Designing Women
Photos by Dinah Satterwhite
Whether it’s a kitchen or an entire home, a renovation is a major project. Overhauling on Bainbridge can be even more daunting—especially when it comes to sourcing materials.
Designer Tamah Burke is changing that.
Burke and her business partner, architectural drafter Michelle Smith, own Color Sanctuary, a full-service design firm now based out of a Coppertop Park showroom. Burke has offered design services on the island for years, but Color Sanctuary’s new home marks the beginning of an exciting chapter for Bainbridge homeowners.
We’ve been sorely in need of suppliers of cabinets and carpet and lighting,” said Jana Wilkins, a local realtor who’s worked with Burke and Smith on residential projects.
And the fact that [Burke’s] got all of that under one roof eliminates the need for multiple trips to Seattle, trying to pick stuff, trying to order it. It’s one-stop shopping.
Burke is no stranger to the challenges that Bainbridge poses to homeowners. Twelve years ago, she bought and restored a 19th-century cottage on the island.
The transition to island living was kind of like moving to the final frontier for me,” she said. It was trial and error to learn what was missing, what was needed.
It wasn’t just Burke’s personal renovation that shone a light on Bainbridge’s construction landscape and its shortcomings. For years, she’d helped clients with simple interior and exterior design. But thanks to her diverse background—she studied color theory, did historic restoration abroad, and tackled sculptural fabrication and welding, among other pursuits—Burke was able to answer a wide range of client questions. She gradually expanded her services to include restoration, home renovation, and even landscape design.
Burke met Smith on a job site during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She described the drafter, who utilizes computer-assisted design software to craft technical blueprints, as “hands down the best CAD/drafting/rendering person I have ever worked with.
The two women combined their skillsets and became business partners. Burke is more customer-facing, focused on “trying to crawl into somebody else’s brain and visualize what they have in mind.” Meanwhile, Smith’s blueprints help clients know whether their visions are feasible. The synergy has created a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.
“We are a hybrid not often found,” Burke explained. “We aren’t just designers. We understand construction and can take something from concept to implementation, permit ready to start.”
Realtor Alex Sadigh agreed that the women’s combined talents make Color Sanctuary unique. “Sometimes you’ll find people who have an amazing design sense,” he said. “And then you take that to your contractor and [they’re] like, ‘No, that’s never going to work.’ Whereas [with Color Sanctuary], you’re looking at actual blueprints during the design process to figure out what can work, what can’t work, maybe what needs to be moved and redone.”
After joining forces with Smith, Burke continued to seek out other women working in the male-dominated construction field. Designers are generally women, but because Burke works closely with contractors, architects and construction workers, she’s often the only woman on a job site.
I just have such appreciation and awe that [other women] have forged through in that manner, knowing it was an interest or passion for them and they stuck with it,” she said. “Because it can be really daunting.”
The new showroom features a number of women-owned importers and distributors. For Burke, connecting women-owned businesses to potential customers fits into Color Sanctuary’s general role as a bridge or interpreter.
“We are the translators, the liaisons for the client,” she said. “Because we all—architects, the contractors, the designers—speak the same language. If we’re spending all this one-on-one time understanding what the client wants, then it’s far easier for us to be able to advocate and translate to those different people.”
Wilkins has seen the magic of this “translation” firsthand in her real estate business.
"When I first mention a designer, the first response is, ‘We can’t afford that,’” Wilkins said. “And I always say, ‘It actually saves you money because of the project management.”
Going forward, Burke hopes that more clients will be introduced to Color Sanctuary’s work through the showroom, which in turn will help her and Smith keep doing what they love.
Each individual project is always a different challenge or a new learning opportunity,” Burke said. “It’s interesting. It stays alive. That’s the premise of design, that it’s an evolving form of creativity, no matter what.
