“I’ve had a love for interior design since childhood. The urge to create is just something I have never been able to satisfy, but it wasn’t until I was pulled into the world of real estate that I even considered staging houses.”

After cofounding a staging, project management, and design firm called Blackwood Homes with her sister Jennifer in 2018, Sarah Nowak quickly decided that it was much simpler to focus on their own individual strengths. Jennifer went on to pursue a career in project management. Sarah founded Sarah Nowak Interiors.

In the beginning, she was focused on home staging, and from day one she knew that she wanted to fill what she saw as a void in the marketplace. For the most part, stagers are taught that they must keep furnishings generic in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. Sarah’s aim was to produce a thoughtfully curated look that would invoke an emotional response in potential buyers. She knew she’d be going against the grain by offering this, but the risk has been rewarding.

By taking a more customized approach to home staging than her peers, she’s carved out a little niche for herself to which people respond positively. She’s always looking for opportunities to bring that same approach into everything she does whether it’s renovation designs, interior decorating, or furniture design. Sarah hopes to inspire others and prove that you don’t have to keep things generic to be widely appealing, and good design can be accessible to everyone.