Pittsburgh Magazine Nest- Design Happy Book, Nov 2022

Our book is in Pittsburgh Magazine!

Pittsburgh Magazine NEST featured Design Happy on November 28, 2022 as "Designing a Happy Home Gets Practical with Betsy Wentz's New Book."

I never really thought about writing a design book — until the pandemic. Stuck in the house, with no timeline on when socialization would resume, my PR agent suggested a book about making interiors beautiful. It started to make sense.

"I thought that was really funny because I'm not an author and didn't see myself as someone who would write a book," I told NEST. "But it started to make sense."

The result is Design Happy: Colorful Homes for the Modern Family — 224 pages, available for presale now, hitting bookshelves April 2023 from Gibbs Smith.

It’s 13 chapters = 13 real family homes I worked on over the last few years — around Pittsburgh, Palm Beach, and Blue Hill, Maine — including Campbell Creek, Pulpit Rock, Phillips Cabin Ohio, Bunker Hill, and Cypress Grove.

Each chapter has the story behind the project, the families who live there, and how we made it work for them, plus color studies, design lessons, and pro tips including the exact paint colors and fabrics we used.

"More often than not, I found myself remembering clients and the people and how they drove it to be the best. At end of day it's all about relationship you have with clients. It's a collaboration; I don't do these projects on my own."

Scattered through the book are what I call Betsy-isms — practical rules anyone can follow.

Like foot traffic patterns around furniture, how to scale lighting properly, and my favorite: something in the room has to be the khaki pants.

"When you're getting dressed, you don't put on every fabulous thing you own at once. Something has to be everyday khaki pants or blue jeans. That's what creates contrast and makes things beautiful."

That’s the whole Design Happy philosophy — balance bold with neutral, performance with beauty.

The book is dedicated to my mom, Kay Wiegand, who had her own interior design studio in the carriage home I grew up in in Edgeworth. Everything I learned about design came from her. She died in 2020 of Alzheimer's while I was writing.

"I found myself really choked up when I got to hold the book. So much of her is in my work. To hold it and to look at this book, it's an incredible legacy to her if nothing else."

The foreword is by my friend Tori Mellott, style director at Frederic Magazine and Pittsburgh native.

Thank you to Pittsburgh Magazine NEST for featuring Design Happy.

Read the Nest feature: Pitttsburgh Magazine

Order Book: Design Happy