MARBLEHEAD — Ashley O’Shea, a Marblehead resident, has brought her talents in interior design and styling to the North Shore through her online business, Relux Decor, offering interior design and consulting services.
O’Shea said she focuses on “accessible interior design” aimed at helping clients finish and elevate their homes.
To do this, she visits her clients’ homes to see their space and evaluate the needs they may have. She then creates a proposal for her clients to evaluate and determine if they would like to move forward with her services.
If they choose to, she creates a “design board” with links to items she recommends clients purchase for their home, “so that way they have receipts, and they can do it on their own timeline and budget.”
O’Shea added that this is done for clients who like “to have a little bit of say and autonomy over the process.”
“I think a lot of people, when they think of interior design, think they have to spend an exorbitant amount of money and have somebody come in and do everything. I’m basically a consultant in the sense that most people who use me have moved into their home, they started getting everything ready, and then life happened, and they got busy. So now they’re like, ‘This room was never finished. I want it to look complete,’” O’Shea said.
This year, O’Shea also plans to start a social media campaign, “The Marblehead Edit,” to highlight Marblehead businesses where people can shop for their homes.
She currently operates a website, Reluxdecor.com, and an Instagram account, @Relux_decor, where her work is showcased, and clients can contact her.
O’Shea said her work has been featured in Boston Magazine for a home staging she completed in 2017, in a list for “one of the five best houses to see this weekend.”
She added that this was the first home she staged for her portfolio as a stylist.
“At that point, I was like, ‘Oh, wow. OK, this is going to work, maybe.’ So I took those photos and then passed them around, and just tried to market myself. And then it took off,” she said.
O’Shea said she worked in Lynnfield and other areas on the North Shore to stage homes for homeowners and real estate agents before shifting to interior styling.
“People would see what I was doing as they were moving there on their way out of their home, and then would want me to help them figure out where to put their furniture in their new home and how to arrange it,” she said.
O’Shea said she was led to move to Marblehead by her aunt, who owned Jambu Jewelry on Atlantic Avenue for 27 years.
She said she loves the Marblehead community and enjoys seeing younger generations move to Marblehead and decorate the town’s older homes.
“It’s fun going into some of these old homes that are, once you walk in, not as traditional as you would have expected. People are really taking risks and doing some different things now inside these old homes, which I like. It’s just cool when I see people kind of taking a risk and doing some different things,” she said.
