Everything above is infrastructure, and infrastructure alone does 
not make a home worth living in. That is the territory of the 
interior designer, and few have articulated the shift more clearly 
than Lisa McDennon.
She describes a clientele that has moved away from visual opu-
lence toward quiet luxury: understated, personalized, built on 
artisan detail and craftsmanship rather than display. Wellness, 
she notes, is no longer a trend running alongside that. It has 
become an entire sector, reaching across the architect, the 
designer, the builder, the trades, and the manufacturer at once.
Her requests now begin where ours do. Lighting control and 
shading tied to circadian rhythm. Whole-house water purifica-
tion and upgraded drinking water. Air filtration, saunas, steam 
rooms, cold plunges. For ground-up projects, the decisions go 
deeper still, into natural recycled insulation, EMF-resistant 
rooms, and operable window walls that let a house breathe.
However, her most useful correction is about mood. Air, water, 
and light are the essentials, and every material a family touches 
carries weight, from zero-VOC paint to organic bedding to natural 
fiber rugs. Yet if the room itself is cold or uninviting, the amenities 
will not deliver what the owner came for. Materials and lighting 
design, she argues, are the two elements that govern how a space 
actually feels, and a sense of calm is the thing that ultimately 
allows a body to rest and repair. The beauty and the wellbeing are 
the same decision, made once, in the specification. 
Design | Lisa McDennon
85 
BALLIET + WANG LUXURY LIVING 

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