Newport Beach interior designer is gaining attention for her ‘magic spaces’
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About two years ago, Newport Beach interior designer Cher Beall spoke to an editor about doing a holiday book.
The response?
“Come talk to us when you have a following of 30,000,” according to the designer.
Her Instagram following is now at 543,000.
When she started building her Instagram account, Beall didn’t know much about gaining a following — but she did have photos of a lot of her work through her interior design company, Cashmere & Co. in Newport Beach.
“So we started posting pictures that I had of the holidays, and then things just kind of took off,” she said.
Since then, the award-winning designer has appeared in five episodes on Homeworthy, a website, YouTube channel and social media creator that films video tours and related content of the homes of celebrities and other high-profile individuals. Beall’s episodes include decor and DIY tips for Halloween, Easter, Valentine’s Day and Christmas. She also has an upcoming Thanksgiving special with Homeworthy — sharing ideas on hosting, styling and creating holiday traditions.
She said it’s the kind of content she’s designing and thinking about creating anyway because she’s always created these “magic spaces and places, trying to make things special for my own family.”
“It’s what I love,” Beall said.
In the more than 35 years she has operated her business, Beall has worked on both commercial and residential properties across the country. She worked on a daycare center in Atlanta, a bank lobby in Texas and many others. Projects vary in length, she said, but most of them now can take years.
“They’re not so much little teeny projects but they’re bigger projects,” she said. “We wouldn’t just do one room or one little bathroom remodel or something like that. So most of the things are working with someone from the ground up, with their plans and the architect.”
She’s enjoyed working on holiday-themed design projects to showcase in Homeworthy, as well as on her Instagram account. She said that it’s not only fun to create the content, but because she’s already doing this for her holidays with family, she can quickly transform a space.
Raising two daughters and a son with her husband — and now with five grandkids — she’s had plenty of family to host holiday events for.
“I told the story on Father’s Day about my dad and how I created this special pilot party for my dad,” she said of an Instagram post. “He was an airline pilot and a fighter pilot, and I showed what I did for the party and my family interacting at the party.”
She said followers really responded to the post.
“People were so cute and so responsive because this playfulness and act of love resonated with them,” she said.
She also shared on Instagram how she created an art studio for her grandchildren out of an old garage at a property in Ojai.
“It’s a very cute space,” she said, “but the story behind it is that we call it the Tiny Club … for tiny people.”
She said they read books, make crafts and eat cookies in their special club.
“I decided to invent this space because I had one little granddaughter that was super tiny, and I’m kind of tiny,” Beall said. “People were always commenting how tiny she was and how short she was, and she was kind of feeling bad.”
She said she “wanted to make her feel special by creating this space especially for tiny people.”
Tips for the holidays
With the holiday season quickly approaching, Beall has plenty of helpful tips — including that parties and celebrations should be unique and personal.
“I think the most important thing is trying to make it personal,” she said. “Do you have your grandmother’s silver? Well, if you do, then this is the time to use it. Or a vintage tablecloth that somebody gave you and was passed down? I mean, to me, it’s all about the personal and how that relates to you.”
She said she also enjoys offering up a surprise on a holiday table setting.
“A little gift, or just some little sort of whimsical surprise,” she said. “I feel like, especially with Thanksgiving, it’s just such a time to be grateful and celebrate — celebrate what you’re most grateful for over the [past] year. So it just feels like the perfect time to be sentimental about things. This year, I’ve got little gratitude journals that I’m giving people and then I [also] discovered these little lovely books that you could actually write in to tell each person all these different things that you love about them.”
She said when she shops, she often likes finding vintage items and unique, creative items from artists. She also might get the basic holiday decor from Hobby Lobby, Target or T.J. Maxx and then add a unique twist.
On her Instagram posts Beall shows how to deconstruct items to use in creative ways. For example, she said she demonstrated how with four different garlands, she created various tabletop accessories. One was by removing little glitter acorns from a beaded garland and tying them with a velvet ribbon on napkins. She said “this became a lovely detail on the table setting.”
“It’s an inexpensive way to make something that’s unique and different, and really it ends up being one-of-a-kind because you’re using something that’s meant to do something else,” she said.
As for her book idea — which began her dive into the social media world — it’s still on the table.
“I’m currently writing the book proposal and searching for the right literary agent, in addition to my interior design projects and Instagram escapades,” she said.
