At the KBIS 2026 Luxury Lounge, design journalist Sophie Donelson’s conversation with Cathy Purple Cherry of Purple Cherry Architecture & Interiors made one point clear: Human-centered design starts with honesty about how people actually live. They discussed what it really means to design for the way people live and create homes that are deeply personal and unapologetically human. It’s about shaping homes around habits, relationships, limitations, rituals and daily life.
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How do clients move through stress? What patterns define their mornings? Are they raising children, caring for a disabled family member, adjusting to retirement or trying to protect a marriage under one roof? Purple Cherry’s work is grounded in empathy, informed by her own experience with caregiving and advocacy. She uses those insights to design spaces that solve real problems rather than perform an ideal.
Design Scenarios
In primary baths, she favors shared zones that preserve connection – especially for couples raising families – while still allowing personal space at the vanity. In kitchens, she supports secondary prep spaces but warns against placing a cooktop in the back kitchen, where the cook is pushed out of the social life of the home. Support spaces should reduce clutter, not isolate the person doing the work.
Purple Cherry also pushes back on perfectionism as a design driver. Not every client needs a picture-perfect organizing system, and mess is not a moral failure. For many households, visible life is simply evidence of a full day. Good design should respond to that truth with smart storage and flexible planning.
Her broader message is one many designers will recognize: A home becomes meaningful when it reflects the people inside it. That includes aging-related decisions, neurodiverse needs, walkable layouts and the final layer of rugs, art, objects and collected pieces. In Purple Cherry’s view, those layers do more than decorate; they make a house feel human.
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