Beauty Is Abundant: Leah Alexander on Redefining Interiors and Elevating Black Interior Designers
Words | Cristina Deptula
Before the read
What makes Beauty Is Abundant stand out in interior design today
A look at how color, diversity and practical spaces shape modern interiors
How does Leah Alexander blend diversity with luxury design services
A peek at cross cultural collaboration and its impact on residential and commercial spaces
Why should I follow Beauty Is Abundant for my next project
Insights into elevating spaces while supporting under represented artists and vendors
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Expansive Design: Leah Alexander Seeks to Elevate Your Space
To Leah Alexander, interior design should make you feel like you’re showing up as your best self.
“My mission with Beauty Is Abundant is to make our clients feel like they’ve made it. When you hire us to serve you, you have made it.”
Alexander is a black interior designer, whose firm serves commercial and residential clients, so her online portfolio regales us with a mixture of elegant home offices she describes as “feminine,” fun children’s bedrooms with hanging chairs and giraffes, and luxury hotel suites. They have also worked with a salon, whose interior is showcased to reveal classy black seating, touches of pink on the walls and in signage, and eclectic lighting.
Always practical, she recommends storage solutions in her blog so clients can effectively display the items they have collected over the years. She suggests kitchen upgrades for homeowners on a budget, which reflect class with a touch of minimalism. Also, she offers a $15 e-book titled the “Starter Kit” on her website, designed to share her insights with those who have fallen in love with her sensibility.
In an interview with HGTV, Alexander points out three elements she works into just about any interior she designs. These are multiple sources of lighting, plants, and any interesting objects the home or business owner already has in the space.
She appreciates color and inspiration from nature, bringing in nature-themed artwork alongside houseplants in several of her kitchen and living room designs. And she encourages decorators to create cohesive color palettes between the indoors and outdoors for spaces such as sunrooms and lanais.
Master Bathroom
Beauty is Abundant Celebrates Diversity
Based in Los Angeles and Atlanta, Beauty Is Abundant brings an international, cross-cultural design sensibility to the table.
“We support diversity in the design community by collaborating with under-represented artists and vendors who contribute talent, culture, and worldviews along with us,” Alexander says. These include many vendors who explicitly seek to amplify and celebrate Black talent.
“We are agents of change,” she says. “And if you work with us, so are you.”
She showcases some of these vendors in blog posts on her site, particularly those who can “trick out” a kid’s playroom with fun paintings and stuffed animals.
Office Interior
Interior - Living Room
She loves to visit museums whenever she can and attends furniture conventions, including the giant High Point Market, which regales visitors with miles of furniture, fabric, upholstery, lighting, and art.
As a Black designer, she gets asked how to make the industry more welcoming to Black designers and clients. As she explains in her interview with HGTV, “There’s never been a lack of talent. I think featuring and celebrating Black designers on TV, in magazines, in showhouses and creating that exposure is simply going to make people aware that some Black designers have been creating excellent spaces for decades.”
Modern home
Child’s bedroom
Professional Recognition
Beauty Is Abundant designed the laundry room for the first-ever virtual show house from Architectural Digest and the Black Interior Designers Network, known as The Iconic Home.
“I really wanted anyone in this space to feel expansive and abundant, to be able to open their mind and relax in this little space that I designed,” said Alexander.
She also created a unique bathroom concept for House Beautiful’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, displayed in Dallas in 2022. Here, the words “your beauty is abundant, forever and ever, amen…” in neon cursive take the place of a mirror in her star-speckled, red, white, and marble Intergalactic Superstar room. Those words have become a mantra for Alexander, joyfully repeated throughout her social media.
Leah Alexander
Alexander has been featured in Atlanta Magazine’s HOME section, Curbed Atlanta, and Designers Today. She just finished a six-home development in West Midtown, Atlanta, and is currently renovating a 1930s home.
Critics describe Leah Alexander’s work as “clean and contemporary.” She refers to her basic principles as “shifting paradigms” and “unifying in diversity.”
After just over five years in business, she’s come a long way toward her mission to help her clients “thrive and live the beautiful lives they want to live!”
