RESA Greater Capital Area Chapter Heads To The Washington Design Center For Their Spring Market

Last week several RESA Greater Capital Area Chapter members and prospective members met at the Washington Design Center for their Spring Market. The keynote speaker was Vern Yip, one of HGTV’s most recognizable designers, who discussed his book: Vern Yip’s Design Wise: Your Smart Guide to a Beautiful Home. We were all very excited to listen to Vern as he is also going to be speaking at the 2018 RESACON event this July.

Vern was both humble and entertaining. He grew up in McLean, VA, very close to where a lot of us are located and work and told the story of the sacrifices his parents made to bring their family to the United States so that their children would benefit from a good education. It is a heartwarming story of sacrifice and love, and he shares how he was deeply touched by his upbringing and, in particular, his mother’s influence on his design sense. Vern spoke about his own family including two children and multiple big dogs and how his philosophy is to design a home that provides comfort and purpose for those that live there. In other words, if a family wants to hang out on the sofa together then it should be suited to withstand that (dogs and all!) On the other hand, if you have clients that like to throw elaborate dinner parties, then the design should be geared toward that.  It really parallels what we do with our home staging businesses. We are staging homes based on the target audience of the buyer. The better we are at identifying the buyer and adding some design to our stagings that represent that buyer, the more likely that home will sell faster.

Vern’s book will be a great resource for all staging and design professionals. In the book he identifies and provides guidelines for many of the things that we typically debate. For example, how high to hang lighting, how big your area rugs should be, how high should you hang art and how to select the right lampshade for lamps. For design projects, he discusses the general rules for spacing of walkways and lighting, the differences in counter materials, the appropriate table sizes for seating, chair heights appropriate for different tables, etc. It is basically a bible for design and very easy to reference if you want to quickly look something up.

As we got our books signed we had a chance to talk personally with Vern and his partner. They are both very cordial and it was nice to hear how much they really love having a family and being together and how this influences his design. He is very excited to come speak at RESACON 2018 and we are anxious to learn more from him! RESACON 2018 – here we come!