Home Is Where the Art Is 

Since launching her home design studio Ọlọrọ Interiors in 2016, clients have sought out Chanae Richards for her ability to deftly enhance soothing, minimalist environments with artful and cozy touches. No two spaces look alike, and yet every result feels distinctly like a home: inviting, lived-in, and comfortable. But thanks to projects within her own residence, a two story townhouse in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood, the designer has added two more titles to her resume; painter and plant lady.

Regarding the plants: “Somehow I have a particular knack for greenery and growing things,” she says with a slight tone of surprise. It’s a skillset that came without formal training, she says, and one that’s resulted in far too many potted green things to keep. In fact, on the afternoon that we speak, Richards explains that someone will arrive shortly to adopt several.

Although she’s owned the house for nearly 20 years, Richards only recently moved back there from Harlem, where she had been living up until the pandemic. “I couldn’t deal with the stress of being in an apartment building, with a shared laundry situation and everyone coming in and coughing,” she recalls of that strange, scary time. “I didn’t know what this pandemic thing was going to be, and I’d rather do my own laundry, have a nice little garden to figure it out. And then I stayed here.”

Growing up in a crowded household with seven younger siblings, Richards always yearned for a space of her own. “I remember when I got my own room for the first time briefly. Not having to compromise, and making that space my own was really, really special to me,” she explains. The dream was cut short when she left for college, but Richards ultimately created something more lasting in Philadelphia, when she converted her garden-level garage to a painting studio. It’s also currently a holding space for over a dozen plants Richards is temporarily safe-keeping or will eventually give away, making the studio feel like an artist’s hideaway in the wilds of the jungle.

As with plants, Richards’ painting practice wasn’t born from formal training. “I had no involvement in art before the pandemic started. I remember a night when there was just so much unrest in the city. And I went into what was then the garage, and I was just like, ‘I need to do something. I have so much energy, so much of the city’s energy in me.’ We were in the middle of the pandemic, there’s a civil uprising, I wanted to do something. And that something was painting.I never painted anything before that.” Richards’ urgency to create something in that moment evolved into an ongoing practice, and while selling her oil-on-canvas pieces was never the original intention, clients’ requests persisted. In addition to her own walls, Richards’ paintings can be found in Jamaica, Ohio, across Brooklyn. “In so many places,” she adds. “I feel like my art is an extension of me. I’m not there, but I am.”

Richards ethos for design, as she states on Ọlọrọ’s website, is: “The best design of your life starts at home.” In that same light, one could also say the best-designed home starts with one’s life: a space that’s personal, and reflective of its inhabitants, their histories, their routines and rituals. As Richards explains, her own home cycles through phases every few years—chapters mirroring her own personal eras, which manifest in her surroundings, whether it’s a new paint color or different furniture.