Interior Design by Jennifer Inners

Every now and then, you visit a place and think: I’d like to live here.

It’s likely that many patrons of Saylor House, located along the 1200 block of Penn Avenue in Wyomissing, get just that feeling when they enter the eight inspiring showrooms of this home décor haven.

And it’s even more likely that if you were to walk into the home of a Saylor House client, you might witness some design impact from those showrooms.

The innovative talent behind Saylor House is owner and lead designer Jennifer Inners.

Education in the field is critical to good interior designers. And while Inners has that, she has something else that gives her a bit of an advantage when it comes to working with clients: her first career involved a 15-year tenure as a psychiatric nurse in Florida.

It would seem that the two careers are totally disparate. But Inners is quick to counter that assumption.

“When you work with people, you tend to develop a good sense of what people would like,” she says.

Her medical training also factors into her role in negotiating a middle ground when clients and their partners favor different styles.

“I often see divergent tastes between couples,” she says. “All that training helps me get them to agree on something.”

Moving on up to Berks

Inners and her husband moved to Berks County from Florida about eight years ago. Her husband is originally from southern Pennsylvania, so they considered several areas of the state prior to deciding on purchasing a vintage center-hall Colonial-style home in Wyomissing.

“I call it our money pit,” she says with a smile. “I don’t know if it’ll ever be done.”

The delay in being able to renovate their own home is not exactly a real problem for the couple. Indeed, contractors upon whom they rely are pretty much booked up for jobs as a result of Inners’ numerous Saylor House projects.

With a booming economy amongst her client base in Berks and the multi-county region, Inners is seeing her five-plus-year-old business thrive. She puts in long days, often off-site at her clients’ properties. Back at the Penn Avenue showroom — which features furniture, lighting, area rugs, custom window treatments, wallpaper and accessories from cutting edge manufacturers — there are three part-time staffers to assist customers.

Residential work comprises the bulk of Inners’ business. She’s worked on homes as large as 8,000 square feet and also met the challenge of decorating her daughter’s former 250-square-foot Manhattan apartment. 

“You have to go up,” she says, referring to utilizing wall space.

Opening the Décor Door

When contacted by a client – whether for an entire new build, a full or partial renovation of an existing house, or helping boomers downsize tastefully – Inners’ first step is to visit the client’s home.  

“I go out and ask a whole bunch of questions – what are your wants and needs, are there kids and what are their ages, how about pets? I take everything into consideration,” she says.

The homeowners’ input is key; she is pretty much uncomfortable if asked to go ahead and decorate to her taste.

The scope of her involvement can range from a simple paint color consultation to the construction of a new home involving “every little thing” down to switchplates.

“You can be with people for up to a year,” she says, “so you really get a feel for how their lives work.”

Inners knows the emotional value of continuity when it comes to a home’s furnishings or other components.

“I don’t recommend getting rid of everything,” she says. “It’s important to realize that people usually have at least one piece that means something to them or meant something to a parent.”

In some cases, that one piece may become the focal point of a space. She cites two recent examples where custom wall recesses were created to fit a family heirloom buffet and an antique Asian chest, respectively.

Chair Lifts

Sometimes the item is a chair, often an antique piece or a set of dining room chairs, requiring a makeover.  

She advises clients to invest in only top-quality or real family pieces when it comes to reupholstering.

“It’s a matter of what the quality means to you,” she says. “The cost of reupholstering versus buying a new piece can be nearly the same.”

That being said, the Saylor House upholsterer is busy enough to be on-site one day a week. Hundreds of fabric choices provide customers with the opportunity to have a reupholstered piece either set the tone for a room makeover or complement a style.

Inners tips her hat to the popularity of HGTV and the high interest it has created in home décor and renovations. Of particular influence, she noted, is the open-concept style that has been applied not just to newer homes, but to existing properties.

“I knock down a lot of walls,” she says.

Home-renovation celebrities’ influences are clear, too.

Concentrating on the Classics

“I do have a lot of clients who like the Joanna Gaines style,” she says, “but I try to steer people away from anything too trendy, and to stay with things that are going to have longevity.”

Inners is a proponent of classic styles that will stand the test of time. She advises clients to express their affinity for popular decor through accessories.

