Ambiance Interiors, Asheville’s Oldest and Finest Design Firm
For artistry, training, and experience, you will find that our work is unparalleled in Western North Carolina.
Kathryn S. Long, ASID
I have an early memory of my home burning to the ground on Christmas Day in 1953. I remember being held by a fireman that day, and they salvaged a set of building blocks. Those were the first toys I remember.
Read More Kathryn's Interview
When I discovered you could major in Interior Design in college, I chose to go to East Carolina University for a BFA. I became so interested in art history that I went to the University of Georgia for an M.A. in that subject.
I needed to see all I had studied about, so I spent a year in Europe, settling down in Paris to “complete my education,” as Hemingway would have put it.
I moved to New York City to work in a commercial design firm, then returned to Asheville to set up shop in Sluder Furniture Company, where my parents encouraged me to open Ambiance Interiors.
You’ve worked in Asheville interior design for 40 years. What has inspired you to keep going?
Mother Nature! My artist’s eye enjoys the changing light, color, and textures of our beautiful world. I also am inspired by traveling, especially to France, Italy, Greece, and Morocco.
What are the highlights of your forty-year career?
- Sharing my clients’ joy as they experience their new spaces.
- Hosting the official opening of Ambiance Interiors in October, 1977.
- Passing the NCIDQ qualifying examination that same year.
- Having my work recognized by my peers in the Carolinas Chapter, ASID is always a thrill. I have thirteen Design Excellence Awards from them.
Wayne Caldwell
The biggest was early on, when the city pushed a downtown mall that would have taken our buildings. Ambiance had only been around two and a half years when the project was announced, and we spent the next year and a half fighting it, which stretched and stressed us in ways a new business should not have to experience. But we, alongside the “Asheville 1000,” stopped it. I’m very happy we did.
Read More Wayne's Interview
What is your role at Ambiance Interiors?
I like to say I keep the government happy and the lights on. I write checks and do accounting, in short. Which is sort of strange, as my training is in English and I never took a business course.
You are also a published novelist and poet. How has your work at Ambiance Interiors informed that?
It has given me forty years’ worth of insight into all manner of people, so I have enough characters to populate a whole series of novels. But I doubt I’ll write a book about this business. Nobody would believe it.
Ambiance Interiors •817 Quill Gordon Court, Biltmore Lake, NC, 28715 • 828-230-7446 (by appointment only)
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