Episode 43: Interview with Kelli Ellis

Scott Williams: Sweet Home Santa Barbara where the skies are so blue. Sweet Home Santa Barbara, what’s worked for me can work for you.

Jonathan Robinson: Welcome back friends to Sweet Home Santa Barbara. I’m your co-host, Jonathan Robinson. I’m with my friend and realtor.

Scott Williams: Scott Williams. 

Jonathan Robinson: Scott, we have another guest today who is an expert in her field. Let me just say a little bit about our guest, Kelli Ellis. 

Kelli is an award-winning international designer, a host, a speaker, an artist, and a best-selling author. Kelly is the SVP of Operations and Industry Relations for Ronati, working with designers, antiques, and art dealers worldwide. 

Please welcome Kelli Ellis. Hi, Kelli.

Kelli Ellis: Hello. Hello. Hello. Thank you.

Jonathan Robinson: You have a lot of experience on a lot of different things. I’m looking forward to asking you some questions. But just right off the bat, I’m curious how you intersect with the world of real estate and house buyers and sellers.

Kelli Ellis: My specialty has been design psychology and working with stagers and everything from designers, stagers, life coaches to the therapists about design psychology and understanding the whys of design, not so much how to design. It’s been a pleasure working in the real estate industry actually. I quite enjoy it.

Jonathan Robinson: What do you do with people in the real estate industry? What might be a typical day or a way you interact with them?

Kelli Ellis: Understanding, as you know, the power and the influence of properly staging a property, how important that is, and depending on the property, of course. But a lot of the times, I will work with stagers to help them understand how to not lose the sale for an agent. 

I have a really funny anecdote really quickly. I’ve been an interior designer for thirty years myself, over thirty years, not to age myself.

Jonathan Robinson: Started when you were ten years old.

Kelli Ellis: That’s it. That’s right. I did. An agent hired me to stage a home. It was my first staging job. I staged it so well, the couple didn’t move. I thought, “Oh, yes.” Not the point, because I was so engrossed and engraved in what the couple really wanted in their next home and why they bought this home and digging deep in the design psychology – because I was at the time writing my book – that I ended up creating the home that they wanted. It was a terrible experience for the agent. Clearly, she never worked with me again. 

But then I also went, “Okay. How do we take all this information and bottle it so that anyone can use it including agents and stagers to optimize this space for potential buyers,” whether or not agents want to use a staging company or they just want to know how to do it themselves. Because a lot of successful agents will do staging themselves which is brilliant, I think. If they have the bandwidth for it, I think it’s really important to understand. 

Aside from hiring stagers to come in, it would be great if you don’t need them. There’re some tweaks that you can make very easily in a property you’re getting ready to sell yourself and teaching yourself and your team. I love doing that, getting in with some of the agents and their teams in their offices and talking about the design psychology, what it is that we’re looking for, what buyers are looking for, and how they can do it themselves.

Jonathan Robinson: Scott?

Scott Williams: I think you refer to it as designing for life. Why don’t you share a little bit about what that means and how that influences your work?

Kelli Ellis: It’s really interesting. Like I mentioned before, the whys of design are so important. We actually walk hand in hand with real estate agents in that we’re asking very personal questions when you have a client. You have to get to know them on a very personal level. You have to connect with them. Whether or not you’re representing the house that they currently live in or you’re helping them find another home, you have to understand their motivations, where they’re coming from, what they love. 

A great example is you’re walking around a property with your clients. One says, “I love it. The other one says, “I hate it.” You’re like, “Why?” There’s very visceral reaction. We have a feeling about certain properties, and there’s a laundry list of why one person said they loved it versus one person saying they hated it. You have to understand those things in order to show them the right properties or to effectively sell their current property. 

It’s the same thing with designing for your life. I’m asking very personal questions. I’m helping people create spaces that they can live in through all stages and that all people within that home can live in through all stages and comfortably. 

