Jamie Haller Is the Designer You’re Going to Be Copying All Year Long

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Designer Jamie Haller is known for her work with Craftsman homes, but the truth is, she only worked on her first one about ten years ago. At that time, she and her husband saw one on the market in Angelino Heights, a historic neighborhood in Los Angeles. They had just finished rehabbing a mid-century modern house, and they were looking for their next project.

“Of course, we jumped at it,” Haller says, even though the 1905 home was filled to the brim with the previous owner’s belongings. Through the clutter and questionable design choices (more on those in a moment), they saw its potential.

The plan was to polish it up — and, boy, did it need polishing! — then sell it. But after working on it and falling in love with the neighborhood, the couple decided to stay. Since then, Haller, who also designs an eponymous ready-to-wear line worn by the stylish set like Jenna Lyons and Mandy Moore, has fixed up five or six other similar homes along the same street in her neighborhood, earning her the nickname “the Craftsman whisperer” among those in the know. 

Haller isn’t the only one obsessed with Craftsmans. A 2018 Trulia report showed that Craftsman is the preferred home style by 43% of Americans surveyed, and that interest has only grown since (maybe in part because that’s what’s readily available in the housing stock in some areas). But the design world — and top designers’ love for all things Craftsman right now — probably also has something to do with these humble homes’ good bones (think: stained glass transoms and windows, built-in shelving, and gorgeous wood paneling and trim).

“For me, [Craftsmans are] very energetic,” Haller says. “Not so much in a woo-woo sense, but like, literally. There are real 100-year-old wood floors, and under that there’s another set of wood floors.”

There’s just such a sense of history behind Craftsman homes that makes them appealing. And those physical layers often mean that Haller’s renos are not really full-gut ones. “You leave all the good stuff, but you take all the other stuff out to go down to the bare basics,” she says. “It’s like you’re peeling this onion back, and every layer is this new thing that has a story. Then you build it back up in a way that’s ultimately mindful of the most authentic choices.”

In the case of their current home (going back to those questionable design details), most of the original character was intact, but the giant sun porch oddly had no windows. Then Haller walked outside and realized there were actually ten windows in that room; they had just been drywalled over. They decided to restore it to its primary state. 

After all, Haller says that renovating Craftsmans is all about making decisions. “Every choice you make is the opportunity to kind of create the original thing,” says Haller. “But it doesn’t have to create the original thing in a grandma sense; you can still do it stylishly or beautifully or in a modern way.”

The hand-hewn nature of Craftsmans helps Haller make her design choices. For example, she often encounters original wood floors that are unsalvageable, either because they’ve been sanded too many times or have been cut and patched. So then she’s forced to decide: Do I put in laminate wood floors and mess with the home’s aura, or do I choose to go with what the original home would have had? Energy-wise, Haller recommends the latter.

She follows a similar rule for kitchen countertops. “In a Craftsman, if you put in the type of counters that are like poured plastic or even quartz — which is a stone, but it’s not what would have been there energetically — it feels off,” she says. “Versus if you put in a soapstone, or even a marble or butcher block, that is more earthy.” (Speaking of soapstone, there’s a soothing video of Haller waxing soapstone counters on her Instagram highlights.) 

In bathrooms, Haller suggests resisting the urge to buy that bargain basement tile that’s on clearance at the home center. “I see a lot of flips where people are just slapping horrible porcelain tile everywhere,” she says. “But you can fix it. You can take it all back off.” A far better solution, according to Haller? A subdued hex tile underfoot, which is period-appropriate but also can feel quite modern in, for example, a matte black colorway. 

Once these foundations and fixtures are in place, Haller says there’s not much you can do to go wrong from there, especially with paint and wall coverings. “If you have wood trims, it creates such a gravity in the room that you can paint the walls emerald green — you have to pick the right shade, obviously — or [use] floral wallpaper, and they’re going to look amazing,” she says.

Haller suspects that Craftsmans have become popular recently because of a collective yearning for things that feel real. “We’re all existing in more and more of a virtual state: text, email, this, that, social,” she says. “Your phone’s dinging. You’re always just spaced out and trying to address a million things. Our lives feel so much more busy than ever before, at least mine does. And when you come home, maybe you can appreciate that more grounded element. Energetically, these homes have this very heavy gravity to them that feels very solid, feels of the earth.”

Even so, Haller is stepping away from taking on design clients right now — though she still consults on The Expert — to focus on her ready-to-wear line. But in her down time, she returns to her rooted-in-nature home. And if you’re looking for that touching-grass kinda design style indoors, it’s Haller’s home style you will probably be trying to emulate for the rest of the year, if not well into 2026.