Jenna Pilant
Home Renovating YouTuber, Upholsterer, Blogger
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Instagram: @jennapilant | jennapilant.com
Photos: Luis Gonzalez
The 411
Over the years, my personal love for color has morphed into a rainbow-tastic lifestyle. I like my designs to be uniquely different and a fearless melding of almost every Crayola box color with a healthy combined dose of vintage motifs and contemporary designs.
Design Advice
The rules of design were made to be broken. A home should reflect its inhabitants, not a Pottery Barn catalogue. Create a one-of-a-kind space that’s truly yours and yours alone! Warning: Happiness will most likely follow.
Biggest Challenge with Your Home
When we initially purchased our “50 shades of tan” house back in 2016, I naively thought that all contractors did what they promised. Such a rookie mistake! But I guess if we hadn’t gone through such an ordeal with all of those terrible exterior contractors, I may never have had the idea for the home renovation show Room Bloom on YouTube in the first place. Now I’m designing and renovating our entire house to resemble something straight out of my technicolor daydreams and we’re only 25 percent done, y’all!
Proudest DIY Moment
Thus far in my design career, my proudest DIY moment to date is currently our own family room’s fireplace project. My ultimate design goal was to transform its original blah self into a more inviting focal point of the room. It took me five days total to demo the original down to its base structure before my contractor friend Steve Frost and I could start with its rebuild. It was also my first time ever tiling anything, which, looking back, is a little crazy in itself as I could not have picked a harder tile to start with!
Something You Wish You Had Known When You Started
When I first decided to take my hobby of upholstery full-time, I hadn’t yet realized how the average person knew so little about furniture upholstery. Now well-versed in the “designer/ client” process, I spend a good chunk of my days educating my design clients—from deciding whether or not their furniture piece is worth the initial investment to the very selection of their upholstery-grade textiles themselves. I have learned that the more hands-on you are, the happier the clients ultimately will be!
Upholstery Tip
Due to its lacking “wear and tear,” I am not a fan of using linen on upholstered furniture. However, when I run into a client who absolutely loves linen, I keep both the client and designer happy by bleaching those canvas drop cloths you can buy at the local hardware store in the washing machine, which softens the canvas while not deterring its overall longevity. The canvas can also be easily dyed a color with Rit.
Pass the Spray Paint
This is no secret, but man, spray paint is where it’s at! You can make any decor item work within any space by using spray paint, so don’t pass on an item simply because it doesn’t perfectly match. There’s always room for color potential.
An Instrumental Piece of Advice You've Received
My grandmother, Margaret Dalby Fowler, always used to say, “People will tell a lie when the truth would sound better.” I didn’t quite know what she meant by that as a young girl, but dang, it sure has proven true scads of times in both my adult life and career!
Something We Might Not Know About the Field that You Work In
For the most part, an upholsterer figures out their labor charges by the yardage the furniture piece requires. The upholstery supplies, however, are a whole other beast.
How Do You Create Balance as an Entrepreneur Between Work and Life?
BAHAHA. You're Funny! What balance?!
Motto You Live By
“People will love you, people will hate you, and none of it will have anything to do with you.”—Abraham Hicks