I used to have to sell this concept until COVID, and then I didn’t, because we spent so much time at home and in our spaces and realized what worked and what didn’t, what was comfortable, what wasn’t comfortable, and why. Many people realized, “Gosh, this room is terrible. I’ve used 10% of it in the last month.” Or, “This is the best space ever. Everything is multifunctional. We were able to have gatherings and play games and have dinners,” and whatever.

Designing for life is really getting to understand the clients, what they need, and why. I call it the 3 Fs. There’re 3 Fs that have to be in the room in order for it to work: Function, Flow, and Feel. If you don’t have the functionality of the room, there’s 0 flow. It doesn’t feel right. You’re never going to use it. 

There’re questions that you have to ask. Why are we looking to redo this room? What about this space? Is it working for you? How many people need to be in this space? All the same questions you would ask as an agent to say, “Good. How do you entertain? What are you looking for in your dining room? How big of a table do you need?”

You’re walking the line between therapist, designer, agent, and all the things to really get them what they need for their life.

Scott Williams: That’s why all your different hats can be useful; I assume.

Kelli Ellis: Exactly. Definitely.

Jonathan Robinson: Being that buyers are all individuals, how do you use your strategic interior design? Can you do it and give some general tips as to what people might do to set up a house or fix up their house in a way that is ready for selling?

Kelli Ellis: We always say, “Edit. Edit. Edit.” The biggest thing is this. When buyers are walking through your home, obviously, we remove too personal items, the items that are too personal to the actual homeowner. Because it’s hard to envision my own photos there. 

But by the same token, people want to see that there’s warmth in the house, because a home brings energy. If a house feels like it’s too cold, not lived in, not loved, there’s no real good energy that happened here. We didn’t have family holidays here. This place was never used. There is no love in this home. 

You can feel it when you walk in. You can tell a brand-new spec home versus the home that’s been lived in. People know that when they walk in, and they go, “Oh, that’s really great.”

I don’t think that stripping away all personal facts, the artifacts, is important. I don’t think. I think it’s really important that we understand that buyers are coming through using all 5 of their senses and that the number 1 thing we can do is create space. There’s that flow that you can see the function of the room but also other functions, potential functions of the room and that the feel is nice. 

That’s where we talk about color. When we start bringing in color, how does it feel? Is it shocking? Is it calming? Is it jarring? Is it relaxing? All of those things.

But what is happening, what I’m seeing most often, is if I am ever able to walk through a space with a potential buyer, the first thing I want to tell the agent – and I do tell the agent in the nicest way possible – is, “Please, just listen. Don’t talk. Do not oversell a space, because the exact moment the client is walking through a space- it could be your home. You’re listening to these people walk through the space. They’re walking through your home. If you happen to be there…” That’s what we tell most of the sellers not to be there, “Don’t be there, because they don’t want to hear the good, the bad, or the ugly.”

But as an agent even, if you’re listening more than you’re talking, you are not getting in the way of that buyer making a potential memory about the space. When clients are walking through the space, they’re using all 5 senses to create an impact, to create a feeling, and then a memory about the space. 

If I said, “Oh, I love it,” then I start telling you why I love it, “Please don’t interrupt me, agent, to tell me what I could be doing with this space or how wonderful this is or how beautiful XYZ it is, or imagine,” blah, blah, blah. No. Like, “Let me imagine what I would do in this space.” You never know. I’m sure you’ve been shocked at some of the things or some of the ideas people have. You just go, “Oh, okay.” 

These are the people that I actually need to just zip it and let them come up with the ideas for these spaces where you’re thinking, “This is the worst place for [inaudible]. But all right, I would never put the yoga studio here. But you’re right. Dining room here? Weird.” You’re just not going to really let them create their own ideas.

It’s the same thing when you’re staging [inaudible] sell. I don’t believe in stripping it down and not having personal effects. I do believe in creating emotional space and mental space for the buyer to actually create their own memories. It just needs to flow. It needs to feel good. We’re not tripping over things. There’s a lot of stacks and piles of junk. There’s none of those things. But there’s also the ability, the mental space for the buyer to actually go through and formulate their own opinions. 

