Tim Clarke

Designer's Site

I think the first time I ever studied a room in a magazine and thought, "I wonder if this guy has a web site," the designer I searched for was Tim Clarke. It was the August 2003 issue of House Beautiful, and it's still floating around the house, not filed in the bookshelf where it belongs.

What originally caught my eye was the collection of objects on the long fireplace mantel. In my own living room, I have a base cabinet that runs along an 18' solid wall, with no windows above it. How do you decorate a surface that long? I crawled through books and magazines without finding much inspiration, until I found the Hollywood Haven article.

From all the rooms on Tim Clarke's site, I get the same message: "I use what I like. I mix what I want to mix." That message is the lesson I walk away with. In my own house, I want rooms that say exactly that.