The year was 2020. High school friends Jake Arnold and tech entrepreneur Leo Seigal launched an online platform called The Expert, and redefined working with home design professionals. They offered one-on-one hour-long sessions at a range of prices, so everyone had online access to expert professional designers. In 2021, in an interview with Forbes, Creator Jake Arnold stated, “The Expert is being able to have quality time with someone where it’s focused, and you can ask all your questions in one place and have them answered on every call,” Arnold says. “It’s surprising to me because the feedback that everyone sends says they get so much from it. It’s so amazing and it makes me feel really good that I’m helping a lot of people that really are grateful for the time that we spend doing these calls. And all our friends that we brought onto the platform feel the same way.”
They’ve grown in leaps and bounds. The Expert has expanded to collaborative sales with high end furniture manufacturers, and relationships with trade professionals. And the general public still has access to an expanding roster of sessions with celebrity home designers.
How could I not give The Experts a try? I’ve followed Jenna Lyons career since she became Executive Creative Director of J.Crew, so I thought I’d write a review about my experience working with her during a one hour session through The Expert. The truth is, I wasn’t cool about it. I ran around for a while acting like a goofball. “I have an hour with Jenna Lyons to talk about my house!” I gasped to the walls of my house. No reaction back. Note to self: don’t talk to walls.
When I booked the session, which was ridiculously easy online, The Expert Client Concierge became a new email friend. She seamlessly facilitated the coordination of the meeting, handled my embarrassingly unorganized notes (about neons and fluorescents and disco), and made sure I had the correct Zoom information. It was an elevated experience, and I was made to feel like a very important person.
And now, the actual meeting. I’m very happy I took notes, because the goofball came over me again. I remember that we joked around about my crazy love of color, and she had a very cool coordinator, and I tried to describe my questions in an intelligent way.
Jenna asked me to tell her a little bit about myself, and I told her about the DomaChroma project. We talked about the rooms I had sent her to review, and our conversation turned to broadening my overall color palette. She recognized a recurring pattern (!) in my choices of color. Since Lyons studied at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, before earning a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons, New York, she IS the expert (pun intended). This became a life changing lesson for me. I understood her point. My color choices were too narrow.
Now, I started DomaChroma to preach to the world that bold, electric color is life changing. And I learned through Jenna’s explanation that by not choosing combinations of pastels and brights, I was missing the opportunity to make the bright color dance.
She explained that my theory of framing color in white moulding and window treatments was breaking up and minimizing the bold wall color. A sense of push–pull between pastels and brights makes a room more exciting, and color-drenching a room, instead of framing the wall colors in white, is more dramatic and enticing. She asked me to check out specific fabric and furniture designers for reference, and showed me a huge selection of images for inspiration.
I was completely gobsmacked. I thought we would talk about furniture and placement and color – and we did. What I didn’t expect was the game-changing color theory wisdom!
I highly recommend the services of The Expert. For color enthusiasts, It’s a window into the thinking of designers like Miles Redd and David Kaihoi, Ross Cassidy, House of Honey, Sarah Brown Interiors, Noz Nazawa, Brigette Romanek, and Studio Ashby.
My meeting with Jenna Lyons was extraordinary. This proves that if you live life in maximum color, exciting events are always on the horizon. Fun fact: her Brooklyn bathroom has been deemed one of the MOST pinned bathrooms on Pinterest (and YES, I asked her about creating that famous glass wall with color!).
Thank you The Expert and thank you Jenna Lyons!