Then we can talk about there are some tried and true things to do: making sure there’s enough light, making sure there’s a mixture of textures, making sure that there’s a good airflow, the room smells good, all 5 senses. You go through all 5 senses to make sure all the things are there. I love talking about staging. I’m sure you, guys, have heard so much about staging. But the next most important thing is what happens mentally. It is really the key.

Jonathan Robinson: This, in some ways, goes against the staging by, “These are all the things you need to do,” that are very ordered: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, “Do all these things.” You’re trying to introduce some choices and maybe a bigger palette than just the regular 5 ways to do it.

Kelli Ellis: Yes. It’s interesting. If you have an empty house, and you see the staging company come in, and they’re dictating where everything goes, it’s just as annoying when you have an empty house, and you’re being dictated to, “Well, the nightstands have to go here, because this is the only place that we have plants.” It’s that same thing where you don’t get to use your imagination in the space if you rein it into too much. 

Now, obviously, if you’ve got a sitting room, you’re going to show how you can put some furniture in the space. You’re not going to overwhelm it. It’s going to be a good balance with a little bit of green plants to show life. You’re going to have good smells in the space. You’re going to have mixture of textures. Like you said, the hard and fast rules. 

But sometimes you got to mix it up, because trends do matter here. Buyers are going on trends. We’re also coming off, like I said, COVID. We’re coming off of a time where we spent a lot of hours in our home. Some of us still work at home. I do. 

Now, I know that I need a separate office. You might think about dedicating one of those bedrooms and making it an office instead of filling up all those spaces and go, “I wish this is a 5-bedroom, 6-bedroom house.” “No. It’s a 5-bedroom with a flex room. This room could be a yoga room. This can be a retreat.”

We don’t want to dictate too much about the uses of the space, because so many people are doing so much more in their homes than they ever were.

Jonathan Robinson: What are a couple of the trends that you’ve seen lately in terms of design?

Kelli Ellis: It’s really funny. Trends come and go. They are like that. But my favorite is the emphasis of biophilic design. Back in probably the ’50s, ’60s, you used to see homes that would have almost like a terrarium or inside gardens. 

Do you remember those beautiful mid-century- you’ve got these gorgeous homes. They always brought the inside out and outside in with the big windows. There was always a view to a green. Or there was the ability to put plants inside the house. We’re seeing a huge return to that, understanding the power of plants, the power of nature and wellness as a buzzword. 

Now, we’re seeing that being put back into the space. California Room is always a thing, or Eulogia was always great. That’s always, “Yes. We want outdoor living space.” Now, we’re bringing the outside in and in not new ways, but we’re going back to some of those smatters of the 1950s and ’60s which I think is really cool.

Scott Williams: One of the things that is part of that bringing sort of the brightness of day, daylight, sunniness to rooms- I suppose that can be done with color. Do you have any ideas or suggestions about doing that? “If you can’t, just do it with a window.”

Kelli Ellis: Adding color to your space? We’ve mentioned…

Scott Williams: Yes

Kelli Ellis: How do you do that without just… rephrase the question. Sorry.

Scott Williams: Well, this is coming out of a thought that we talked a little bit about, the whole idea of chromophobia or being scared of color. Part of what staging has led us to is great neutralnesses of houses or neutralizing houses. The opposite, I found myself, I went entirely down that road. I end up with a chromophobia. I’m scared of using lots of vibrance or lots of colors. What’s your comment on that?

Kelli Ellis: It’s really interesting. Because of the wellness trends, we did see a very big return to cleaning walls, simple colors, don’t scare people. If you have a truly feng shui house, you’re going to have a red room by the way. There’s some craziness out there. I don’t need to tell you that I don’t love feng shui. Because if you really apply the principles, they don’t work for everybody just like that blandness doesn’t work for everybody.

