1. Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do!
I’m Laura Melling, founder + creative director of Melling Studio – an interior design practice I started in 2010. I live in Vancouver, BC, in a modern home in the Hastings Sunrise neighborhood of East Vancouver with my husband Quinn and our two children, Grayson (10) and Hunter (3). On weekends, you’ll find us recharging with a nature moment along the coast or in the forest, enjoying an oat milk matcha at a local coffee shop or exploring the city by bike.
Both personally and professionally, I am deeply grounded by three core values – optimism, curiosity and collaboration – and consider each project as an opportunity to express these values. Optimism is leading with an open mind and a sense of quiet confidence. Curiosity is an intentional practice of observation and discovery to cultivate understanding. Collaboration is all about connecting the dots and coming together to reimagine an idea.
From an early age, growing up in Victoria, I had a spatial awareness and a tactile understanding of the world. Art was my favourite class – it’s where the ideas of exploration and process were first incubated. This creative side was paired with a willingness to take risks, something which is an integral part of being an entrepreneur. My earliest venture was in Primary School when I set up shop selling handmade friendship bracelets at our school holiday market, and there were a handful of other ventures to follow before Melling Studio.
Following graduation from high school, I knew I wanted to spend my life doing something creative, but couldn’t yet grasp what that actually meant or the steps involved to get there. Enter design school – first a Diploma in Interior Design from Pacific Design Academy in Victoria, followed by a Bachelor of Design from OCAD in Toronto with a focus on materiality and textiles. While at OCAD, I was exposed to a conceptual studio environment paired with classes like guerrilla entrepreneurism, which started to shape how I could blend creativity with business.
In 2010, we decided to reconnect with the West Coast and move back to Vancouver. This felt like an opportunity for a fresh start, and so it was in December 2010 that I founded my interior design studio.
At Melling Studio, our body of work expresses a warm, minimal aesthetic paired with a cohesive material palette that is often inspired by the natural world. We work on residential projects of both private residential and multi-family scale, commercial and hospitality projects.
2. Before Life Happens, what are the daily rituals that keep you grounded and inspired?
When I consider this question, I feel compelled to share a personal experience that lives at the intersection of humanity, wellbeing and leadership.
Early in my career, my approach was to work hard and to work long. While this can be one path towards growth, it can also be a slippery slope of unsustainable habits that ultimately do not serve us and lead to burnout.
Fast forward to 2021 when I discovered I was pregnant with our second child, Hunter, who has a 7-year age gap with his older sister, Grayson. At the time, I was completely overwhelmed with feelings of fear and anxiety – how could I thrive as a mother of two, a successful entrepreneur and a leader?
It was at this turning point that I chose to go inward and reflect on the practices and habits that would serve me in this new chapter. It was about the clarity of my values and how I could lead from a place of optimism, curiosity and collaboration. It was a process of challenging my perception of life/work balance and disrupting the idea that we should be constantly working to be successful. It was an opening up to the possibility that success, optimization and happiness could be achieved by working less, not more.
With this newfound awareness, I made a conscious choice to find ways to infuse this approach into the culture of my business. I lead a team of four inspiring women, and am always thinking of how I can best serve them as a supportive and empowering leader and listen or anticipate what they may need to optimize life/work balance and overall wellbeing. I am curious about norms like the typical work week and how we could reimagine the work week with more freedom and creativity. As Christina Disler so beautifully summarizes in her new podcast, Humanity at Work – “When we feel well, we do well”. One way this shows up within our studio culture is that we have implemented a four-day work week in the summer months, and it is something that I’m always thinking about and considering new ideas for.
A few of the rituals that keep me personally grounded and inspired include:
Early Mornings
I love the quiet of the early morning hours for practices of observation and reflection, especially because I have two young children and this is a window of time before they wake. Most mornings, I wake around 5:30 am – after showering, I begin with my daily skincare routine, hydration with AGI and then hold space to set intentions and a roadmap for the day. I typically avoid using my phone for the first hour of my morning.
Movement Practice
Movement is an essential part of my formula – I love Pilates, Yoga and Road Cycling. As I get older, my awareness of the connection between movement, physical and mental health has expanded. This awareness has clarified a deeper sense of discipline towards the movement practices that serve and optimize my wellbeing, creativity and leadership. I practice Yoga and Pilates at inspiring studios like ALL Studio and Jaybird, and am part of a local Cycle Club called Velosophy Queen of the Mountain.
Connecting the Dots with Community
I wake up with a sense of deep gratitude for the opportunity to do what I love and collaborate with others each day. One practice that keeps me grounded and energized is making intentional space and time to connect with other creatives, entrepreneurs and leaders. Often we gather for a walk or a warm beverage, or sometimes an invigorating thermal circuit at Tality. Together we explore our values and goals, discuss the opportunities and challenges of running a business and hatch new ideas.
3. How do you approach designing spaces that tell a story?
As a studio, we are curious about the connection between design and the human experience – how space feels and how a home can embody a sense of wellness for its inhabitants. We cultivate a practice of discovery to consider who lives in a space, what are their values, their rituals and their lifestyle.
We often begin a project by guiding a client through a visualization exercise to consider the sensorial qualities of their completed space – sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. This practice enables us to more deeply understand the story of an individual or a brand that we can then weave into the space planning and materiality of the interior.
4. Vancouver’s design scene is constantly evolving. How has the city shaped your creative perspective?
Vancouver has this incredibly open and collaborative approach compared with other places I have lived and worked over the course of my life. When I moved here in 2010, I slowly began to discover an inspiring community of like-minded individuals who were connected by the common threads of creativity and entrepreneurship.
As a community, we believe in a transparent, supportive and collaborative philosophy – community over competition all day every day. At Melling Studio, one of the most essential ingredients to our playbook is the simple concept that 1 + 1 = 3, meaning that creativity and capacity are boundless when we join forces. One of my favorite things is finding commonality and a shared perspective with fellow entrepreneurs in seemingly different fields.
5. What’s a recent project that pushed you outside your comfort zone in the best way?
We recently designed our first restaurant project, which was infused with a completely new formula that was both thrilling and daunting at the same time. We typically work on projects that exist within a private realm — like someone’s home for example – and this restaurant is a space that would be experienced by a much wider audience.
Chau Cafe is a Vietnamese wellness eatery that we designed and renovated in the matter of a few months. The ambitious workback schedule introduced a new set of considerations that became essential to the project’s success. One of the ways this presented was for material selection – anything we included in the space had to meet a specific aesthetic and availability criteria while also honoring the reimagined brand identity of this well-established brand. I love how something that can at first present as an obstacle or challenge can transform into a compelling narrative that begins to fuel our design process.
6. When you’re not designing, where do you go (or what do you do) to recharge and reset?
Now that I’m in my 40s, I have a deeper understanding of the Venn diagram between the moments of extroversion and introversion that allow me to be my most optimal, creative and connected self for both myself and those around me.
My entrepreneurial life requires a great deal of extroverted energy with my team, our collaborators and clients – and I crave moments of introversion, quiet and reflection to recalibrate. This can take the shape of a weekly movement practice, or spending time by the ocean or in the forest. Over the past year, I had the opportunity to attend an immersive wellness experience, Rare Method Retreat in Portugal – a blissful week of daily yoga, pilates, breathwork and meditation paired with self-inquiry, nourishing food, new connections and sunshine. Definitely trying to manifest at least one of these wellness experiences every year from now on!
