photo by john pickle
Carmeon Hamilton is a designer, an Instagram influencer, and a lifestyle blogger.
She may be one of the most sought-after designers in the Mid-South, but Carmeon Hamilton didn’t set out to have a career creating unique interior spaces. “I actually didn’t recognize it in myself,” she says.
Her life path became clear while attending the University of Central Arkansas at Conway. “I went to school for physical therapy,” she says. “When I became a resident assistant, I got my own dorm room for the first time — you know, you typically have to share.”
For the first time in her life, Hamilton was free to decorate her space to her liking. To her surprise, it was a hit with her fellow RA. “My now-best friend Denise recognized it then. She was just surprised at what I could do with four cinder-block walls and a little wood twin bed. So it was actually her who suggested that I check out [the school’s] interior design department. I did, and I changed my major the next day.”
While at UCA, she also met her now-husband, Marcus, who inspired her to start writing — another fateful decision.
“I started my blog talking about my relationship with my then-boyfriend, now my husband, because we had moved away,” she recalls. “That’s how I stay connected with friends from college and people I follow. They read my blog.”
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photo by john pickle
The wall of windows in the great room is what sold the Cordova home to Hamilton. The wide bar serves as her workspace, and during the pandemic, has been her son Davin’s schoolroom.
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photo by john pickle
Hamilton also did the creative line work in the foyer, which is reminscent of graffiti art. The cabinet in the foreground once held her great-grandmother’s radio.
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Ample natural light floods the dining room. Hamilton bought the painting above the table at The Find Designer Home Outlet in Memphis. She patterned the walls herself.
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The wallpaper in the hallway, which depicts an African savannah scene, is a new addition Hamilton added this year. The framed art on the right is the floor plan from the home’s original blueprints.
Cohesive Randomness, the blog Hamilton began in 2011, is still going strong at carmeonhamilton.com. Over time, the content would evolve from purely personal stories about post-collegiate life into something that reflected her wide-ranging interests in living spaces.
“I got my first apartment, and we started to decorate it,” she says. “I had to come up with creative ways to get what I wanted when I couldn’t afford things. So it grew into a DIY home interiors blog. And that’s what it’s been pretty much ever since. Every now and then, I’ll still talk about lifestyle stuff.”
It’s not just her clients who are taking notice of Hamilton’s work. She has been featured in Southern Living, and last month, Architectural Digest named her as one of nine rising stars in the design world.
In the social-media age, Hamilton gravitated towards Instagram (@carmeon.hamilton), where her playful but comfortable style quickly gained her followers. “It was almost inevitable since I had been blogging and sharing for so long,” she says. “A lot of brands are really focusing on influencer advertising.”
In 2018, she got her first sponsorship. Now she works with national brands such as Grove Collaborative, Mrs. Meyers, and Home Depot. When the pandemic hit, her existing online audience meant she was well-positioned to help people spice up their spaces. She started offering virtual client services on March 10th. “Things exploded from there,” she says. “I was booked through the end of the year by June.”
It’s not just her clients who are taking notice of Hamilton’s work. She has been featured in Southern Living, and last month, Architectural Digest named her as one of nine rising stars in the design world.
Hamilton says the pandemic lockdown forced everyone to take a closer look at their lives. “My workload increased dramatically with everyone being at home and wanting to improve their spaces,” she says. “A lot of people have realized that they have neglected their homes for a really long time. Most people have just been able to avoid it — you don’t want to be at home, so you leave. You can travel, or you can spend the day shopping, so you don’t really pay attention to your surroundings, because you’re not there all day. But now that people are at home all day, they’re realizing, ‘Oh, I haven’t bought furniture in 15 years. I haven’t painted this room ever.’ So a lot of people are just wanting to be in spaces that look better and make them feel better about being at home 24/7.”
The changes her clients are seeking “depend on their own personal stories,” she says. “Kitchens, bathrooms, living spaces, bedrooms — it varies. From what I have experienced with my own personal clients, it’s things that they’re noticing now, not necessarily things that they’ve put off for any particular reason.”
Hamilton knows the feeling herself. The seriousness of COVID-19 was driven home to her in April, when her father, a healthcare worker who specializes in patient transport, contracted the disease. “We were among the people who were told to stay home, and we did. So, not a lot of going out in public and keeping our circle small.”
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photo by john pickle
Artist Francis Berry, whose work hangs elsewhere in the home, painted this bathroom.
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photo by john pickle
The line art motif continues in the master bedroom, although in a more subdued manner. The green headboard and matching ceiling create a relaxing atmosphere.
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photo by john pickle
Hamilton created this bedroom in partnership with Crate & Barrel.
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The back patio is an inviting space for outdoor entertaining. The bunched solar lanterns from Ikea appear to be paper, but they are actually made from a durable plastic.