But there are colors that you can use always that we have scientifically determined actually spark creativity, the blues and the teals. The teal greens are safe everywhere. If you’re like, “Okay. I would like to toast up into using some colors to show a little bit more, to make people feel comfortable, creative and calm,” your greens, your sages, and your teals are a way to do that. They’re not scary. Those are really calming colors.

If you ever want to know what the trends are, just walk through model homes. That’s what my advice has been forever and ever and ever. Most of the model homes are going to be cutting edge, because they are appealing to a broad range of buyers. They’re trying to get that little bit of an edge and show that, “We are cutting edge. We know the trends. We know what’s going to appeal to everybody.”

When you do, you get the beiges and the greiges, your gray-beige. You get your white walls. But that color, if you ever see it, is going to be very neutral, very well and spaced. Think about walking into a spa. Those are the colors that you can use without fear. Obviously, the hot reds like my lipstick or colors from In-N-Out Burgers, those are reds and oranges. Those are energy colors. You’re never going to see those on the walls. Never a good idea. Everybody knows that, because it doesn’t feel good. It feels like a kick to the stomach. When you walk into the space, it’s jarring. 

As we said before, when people are creating their memories about a space, you want them to feel good. You need colors around them to feel good. If there’s hot pinks in a little girl’s room, that’s appropriate. If there’s memorabilia in certain rooms because it has a theme, that’s appropriate. 

But there are things that can be very polarizing. If you walk into a game room and you’ve got a kid who’s addicted to gaming, this house is not going to feel good to you. All you’re going to remember is that stupid game room and how terribly you felt in it. You remember that your kid’s addicted to gaming. I don’t like that place, because it’s bad for you [?].

That is not even a rational thought. It had all the bedrooms they wanted and had all the bathrooms they wanted and had everything that they wanted on their list. But for some reason, they don’t love this house. That’s because some people can’t see past the décor. That’s why we’ve gone to that fear of color. There is a chromophobia. You can add color. But you just need to do it in a very careful way, in a very careful way. 

I don’t believe in everything being neutral. It actually does the opposite. It actually ends up looking almost like a padded cell. When you go all white or all neutral and there’s nothing in it – there’s no life – that’s when we’re going to have a problem. You need to bring in the woods. You need to bring in the balance. 

I know you’ve toured a house where you’re thinking, “Wow. This is dark.” All they needed to do was add some natural elements, aka, marbles, woods, and give some earthiness back in there, add some plants. Those are the things that I love to tell agents about going, “Look. How does it feel to you? What was your first reaction?” It’s generally right, because you, guys, are seeing more properties than anybody. You’re the one who is getting that feeling. What your gut says is probably 90% correct about the color and the feeling of space.

Jonathan Robinson: That’s a lot of great information, Kelly. I’m wondering if you have any final comments that might be useful for all our listeners in terms of the design and what you do.

Kelli Ellis: I think the benefit of understanding the emotion that people are having when they’re walking through a space [inaudible] is doubly as important as the way the space looks. Allowing your buyers and sellers to create their own emotions and memory of the space is just as powerful as good design. Listening more, talking less.

Jonathan Robinson: I’m glad you said that. I agree that that’s a really important thing that’s underrated and not talked about a lot. A lot of great information, Kelly. We really appreciate it. How can people get hold of you?

Kelli Ellis: Please reach out. You can find me on Instagram, @desirekellyellis, where I’m always giving design psychology tips and sharing my life here in Barcelona and beautiful properties around the world as well as my design projects. I’m really happy to talk to people. If there’re questions, specific questions, they can reach me at kelly@kellyellis.com.

Jonathan Robinson: Scott, how can people get hold of you? 

Scott Williams: scott@scottwilliams.com.

Jonathan Robinson: We thank our listeners for another great episode of Sweet Home Santa Barbara. We’ll catch you next time.

Scott Williams: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite app. If you know someone preparing to sell their home, please tell them about the podcast. Visit scottwilliams.com to contact me and download the 2 free e-booklets, “Is My House Saleable Now” and “How not to Buy a Money Pit.” 

Thank you for listening.