I'm Paula.
My daughter, my niece, and I bring new life to old New England houses. We are a three-person studio based in Portsmouth, two generations of design experience in one family, and we take on a small number of projects at a time so one of us is always in the house.
About
Who you are working with: three designers, one family
How I got here
The houses I work in are clapboard and brick, low-ceilinged and good-boned, with rooms that were built for a different way of living. My job is to bring a modern sensibility to them without anyone being able to tell where the old house ends and the new work begins.
What I love about them is also what makes them hard. The parlor nobody uses. The kitchen that was an afterthought in 1890. The beautiful front hall that swallows every coat in the family. My job is to keep what is worth keeping, and to make the rest of the house earn its place.
I have a deep weakness for well-made things, whether they come from a maker whose name you know or a dealer in a barn off Route 1. I put the two side by side all the time. The mix is the point: a house should look collected over years, not ordered in an afternoon.
When I’m not in a client’s house, I’m usually in someone else’s: an estate sale, a workroom, an open house I have no business being at. Or on a ski lift, which is where a surprising number of my best ideas arrive.
How I work
Four things I believe, and the way you will see them show up in your house.
01
Beauty and livability, both
A room that photographs well but cannot take a dog, a teenager, or a wet February is a showroom, not a home. I design for how you actually live, then make it beautiful.
02
The house gets a vote
An old house has opinions about ceiling height, window placement, and what color its rooms want to be. I listen to it before I argue with it.
03
Known makers and hidden gems
I source from established brands and from the antique dealers, upholsterers, and woodworkers I have come to trust around the Seacoast. The best rooms have both.
04
You are talking to us
We are a three-person studio, my daughter, my niece, and me, and there is no one else to hand you off to. Each of us sees a house a little differently, and that is the point: three perspectives on every room, one of us always in charge of yours. We measure, we draw, we pick, we show up on install day. If something is wrong, you call one of us.
“The goal is a house that looks like it has been this way for a hundred years, and lives like it was finished last month.
Paula Packard
Tell me about the house.
Send a note about the rooms, the age of the place, and what is bothering you. The three of us reply to every message ourselves.
Contact form
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
By appointment