Kristen Roessel doesn’t remember a single moment when interior design “clicked.”
There was just a room. Her room.
She was a kid, newly moved to Michigan and newly given her very own bedroom. Her mom told all the kids they could do whatever they wanted with their spaces. One sister felt overwhelmed. Her brother didn’t care.
Kristen lit up.
“I could look at any space and just envision how I wanted it to feel,” she says.
Not how it would look. How it would feel.
That instinct has never left her.
Today, as the owner of Heart + Home Interior Design, Kristen approaches every project the same way she approached that first bedroom: by listening first, imagining second, and designing only after she understands the human life that will unfold inside the walls.
“I can gather almost everything I need from a half-hour conversation,” she says. “Not about their job. About who they are.”
Design, for Kristen, starts with curiosity.
Her first call isn’t about timelines or budgets. It’s about hobbies. Routines. What feels off. What feels missing. She listens for words people repeat without realizing it. She notices what’s cluttered, what’s empty, what’s been avoided altogether.
She insists on standing in the space too, and watching the people who live there move through it.
“I can’t design a home without being in it,” she says. “And I can’t design for someone without knowing them.”
That curiosity is shaped by a life spent connecting people: Kristen studied communications, and worked in corporate event planning. Design, for years, was the side gig, the thing she did with her mom, who shared her eye for color, texture, and possibility.
“She and I are two peas in a pod creatively,” Kristen laughs.
They wandered open houses just to see what could be done. Turned birthday parties into experiences. Transformed dorm rooms into showplaces.
Design was their shared language. And when Kristen reached a point where she “wanted to know what I could accomplish if nobody was telling me what to do anymore,” she went into it full-time… with mom as part of her core team.
When I ask Kristen for an experience that helped shape her design process, she recalls one long before Heart + Home was a business. A neighbor down the street, elderly and newly widowed, was overwhelmed by what to keep and what to let go of.
Kristen and her mom didn’t arrive with a plan. They listened. Checked in weekly. Moved furniture. Shopped together.
At the end of the summer, they asked her to leave the house for a few hours. When she returned, her living room—her comfy space—had been reimagined.
“The way her face lit up,” Roessel says. “I’ll never forget it.”
Years later, Roessel went back for a visit. Not a single accessory had moved. Not one pillow repositioned. The woman told her it was still the most comfortable place she’d ever spent time.
They still exchange Christmas cards.
“That was the moment,” Kristen says, “when I realized design isn’t about taste. It’s about people.”
So now, even when clients don’t yet have language for what they want, what they need, Kristen listens.
“Most people just say, ‘It’s not working,’” she says. “That’s why they call me.”
Sometimes one detail shifts everything. Like the clients who hadn’t moved into their new house yet.
Kristen noticed a book on their table: a guide to designing homes for cats. That’s when she realized: the couple wanted to make the transition emotionally safe for their pets.
“So my brain just went,” she says, “What if we turned the great room into a vertical climbing, resting, play structure? An art installation that happens to be a cat jungle.”
The couple was in immediately.
“The room isn’t the star,” Kristen says. “The people are.”
So yes, Kristen has a style. She gravitates toward natural elements, reclaimed materials, local partnerships (“I want to leave this world better than I found it,” she says. “I have young kids. That matters”).
But she never imposes her style, or any style. And she measures success by reluctance.
“My hope,” she says, “is that when someone walks into a space we’ve finished, they never want to leave.”
And they don’t.
Kristen and Heart + Home Interior Design (heartandhomeinteriordesign.com) is in Ferndale
“I can gather almost everything I need from a half-hour conversation… about who they are. I can’t design for someone without knowing them.”
Ask Kristen Roessel what room every home should have, and she won't say kitchen or master suite.
She'll say: the bonus room.
Formal dining rooms usually gather dust. Perfectly staged guest bedrooms rarely get used.
That's why Kristen recommends what she calls a "bonus room."
"It's a multifunctional room where somebody feels warm, cozy, and inspired," Kristen says. "A study. A creative space. Somewhere you can close the door and just be."
It's the room Kristen retreats to in her own home—her office, but designed as something more.
"These are the rooms people actually live in," she says. "The ones they never want to leave."
Kristen's advice: let the room evolve with you. Make it cozy first, functional second.