Welcome to Tone & Oak!
Tone & Oak started while I was updating my own home and, honestly, making a few design decisions I wish I could take back.
Like a lot of homeowners, I assumed that if something looked dated, it needed to be painted, replaced, or covered up. But the more I worked on my house, the more I realized that sometimes the thing you think is the problem, isn't actually the problem. You just haven't figured out what works with it yet.
I've also spent nearly 20 years cleaning homes, which means I've been inside a lot of houses. Big ones, small ones, newly remodeled ones, and ones that haven't changed much in decades. Over the years, I started noticing what made some homes feel pulled together and why others never quite did, even after a lot of money had been spent updating them.
Between that experience, design and psychology courses in college, and everything I've learned while working on my own home, Tone & Oak slowly took shape.
I created these guides for people who want their homes to feel better without starting over.
Maybe you have oak cabinets you don't want to paint. Beige tile you can't afford to replace. A countertop that's perfectly fine but dictates half the decisions in the room. You're not designing from a blank slate, and that's okay. Most of us aren't.
Tone & Oak is about figuring out what you already have, understanding why certain choices work with it and others don't, and making changes that actually move your home in the right direction.
You don't have to replace everything to make an older home feel current. Sometimes you just need to know what to keep, what to change, and how to make it all work together.