DESTINED TO DESIGN

Interiors maven Laura Tribbett has been reading rooms all her life.

Laura Tribbett didn’t stand a chance. She was born to be an interior designer. As a kid growing up outside the Twin Cities, she loved building with Legos and making shoebox dioramas. By the time she was in high school, she was hooked on TV’s Trading Places and begged her parents to let her redecorate her room. When they gave her the green light, she took inspiration from a colorful comforter, sponge-painting the walls yellow and hanging a wallpaper border. “It sounds super cringy now,” she says, “but I felt so empowered, and I’m really grateful that my parents gave me the freedom and the space to explore this passion.”

That passion took her first to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, where she received a BS in Interior Design, then to New York. “That’s when my true design education started,” says Tribbett, who worked in customer service at a furniture showroom before landing a junior designer job at William T. Georgis Architect. Gigs with other leading design professionals—including David Easton and Thom Filicia—followed. “My last role in New York was as the head of interior design for Danish architect Thomas Juul-Hansen. He needed someone to start and lead the interiors side to interface with his already strong architectural team. When my boyfriend, now my husband, moved to Chicago, so did I. I worked for Alessandra Branca in the Gold Coast for about a year when I decided that it was time to do my own thing.”

Tribbett—who lives in the city’s Fulton Market neighborhood with her husband, Charlie, and their two very young daughters—launched Outline Interiors in 2015 and has enjoyed sustained growth over the past nine years. “What started out as just me designing literally any space that family and friends needed, has grown into a firm with six full-time employees, an established office in the West Loop, and unique, beautiful projects all over Chicagoland and beyond.”

In addition to getting a bead on a client’s taste and lifestyle, Tribbett works diligently to manage homeowner expectations. “Online resources and social media are great tools for clients to communicate the look and feel they’re interested in, but it takes time to craft design

options that meet their functional needs,  aesthetic goals, and pricing and timeframe parameters,” notes Tribbett. “It’s my job to educate my client, and once we understand what those needs, goals, and parameters are, we can talk about budget and quality expectations. Many clients are inundated with online ads and emails from retailers with items that look great, but perhaps aren’t the best quality. This is where we come in—to steer them in the right direction.” 

When a client purchased a house in Barrington where the kitchen was “50 shades of margarine,” Tribbett’s charge was to better align the space with the rest of the home. She painted

the cabinetry a deep green (Benjamin Moore’s Boreal Forest), updated the backsplash, and custom-designed a new island. She kept the slate stone floor because it carried out into other rooms and dressed the walls in a beautiful trellis wallpaper from Sanderson. “One of the biggest upgrades to this space,” shares Tribbett, “was flipping an old coat closet to open into the kitchen  and installing custom cabinetry and under-counter refrigeration. Pocket doors painted to coordinate  with the cabinetry conceal  this  space when  the  client doesn’t want it on display.”

No matter what the project, Tribbett’s design approach comes down to creating “moments of joy for others,” which she calls “MOJO.” “Style, colors, textures aside, I want the space to function for the client and create a sense of pride in their home.”

For more information, please visit outlineinteriors.com.