I’ve lived on both coasts all of my life – in California and New York – and I’ve spent enough time in the south and the midwest to have a grasp on the design and culture, but the Pacific Northwest still eludes me. What is quintessential Pacific Northwest style beyond being “nature-inspired,” and “bringing the outdoors in” — things that could be said of anywhere with big picture frame windows and earthy textures and color palettes? What does it mean to do that in Portland or Seattle or Vancouver? Or in Redmond or Mesa?
Architectural marvels and design masterpieces abound in the PNW, like the Shorline House, pictured above, designed by Splyce or the PNW residence pictured below designed by Philpotts Interiors, but when I set out to define what constitutes Pacific Northwest Style I had the hardest time compared to anywhere else.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the rosters of my usual round of design publicists are not packed with designers from Portland, Seattle and the surrounding areas. This is purely anecdotal since no one is collecting this kind of data, but it seems as though there are less designers in the Pacific Northwest participating in design media on a national level than in most other regions**. You get the sense that they are just doing their own thing. (There are, of course, exceptions including the talented AM Interior Design, whose work is pictured below)
Those that do tend to be larger firms who boast offices in multiple metropolitan areas like New York, Miami and Los Angeles. For their clients, building in the PNW often means building a second or third home and it is in one of those other cities that they claim their primary residence. Unless, of course, they are part of the great tech relocation or retiring.
It feels wrong to define a region’s aesthetic by the stylings of its transplants and tourists, so despite the fact that most of the responses I received for comment were from designers working on projects that were not primary residences or were hotels, I am going to do my best to avoid that here. When enough transplants move in, however, they undeniably become part of the region’s cultural fabric.
What the transplants bring with them
The land of the Pacific Northwest has a strong connection to indigenous peoples and a liberal counter-culture permeating the cities of the PNW that purports to uphold and celebrate natives’ connection to their land. But the PNW is often lauded by developers for its potential for growth, as an undeveloped plate of resources to be extracted and picked apart, rather than preserved.
New development is often defined by outsiders with no real connection to the land, as it is in many attractive cities where technology companies set up shop in droves. These transplants often feel pushed (as much as they do pulled) out of places like California. They are lured by prices*, by vast views of rainy landscapes and by solitude.
Transplants never fully shed the culture from which they came in favor of something entirely new. This can be beautiful when it contributes to the fabric of the place or it can be detrimental when it displaces entire swaths of the culture and its resources. Like any major city, the cities of the PNW experience both.
When you look at what parts remain from transplants’ cultures, you begin to unpack why it is so hard to pin down a distinctive style in the Pacific Northwest. So much new, shiny development is infused with Californian’s (and other transplants’) interpretations of the region, leading to a general flattening of the aesthetic as ‘nature-driven,’ a simple swap of dry desert beaches for lush green terrain. Yet there is still the pull of the region. There is still some shedding being done in favor of what the Pacific Northwest has to offer that other places don’t.
The romance of solitude
The PNW is often defined by its persistent dreariness and many of the designers I spoke to discussed playing with this tension, describing projects based on how far into or away from the moody climate they leaned in their color and material choices. Take the project, pictured below, designed by AM Interior Design, which clearly leans away from it.
What this means materially: exposed wood beams and ample millwork, but not so much that it feels like a log cabin, are often off-set by large, modern picture frame windows and skylights to allow for as much natural light as possible and to amplify the views.
Outside the cities, an embrace of solitude came up in nearly every one of the projects I spoke to designers about. There is something about being alone that is both celebrated and questioned here. That – I’ve come to believe – the constant tension between embracing or rejecting solitude, nature and change is what defines Pacific Northwest style.
*While not cheap, it is on average less expensive to build and buy in Seattle and Portland than in Californian cities. Although that is becoming increasingly hard to defend, despite prices being a huge draw to the region in the recent past.
**Aside from maybe Alaska. And not only compared other major cities – I can name more designers based in Oklahoma than I can in Oregon. I sought out writing this piece to change that and ended up meeting firms based in Honolulu and CDMX with projects in the PNW.
Cover photo: Design by Splyce | Photography by Ema Peter
