“Trying to apply M.B.A.-style business plans to the decorating process is the biggest mistake a client can make,” says designer Paul Vincent Wiseman. “It’s not linear, and it’s very emotional; it doesn’t fit a model!” The native Californian, who cites David Adler, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, John Saladino and Frank Lloyd Wright as muses, has run his own San Francisco-based, 32-person firm for 27 years. Wiseman“s approach is grounded in his belief in the importance of achieving harmony between objects in an interior, regardless of the style.

He recently finished a four-year collaboration with architect Ricardo Legorreta on a residence in Hawaii, and in the past year his projects have taken him from Santa Fe to New York to London. What he’s currently most excited about, however, is a Chinese pagoda-style party space he is working on stateside, which he describes as “a wonderful chinoiserie fantasy.” Wiseman, who also designs custom indoor and outdoor furniture for his clients, upholds a threefold philosophy when tackling new projects: An interior must be appropriate to the needs of his client, to the architecture and to the location. Given the opportunity, the designer would live in the D. L. James House, by Greene and Greene, in Carmel, California, “for the proportion of the rooms, the simplicity of the detailing and, of course, the setting and views,” he says of the stone residence, which overlooks the Pacific.

Paul Vincent Wiseman

415-282-2880

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