walls offset an eclectic array of furniture—some new, some vintage—and a salon-style art arrangement. “You need places to breathe,” says Caillier, noting that the view from the living room extends past the entry to the powder room, where decorative painter James Mobley created an immersive mural of dots and stripes.
That kaleidoscopic rhythm continues throughout the 2,500-square-foot apartment, whose circuitous floor plan centers on the kitchen. Whereas the guest suite is cocooned—walls, curtains, bed, seating—in a densely patterned Rosa Bernal textile, the primary suite is a melange of muddy tones, handsome plaids, and tactile details. The office reveals rich coats of Farrow & Ball’s Bancha green—a verdant counterpoint to the chocolate scheme of daughter Vivian’s nursery. “I will marinade on a room until it’s perfect,” Caillier reflects. “But once it’s done, it’s done.”
As a final, personal leitmotif, the couple has sprinkled in an array of Etsy finds, including artworks and lighting. “We both work at companies that empower small businesses, so it was important to incorporate that into our home,” reflects Kingston, who—ever organized—maintains her own secret shortlist of online vendors. In a sign of the times, she and Podduturi have yet to meet Caillier in person—not that they feel any less of a connection to her work. “Heidi has so much confidence and conviction and heart. It made every decision super easy.”
