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From her van to your home - mobile design showroom

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published September 15, 2006

Interior designer Priscilla Castellano decided to take her show on the road - literally.

She was done with stocking expensive showrooms and storefronts, including one she rented within shouting distance of International Plaza.

"Everyone always drove by too fast and missed the store," she recalls with a laugh. "And every time clients came into the showroom they wanted me to come to their homes anyway."

So Castellano, who lives in the woodsy Temple Terrace development of Rain Tree, chose to create an interior decorating showroom on wheels.

Her white Chevrolet Astro van with the company logo painted on the sides - Andrea Lauren Elegant Interiors (for her two granddaughters) - is neatly packed with fabric swatches, flooring samples, molding, faucets and hardware, picture-hanging supplies, a toolbox, level, and paint-color palettes.

"Now I work out of my van completely, and the truth is, as a designer, I don't know what you're all about until I come to your home."

Castellano, 49, drives all over Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties to clients' homes. Her clients also include a number of area builders and developers who have hired her to decorate model homes or advise them on color schemes for newly constructed homes. She says that arriving with a loaded van also helps clients know her style within the first few minutes of a consultation.

"If there's a connection, you'll know," she says, adding that clients can first peek at her Web site www.andrealaureninteriors.com. "I don't charge you for the initial consultation."

Since taking her showroom directly to her clients, she has transformed her garage into a highly organized merchandise stockroom. Castellano, who travels regularly to gift markets in Atlanta and New York, fills it with the kinds of interesting home accessories she thinks her clients will want: oil paintings, pillows, rugs, lamps, candelabra, clocks, bathroom accessories, even greenery.

It's all stored in specially built cabinets that she can access when needed.

"It's great, because I'm able to offer my clients really good accessories without having to go out and look and look," she notes. "That's what takes a lot of time."

She has also plucked castoff furnishings, lamps and knickknacks out of clients' own garages and helped incorporate them into a new, fresh decor. A lot of her older clients, she explains, are over trying to decorate themselves. They've made huge - and often, expensive - mistakes, and learned from them.

Castellano works with a team of subcontractors, who help her with everything from remodeling to moving furniture. She has been known to transform an entire home in a weekend while the clients went on a cruise.

She has clients with 10,000-square-foot homes and young singles just launching their careers and living in small condos.

"A lot of them travel and want to come home from a nice hotel to a place that's cozy."

Her philosophy?

"I'm not here to change who you are, but to enhance what you have," she says. "I tell clients that I'll do as little as you want me to do or as much as you want me to do."

[Last modified September 14, 2006, 10:17:57]