How Sarah Sherman Samuel Found Her Creative Stride in All Things Interiors

Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful women who've made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode will give you a direct line to women who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to stay tuned.

Sarah Sherman Samuel is a multidisciplinary designer working with interiors, textiles, objects, and decorative arts, which she curates together to create truly remarkable spaces. Her creativity aligns with her career path in designing spaces for celebrities and tastemakers such as Mandy Moore and Garance Doré and products like wallpaper, rugs, tiles, hardware, and cabinets that give us all access to her unique blended aesthetic. But the road wasn’t always so clear for an artistic spirit who favored many mediums. "I like working on a lot of different creative avenues,” says Sherman Samuel. "By trying all the things, not only do they inform each other, but then I'm also able to see what I truly love doing.”

And try all the things she did. After getting her degree in graphic design, Sherman Samuel took a job at an advertising agency where she mocked up brochures for high-end real estate clients. "The job was awful,” she says with a laugh. But there was something that stuck with her: one of her accounts, the Viceroy Hotel, was designed by none other than interiors legend Kelly Wearstler. "I was so drawn to it that I was like, ‘I want to be doing that,’” she remembers.

Next, she got her first taste of spatial design at a furniture showroom in Miami before moving to L.A., where she worked for a startup fashion paper company designing prints for journals, notebooks, and stationary. Still, though, it wasn’t until Sherman Samuel started her interiors blog that she truly felt she was part of the creative community she had been fondly observing for so long, and in publishing her own home renovations to much fanfare (like her Pinterest-favorite Venice bungalow), she grew her confidence in the interiors space.

But before she put all her eggs in one basket, she once again tested a few more creative passions. From wedding design to freelance photography and art direction to branding work, nothing fueled her fire like working on interiors, both designing spaces and, eventually, creating stunning products to fill them. 

When asked about her circuitous route to finding her groove, Sherman Samuel says she wouldn’t change a thing. "How I approach my interiors and product is so informed even by my graphic design degree and every little step along the way. It all came together,” she says.

Head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to subscribe to Second Life, and listen to this brand-new episode to hear about Sherman Samuel's entire career journey. To shop her gorgeous home products, keep scrolling. 

Next up, hear how Tia Mowry-Hardrict went from '90s pop-culture icon to entrepreneur.