VUE

BY WENDY LARIMER A new house, a fresh start, a clean slate. The idea of designing the perfect home can be exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. There are so many choices from paint and wall coverings to furniture and lighting, deciding where to begin can be daunting. That's where White House Designs for Life can step in to transform that big empty space into exactly where you want to spend all your time. S parked by an interest in furniture and launched with the opening of her first retail store in 1978, owner Karen Arakelian has been helping to create cozy spaces and show-stopping rooms for decades and just continues to grow her brand. From her first store, Red Barn Furniture that her mother helped her to finance, Arakelian grew into White House Furniture in 1982, followed by the opening of Uptown Country in 1994 which was then moved and renamed White House Living in 2004. Arakelian was firmly placed in the world of furniture design and sales and soon expanded to include home accessories, window treatments, and wall coverings. As she worked to curate and sell the best quality furniture and accessories she could find, she soon recognized that interior designers were frequent customers and so she opened a trade-only division of her growing empire branding it White House Design Resource. Today many top interior designers frequent her stores to gather what they need to fashion the rooms of their clients' dreams. F L O O R T O C E I L I N G D E S I G N A B U S I N E S S E M P I R E B E G I N S V U E N J .C O M 97

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