When Amber Guyton thinks about what a room can be, she doesn’t think in terms of red or yellow or blue. Instead, she thinks of merlot or marigold or aqua. Or maybe it’s Sherwin-Williams Poetry Plum — no, Limón Fresco — or Benjamin Moore Love Affair.
It’s a sort of synesthesia, where Guyton’s senses bleed into a specific memory: the lilt of a romance language, the earthy flavor of saffron, the satisfaction of running your fingers across a sweetgrass basket’s perfect coils.
That’s what happened 10 years ago, on her 30th birthday, on a mountain in the Swiss
Alps. Still an aspiring interior designer at that point, Guyton had spent a week seeing
the country, and when she got to the Alps,
she marveled at the grazing cows, who seemed healthier than any she had ever seen.
More than that, she
was awed by the impossibly green grass, a resplendent chartreuse blanket rolling
beneath ethereal blue skies.
“There’s something about how green the mountainside was,” she says. “Like, that color is imprinted on my memory. Now, if you look at the spaces I’ve designed and even my own home, there’s green everywhere. Nature and travel influence what you want to see every day in your own home.”
Guyton has visited dozens of countries since her 2016 trip to Switzerland, and she has brought new colors back with each trip. The synesthesia has transcended her imagination: This year, the interior design business that grew out of that experience, Blessed Little Bungalow, celebrated its 10th anniversary.
What began as a hobby allowed her to leave her marketing job in financial technology to design full time five years ago, and the momentum continues to swell. More clients. Brand partnerships. Her work regularly appears in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful and other industry publications
But the 2008 University of South Carolina alumna has stayed true to her roots. Now based in Atlanta, Guyton grew up next door to her grandparents in Pineville, South Carolina, a sparsely populated corner of Berkeley County. Neither household was wealthy, but both still exuded warmth and safety. She soaked in that feeling while studying the burgundy-striped wallpaper in her grandparents’ breakfast nook. A joyful home, she realized, shouldn’t be a luxury.
“When Blessed Little Bungalow began, it was a blog that I used as a creative outlet to share my décor and design style, how I would purchase things that were affordable and accessible to the masses,” she says. “My philosophy has always been that design is meant for all. It shouldn’t be something reserved for the fortunate few.”
Compared to Pineville, Columbia was a metropolis — so was USC. Guyton threw herself into everything campus had to offer: the Association of African American Students, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Freshman Council. She served as an orientation leader and RA. Each experience confirmed she was where she belonged.
“There was a sense of community and a sense of self-worth in everything from the Carolinian Creed to being able to build relationships with people from different walks of life who didn’t necessarily look like me,” she says. “I didn’t necessarily find myself in college, but it was the turning point where I felt like, ‘This world is a lot bigger than me.’”
Everyone mistakes Guyton for an extrovert. She’s definitely an introvert, she admits with a laugh, but serving in student organizations — including a term as AAAS president — helped her come into her own.
But interior design wasn’t on her radar, even though she had always enjoyed decorating her own spaces. She didn’t recognize her own entrepreneurialism, either — not as a kid selling Kool-Aid or styling hair for money, not even when she was in the MBA program at the University of Georgia after USC. It was only after she bought a renovated 1948 bungalow in San Antonio, that the seed took root.
“I decorated the entire house in a week,” she says. “My family and friends came and were like, ‘Girl, what?’ They thought there’d be boxes everywhere. And my mom said, ‘OK, so when are you going to do this for real?’”
She still wasn’t sure, though. When she launched the BLB blog, she kept her day job. And when work took her from Texas to California, she continued building her client portfolio. The self-doubt lingered — “Coming into an industry where I don’t hold any degrees or certifications has always felt like a weakness,” she says — but the impostor syndrome was counterbalanced by the resolve she developed at USC.
“My upbringing and faith and home church and grandparents — all of that built the foundation of my moral compass and my view of the world,” she says. “Getting to college is when I understood, ‘OK, here’s what you do with it.’ I did that in corporate, and now I’m doing that with my own business.”
There are elements that make Guyton’s green bungalow in Atlanta’s Adair Park neighborhood a house: the full-length porch, the low-pitched roof, the tapered white columns atop sturdy brick piers. Nestled within a row of similar Craftsman bungalows, the house was built in 2020 with a careful eye toward reflecting the area’s historic architecture.
To transform a house into a home, though, Guyton believes you need to think beyond architecture.
“I want my home to feel like a warm hug,” she says. “I want my home to feel like a love letter to myself and inspire me when I wake up in the morning. I want it to make me feel proud and grateful for the life that I live, and the beauty I can create each day, and the clients who I serve.”
Guyton’s long-haired dachshund, Ralph, has been with her since 2009. Arthritis and partial vision loss have slowed him down but haven’t stopped him from being her constant companion.
In her own bungalow, that has meant wallpapered ceilings and gold-toned light fixtures. It has meant artwork that radiates Black confidence. Everywhere she has lived, it has also meant something was painted purple.
“Lavender and purple have been my favorite colors since childhood,” she says. “In my first townhouse, I painted an accent wall in the living room this grape color. In my current home, my bathroom is painted Sherwin-Williams Thistle, which has a really blue undertone lavender. And then I also have Benjamin Moore Love Affair, which is a mauvy magenta, in my living room. It reminds me of Merlot, which is my favorite wine, and it’s five feet up the wall, so it kind of reminds me of a half glass full of Merlot.”
Guyton knows how to translate feelings into bold designs. But how do you translate them into words? The question seemed daunting when she began writing her book, Soulful Maximalism: A Colorful Guide to Living Boldly at Home, which is expected to hit shelves this fall.
Beyond explaining her process, the book has been a chance to examine the idea of home and why some people are resistant to bold design choices. Interior design that truly reflects a client’s personality can require some armchair psychology. For example, Guyton has helped adults who moved a lot as children, such as those in foster care or military families, recognize their subconscious fear that home is temporary.
“Those are discussions I have with clients, because sometimes they have analysis paralysis,” she says. “If they’re indecisive, you can uncover some of those traumas. ‘I don’t want to put a hole in the wall because what if I change my mind?’ Or, ‘If we sell this house, we’ll have to paint over these pink walls.’”
Her vision is for the book to be an instruction manual of sorts, something more comprehensive than a pretty decoration for the coffee table. And while writing has always come easily for Guyton — her first major at USC was journalism — distilling her philosophies into 200-plus pages, along with photos and illustrations, felt like a nonstop game of Tetris. It didn’t help that she edited herself as she wrote, a habit driven by her perfectionist tendencies.
But like other big life decisions she has made, including the shift to full-time self-employment, the book was an opportunity to do something new without losing momentum.
“Maybe it’s how we millennials were raised,” she says. “Multitasking was ingrained in us. Like, you’ve got to be able to do multiple things at once. You’ve got to be able to hustle, hustle, hustle and get things done.”
And she definitely gets things done. She recently bought her first investment property, another bungalow she can see from her backyard. Soon the Blessed Little Bungalow bedding line will hit stores. She feels right at home making bold choices.
“I don’t know what the future holds,” she says. “I hope that Blessed Little Bungalow will continue to grow. As someone who gets bored easily and feels like they have a quarter-life crisis every five years, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be another pivot. But the Blessed Little Bungalow brand is not going anywhere. It’s just a question of, ‘How is Amber going to adjust?’ My business will shift around my life, too.”