“I say go trendy with accessories because they are less expensive,” she says. “In my house, the accessories are from places I’ve been as well as gifts and family pieces. I believe there should be a mix of everything in the home with what people already have.”

Inners works with real estate agents to stage homes, another increasingly popular outcome of HGTV.

“I do feel people want a home to look like a finished HGTV house,” she says, noting it can take four to six months and living with a lot of mess and disruption to achieve that.

Though her clientele runs the gamut of ages, many have lived in their homes for some time and look to freshen up the décor.  

“I’ll have someone call and say: ‘I’m sick of my living room,’” Inners says. But after one room is completed, others may look dated and a succession of redecorating ensues, especially as the economy improves and homeowners feel more confident.

“I can be with a family for five years as they go through the room-by-room process,” she says.

Chief among the ROI (return on investment) improvements are kitchen and bath renovations.

Cooking up Business

“Kitchens and baths are booming,” Inners says, “and that’s the sign of a good economy.”

She credits HGTV hosts for educating viewers about that value of renovations to these key rooms.

Many of the kitchens Inners tackles are updates of styles that were popular in the 1990s – think dominant dark cherry or honey oak cabinets.  

Painted cabinets – white predominantly – are the order of the day. Subway tiles and grey accents are part of the light and airy design. Again, accessories and appliances can create an ambiance ranging from traditional to transitional to modern. As in other rooms, there may be an accent wallpapered wall.

“I really like the look and versatility,” she says. “I just hope in 20 years people aren’t walking in and saying: ‘What were they thinking?’”

When it comes to bathrooms, a staple of two decades back is going the direction of the dinosaur.

“We’re pulling out a lot of those enormous jetted tubs,” she says. Those gargantuan fixtures are happily sacrificed for more space for modern shower spaces in the renovated bathrooms.

Getting Personal

For Inners, there is a personal intimacy in dealing with décor and her clients. 

“I’m in people’s houses; I spend a lot of time with them and with how they use their house, in their bedrooms, closets and bathrooms,” she says. “I do custom closets as well, and that’s very personal, as I’m dealing with their personal items. I respect that.”

Sometimes those personal items have a big presence in a home’s public room. In a recent project, a husband’s pride in his taxidermy collection was not shared by his spouse. Finding an acceptable location for some mounted game, including a gazelle head, was not a particularly easy task. Ultimately, Inners was inspired to mix the real mounts with some faux antlers and deer heads to create an art wall of sorts amenable to both spouses.

“I did the study right inside the front door,” she says. “I did a vignette and it really worked well.”

She offers one key piece of advice to domestic partners: “You have to pick your battles.”  

For instance, if a guy wants to keep his favorite recliner, figure out how to incorporate it with the new décor.  

“Many times, all men really want is the chair,” she says. “People have to live in their homes; staging is for television or magazines.”

A Starry-Eyed Special Place

Inners says one of her favorite recent projects is a home office for a local physician.

“There was a space in her house she wanted as her own,” Inners says. “She found a picture in a magazine that was the inspiration for the room. We took the basics and put our twist on it. It turned out very cool – very old Hollywood glamour. She has several kids and dogs, so this has really become her escape.”

While residential clients are her mainstay, Inners has also made an impact in the commercial marketplace, having done apartment complexes, doctor and dentist offices, and other establishments. Calming colors and small patterns are critical in medical offices, she says, to create a soothing environment for patients.

Inners has not yet tackled a restaurant makeover, but it’s high on her wish list, particularly with the prevalence of locally unique eateries, bars and breweries. 

Despite its investment in creating a new interior environment for her customers, the name of Inners’ business harkens to the past.

The namesake Saylor House was a hotel and carriage stop for those traveling between York and Baltimore in the 19th century. Inners’ husband was raised in the building, which his grandfather purchased and transformed into a medical office as well as a home. One of his children raised the next generation of children, including Inners’ husband, in the building which Inners describes as a child’s paradise with passages, spiraling stairwells, and lots of places to play and to let imaginations bloom.

A vintage photo of the building with the Saylor House name is displayed on the stairwell of Inners’ home. As Inners was struggling to come up with a name for her interior design business, her husband, passing by the photo, pointed to it and said: “How about Saylor House?”

“I give him full credit, and it’s really a great name,” she says. 

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Saylor House

1295 Penn Avenue, Wyomissing

610.816.7161 | saylorhouse.com