ABOUT ELAINE GRIFFIN
“Being the first African-American to receive an honorary PhD from my alma mater, NYSID, and to address the graduating class of brand new interior designers, was the greatest and most humbling professional honor I could imagine.”
Whether stylistically modern, traditional or transitional, celebrated interior designer and interior decorator Elaine Griffin is known for her warm and layered contemporary interiors that are functional, livable, and visually exciting. "Successful rooms take three things into excruciating consideration," she says. “Their inhabitants' lifestyles and space-specific needs, the room’s dimensions, and the dynamic contrasts of darkness and light, and texture and pattern. And no matter which space or its geographic location, it’s always those three things and in that order. The first tells you what goes in it and how it should look; the second, how to lay it out; and the third, its color palette."
Based in the Golden Isles of Coastal Georgia — St. Simons Island, Sea Island, Jekyll Island and Brunswick — and New York City, Elaine Griffin At Home brings more than twenty years of experience and a lifetime of style to create richly-textured, timeless and classic interiors that unequivocally look like the people who live in them.
Elaine Griffin began her design career in the Manhattan office of architectural behemoth Peter Marino, following a nine-year career as a publicist in New York and Paris, and officially opened her eponymous firm in 1999. “My work as a decorator aims to implement a refined version of the client’s own vision for his space, whatever the look, feeling, or style— coastal, classic, traditional, contemporary, modern, transitional or eclectic. My singular goal for every project I undertake is to create warm, elegant, and effortless-looking interiors that look like the people who live in them and seem to have naturally evolved over time. I design layered, richly-textured spaces, whether casual or formal, city, country or beach, that I want people to love to be in because they say ‘home’ to them,” she says.
A daughter of the Deep South, Elaine is a third-generation trailblazer and soared as one of the most-visible African-American designers in the country in broadcast and print media. As the contributing editor, design, for Better Homes & Gardens, her makeovers were the magazine’s second-most popular feature (bested only by color stories), and served to inspire readers’ own rooms nationally. She brought style, comfort and creativity to charitable organizations’ spaces through her eleven Good Works Makeovers for Oprah’s O at Home.
Elaine was the first African-American contributing editor at Elle Décor, was ranked as one of House Beautiful’s Top 100 American Designers, and in 2003, became the first room designer of color in the Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse. Her 2006 solo Georgia showhouse for Southern Accents magazine – a career trophy for Southern designers – remains the only one produced by an African-American decorator.
Elaine inspired America regularly in design and entertaining segments on morning television nationally, including the Today show, and was a cast member and third-place winner of NBC’s 2014 prime-time design competition reality show, American Dream Builders, hosted by Nate Berkus.
Her 2009 bestselling book, Design Rules: The Insider’s Guide to Becoming Your Own Decorator, published by Gotham Books, remains a leading compendium of the rules, principles and proportions that define well-designed spaces and make them look great. Design Rules has become a go-to reference book in America, China and Russia, establishing Elaine as the quotable home design eminence grise for every style, price point and demographic, and her insider’s tips and expertise appear regularly in print.
Elaine holds the distinction of being the first African-American recipient of the New York School of Interior Design’s highest accolade, their honorary doctorate, awarded to her in May 2019 following her keynote speech to the school’s graduating class. Elaine is a graduate of Yale University (B.A., Art History) and studied at the New York School of Interior Design. In 2015, she returned home to the Coastal Georgia of her childhood to spend time with her mother, who sadly left us this spring. Her 2020 launch of Elaine Griffin At Home marks her return to the design industry full time.
Elaine is active in civic organizations in both the Golden Isles and nationally, with a professional emphasis on preparing interior design’s next generation of creatives of color to thrive and succeed.