The Cordova home Hamilton shares with Marcus, who works as a leadership development facilitator, and their son, Davin, 11, came into their lives four years ago. She says it was love at first sight. “My husband found it in a listing and reached out to our realtor to show it to us the next day. He walked in and knew it was the one. And I walked in five minutes later and agreed.”
The 1,900-square-foot home dates from the 1970s. “My husband and I both had our list of must-haves coming from an apartment,” she says. “This one fit everything on our list. As far as spatial needs were concerned, I had several things. I didn’t want my garage on the front of the house. I didn’t realize that I wanted a ton of natural light until we found this house.”
The centerpiece of the home is the great room, where two-story windows flood the space with sunlight. On the north side a wide bar emerging from beneath the windows provides an informal focal point. For Hamilton, this is her workspace, a place to communicate with clients and try out new ideas and inspirations.
Since school started, it has also been her son’s virtual classroom. After spending four years in a small apartment, this was the space that sold her on the house. “Walking into this home, with the natural light and the high ceilings, it just felt a lot more spacious,” she says. “Even though the house is not a big house, it feels big and open. Also, I’m a plant lover, if you can’t tell. So the natural light is important when it comes to taking care of my plants. Now, light is a must-have on my list if we ever look for another house.”
In a time that is psychologically challenging for many people, Hamilton says having a well-designed space of your own is more important than ever. Her design ideal is to create synergy between comfort and style. “Ultimately, I just want people to live well, regardless of where they are in life financially, or where they are geographically.”
On the south side of the great room, a low table piled with art books and flanked by plants defines the beginning of the family room. Comfortable couches point toward the television and fireplace. The color palette is black and white atop the rich shades of the hardwood flooring. Hamilton, who likes to work with shades of black, added white to bounce the natural light around the room. She says the color scheme is the result of a burst of quarantine creativity.
“We’ve been here for four years. The first three were like, ‘Oh, I changed the light fixture or I painted the bedroom.’ There was nothing major. I would rearrange our furniture all the time to freshen things up. But this year, we’ve done the most work in our house. We had this space painted because I knew I couldn’t reach it myself, with the tall ceilings. We would just put it off and put it off, and this was the year we’re like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to do this.’”
Another 2020 addition is the ornate gold-and-black wallpaper in the hallway, which depicts natural scenes from the African savannah of lionesses moving among baobab trees, known on the continent as the “Tree of Life.” In the hall is one of Hamilton’s most prized pieces, a radio cabinet that belonged to her great-grandmother.
Patterned walls are a recurring theme. In the cozy dining room, where four modernist chairs circle a dark wood dinner table, Hamilton painted the walls black and added a handpainted pattern of horizontal and vertical white stripes. In the foyer, guests are greeted with exuberant lines that recall the work of famed New York graffiti artist Keith Haring. In the hall bathroom, across from her son’s room, the explosive line art motif continues.
Visually, the main bedroom is much calmer. Although the line art is echoed in the platform bed, the headboard is a calming green. Adjustable smart bulbs power the lamps on the paired bedside tables. Double doors open to the spacious backyard. There, a concrete patio provides the setting for an inviting outdoor entertaining space. Guests can gather around a long wooden table or sit in a circle beneath solar-powered Chinese lanterns.
The latest room to get a makeover is the guest bedroom, which benefitted from Hamilton’s new partnership with Crate & Barrel. The burgundy walls set off an inviting white day bed, well-apportioned for a quiet read with a cup of tea or an afternoon nap. Above the day bed is art by Hamilton and her friend Chassidy Jade, whose piece depicts a woman with curly hair. “She’s a film editor and photographer, so the hair is actually film,” she says. “She’s actually the senior editor for the NBA right now. She just moved to Florida when the season started. She edits all the commercial sequence, and things that you see before the games come on.”
For Hamilton, her home is the purest expression of her style. “The biggest thing is, everything I do here, it comes from what I want and what feels good — as long as my family is okay with it,” she says. “I have carte blanche. I don’t have to consider anything beyond function, just making sure they’re comfortable sitting on it or eating at it. I get to test out what I want, or if I have a gut feeling about something, I can go for it without hesitation, because it’s ultimately my decision and I get to live with whatever the fallout is from it. So I don’t have to second-guess myself.”
In a time that is psychologically challenging for many people, Hamilton says having a well-designed space of your own is more important than ever. Her design ideal is to create synergy between comfort and style. “Ultimately, I just want people to live well, regardless of where they are in life financially, or where they are geographically,” she says.
It’s important that the spaces she designs help their owners in “loving the way that they live, and taking those things that most people call the minutiae of life — those smaller things — and really understanding that every single element of the day, whether minor or major, really adds up to how well we live. Whether you’re eating off a paper plate or a ceramic plate, those minor moments allow us to understand that we can be grateful for the smallest things. That’s really the philosophy behind what I do — making sure my clients understand the importance of living beautifully.”
