Las Vegas designer Jill Thomson brings the outside in

By Allison Duck

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Interior designer Jill Thomson came by her career honestly. While attending school for medicine, her plans took a 180 when circumstances dictated a return to the family businessin her father’ s furniture showroom. Thomson explains,

“ Furniture kind of chose me. I went to work at the family business and just never left. I stayed in the furniture industry and just shifted into interior design.”

What started out as pitching in to help her family turned into a career where she helps clients create meaningful, beautiful spaces for their own families. Thomson spends time getting to know each client on a more personal level. She notes,“ I feel like great design is achieved when you build the relationship with your client and then you layer back in their personality into their home.”

She follows the lead of her Las Vegas desert surroundings.“ If I’ m fortunate enough to work on a home with interesting architecture, it’ s a dream because I can take cues from that architecture. For example, I just finished a home in Ascaya, which was very strongly in a desert modern feel, so all those earth tones found their way in.”

Thomson is big on earth tones that complement the desert color palette but she’ s also thrilled color is making its return in a bold way. She states,“ What I love about my clients is I get a big variety, but overall I feel we’ re trending away from the cool tones, from the grays that had been popular and going into warmth with caramel tones and warm tones. And color is back! I’ m working on a project in Southern Highlands and the key word is“ Frenchie,” aka French Provincial, and we’ re definitely adding a lot of blues.”

Thomson is designing a color-saturated office for this property, full of various blues with leather accents and brass picture lights. She’ s incorporating traditional touches like this lighting plus classic molding to help transition a formerly Tuscan home to a more modern aesthetic, in a Frenchie vein.

As indoor / outdoor living is becoming ubiquitous in luxury design projects, Thomson must be strategic with her materials and fabrics. She takes into account how her clients will be using the spaces she designs, in order to best suit their needs.“ Performance fabrics now can be used indoors and outdoors and they’ re anything from a velvet to a bouclé. You can get all of those in performance so that means a soap and water solution will wash off any marks. They now have what they call vegan leathers that look absolutely like a high-quality