By Hollie Deese
Photography by Reeves Smith

Kelly Lord has an eye for creating the right combination of space, color and flow — a result of her education, design experience and innate sense of what works for someone’s lifestyle.

A graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design, she stayed in Atlanta for a few years working under two different designers before moving back to Cincinnati where she met her artist husband — JD Pritchett’s brother-in-law. They moved to Franklin, and now she is the go-to design collaborator on any Pritchett & Co. projects.

After working on homes all over East Nashville on the HGTV show “Listed Sisters,” Lord was excited to take on a small-space high rise project on Church Street. She drew on some of her Atlanta experience while working on the condo in the 505.

What was new about the experience was having the homeowners live in a different city.

“They were very receptive to all of my ideas, which was great, but …I only met with them maybe three times during the entire process,” she says. “That is a huge change, because I usually see homeowners very often. We just tried to be very prepared with what we were presenting.”

Lord took the homeowners in a different direction than they had initially wanted. The result, though it pushed them out of their comfort zone, ended up being everything they ever wanted.

“When we met they wanted everything to be white and gray, so I was a little nervous about” infusing rich blues and purple velvet, she says. “But there was no convincing. They looked at it and they loved it, which was fantastic.”

In the guest bathroom Lord fell in love with an artistic black-and-white tile and built the bold bathroom design around that.

In the master bath the homeowners wanted something a little more glam, and Lord delivered with gray-and-white tile on the wall behind the vanity that’s flecked with gold mirrored details in a way that looks like elevated animal hide.

“It’s definitely a statement,” she says. “We wanted everything else in that bathroom to be stunning, but just more neutral so that vanity wall could really be the focus.”

At home with her 4-year-old and 14-month-old, things aren’t quite so glamorous, but it is rare that what she designs would be her own style. She calls her taste “comfortable modern” because it embraces clean lines and feels fresh while still being comfortable and warm.

Next up with Pritchett & Co. is a home renovation in Franklin where she gets to take on the master bathroom, refresh the foyer and update the fireplace in the first phase before moving on to the kitchen and guest bathrooms.

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