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- 1Sister Parish
Sister Parish, born Dorothy May Kinnicutt, launched her interior design career in 1933 during the Great Depression, reportedly starting the business specifically because her family needed additional income, and she went on to help define the classic American "English country house" decorating style for wealthy East Coast clientele. She was selected by Jacqueline Kennedy to redecorate the White House family quarters in 1961, giving Parish's traditional, comfortably layered decorating aesthetic significant national visibility during the Kennedy administration's high-profile early-1960s public image. Parish later partnered with designer Albert Hadley to form Parish-Hadley Associates in 1962, a partnership that became one of the most influential American interior design firms of the 20th century, training numerous designers who went on to significant careers of their own. Sister Parish's combination of her selection to redecorate the Kennedy White House and her influential Parish-Hadley partnership has made her one of the most historically significant figures in 20th-century American interior design.
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0 - 2Billy Baldwin
Billy Baldwin became one of the most sought-after American interior designers of the mid-20th century, working for high-profile clients including Cole Porter, Babe Paley, and Diana Vreeland, and he became widely known within the design industry as "the dean of American decorators." His design philosophy emphasized comfort and livability over strict period authenticity, and Baldwin became particularly associated with using bold, saturated colors and mixing high-end antiques with more casual, unpretentious furnishings rather than maintaining rigidly matched formal decor throughout a home. Baldwin's 1972 book "Billy Baldwin Decorates" became an influential text within the design industry, and his design principles emphasizing personal comfort and individual client personality over rigid decorating rules significantly influenced subsequent generations of American interior designers. Billy Baldwin's combination of his high-profile celebrity clientele and his influential comfort-over-formality design philosophy has made him one of the most significant figures in 20th-century American interior design.
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0 - 3David Hicks
David Hicks became one of the most influential British interior designers of the 1960s and 1970s, developing a distinctive style combining bold geometric patterns with unexpected color combinations, a significant departure from the more traditional English country house aesthetic that had previously dominated British interior design. His 1966 marriage to Lady Pamela Mountbatten, daughter of Lord Mountbatten and a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, gave Hicks direct access to aristocratic and royal social circles that significantly expanded his client base and public profile within British society. Hicks is widely credited with popularizing the concept of "tablescapes," deliberately arranged groupings of small decorative objects displayed together on tabletops, a decorating technique that became widely adopted and remains a common interior design practice today. David Hicks's combination of his bold geometric pattern-mixing design style and his popularization of the tablescape decorating concept has made him one of the most influential British interior designers of the modern era.
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0 - 4Kelly Wearstler
Kelly Wearstler founded her Los Angeles-based design studio in 1995, and she became particularly known for designing boutique hotels, including several properties for the Viceroy Hotel Group, bringing her maximalist, eclectic design sensibility to hospitality projects at a significant commercial scale. Wearstler's design aesthetic combines bold pattern mixing, unexpected material combinations, and vintage furniture sourcing with her own original furniture and product lines, reflecting a genuinely maximalist departure from the more restrained minimalist design trends that dominated much of the 2000s and 2010s. She gained significant mainstream television visibility as a judge on Bravo's design competition series "Top Design," extending her public profile well beyond the interior design industry's own trade press into broader mainstream popular culture. Kelly Wearstler's combination of her extensive boutique hospitality design portfolio and her mainstream television visibility has made her one of the most commercially and culturally significant contemporary American interior designers.
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0 - 5Nate Berkus
Nate Berkus gained his initial mainstream visibility as a frequent design contributor on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" throughout the 2000s, a recurring television platform that introduced his approachable, accessible interior design philosophy to a massive daytime television audience well beyond his existing private design clientele. He later hosted his own syndicated daytime program, "The Nate Berkus Show," and launched home decor product lines sold through major retailers including Target, reflecting a broader strategy of extending his design brand into affordable, mass-market home goods rather than remaining purely a high-end residential designer. Berkus survived the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami while vacationing in Sri Lanka, an experience during which his partner at the time, Fernando Bengoechea, died, and Berkus has spoken publicly about how the experience affected his subsequent design philosophy's emphasis on surrounding oneself with meaningful, personally significant objects. Nate Berkus's combination of his extensive television design platform and his accessible mass-market retail product lines has made him one of the most publicly visible interior designers in modern American media.
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0 - 6Joanna Gaines
Joanna Gaines co-hosted HGTV's "Fixer Upper" alongside her husband Chip Gaines from 2013 to 2018, a home renovation series based in Waco, Texas that became one of the most popular shows in HGTV's history and introduced Gaines's distinctive modern farmhouse design aesthetic to a massive national television audience. The show's popularity directly drove significant tourism to Waco specifically to visit the couple's retail complex, Magnolia Market at the Silos, transforming what had previously been a relatively low-profile Texas city into a significant home-design-tourism destination. Gaines's "modern farmhouse" style, characterized by shiplap wood paneling, neutral color palettes, and a blend of rustic and contemporary elements, became so widely replicated following the show's success that design media specifically credited "Fixer Upper" with driving a broader nationwide home design trend throughout the mid-to-late 2010s. Joanna Gaines's combination of "Fixer Upper's" massive television popularity and her modern farmhouse style's outsized influence on broader American home design trends has made her one of the most commercially significant interior designers of the 2010s.
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