ByKristen Flanagan,After Photography byKate Jordan,Styling byVeronica Olson
PublishedJul 22, 2026 4:01 AM EDT
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Domino Reno: Before + Afters, DIYs, and Hot Takes From the Pros
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Some birthdays sneak up and force a life audit. The year she turned 40,Sydney Jacksonfound herself chopping her timeline into two tidy halves.
"I've put in 20 years," she says. "The next 20 or 25? Those can be a totally different plot twist." After two decades wrangling stories as an editor and creative director, Jackson noticed her obsessions had drifted from words and images to paint chips, fabric swatches, and questionable vintage scores. "What's the thing you can do for hours without getting bored?" she says. "I could burn a whole day hunting the perfect mirror."
Rather than fling open a design studio overnight, Jackson started with the one project she couldn't dodge: her own house. The 1940s Connecticut charmer had great bones—but its creaky condition kept gobbling her reno budget. Insulation. Water damage. A new roof. "Every six months, some giant bill would rear its head," she says. "And all I wanted was to buy something pretty."
When she finally got to pivot to the first floor, the designer had zero interest in ripping out perfectly good finishes. Instead, she leaned on her editor's instincts: keep what worked, axe what didn't, and make every detail audition for its spot.
The real kitchen villain wasn't the layout—it was the deep red cabinetry. Morning light flipped the cabinets to "blood red," and by nightfall the room read as a "dark cave." But the millwork itself was in suspiciously excellent shape. After a consult with a Farrow & Ball color whisperer, Jackson repainted the perimeter cabinetry inDrop Clothand swipedMahogany—a moody brown with eggplant undertones—across the island. The new palette feels lighter without losing its warmth. More importantly, the open kitchen, dining room, and living room finally look like they belong to the same family. "They all have to live in the same world," she says. Get the backdrop right, and everything else falls in line.
Since Jackson wasn't gutting the first floor, every splurge had to pull its weight. In the kitchen, that meant evicting the sparkly gray granite island for Arabescato Corchia marble, ditching the over-the-range microwave for a custom hood, and treating herself to a Perrin & Rowe faucet and DeVOL pendants. Even the cabinet hardware turned into a surprise obsession. Rather than wait years for unlacquered brass to earn its patina—or settle for a DIY cheat that "didn't look right"—she hunted down pre-aged knobs from RLH Brass. Most guests won't consciously clock the difference; they'll just assume the room has always looked this good.
Jackson has zero interest in pieces you can spot from across a Pinterest board. "I want it to feel like my own little discovery," she says of her favorite furnishings and fixtures. That ethos dumped her down a rabbit hole of weird, wonderful vintage dining pendants. Eventually she surfaced with a stunner by Finnish designer Lisa Johansson-Pape.
She snagged it at auction after a near-identical fixture soaked up all the cutthroat bidding. The same patience unearthed Facebook Marketplace dining chairs, estate-sale stools, and a Swedish pine coffee table she refinished herself. For Jackson, the hunt is half the high.
Jackson had locked in a palette of greens, browns, and warm neutrals when one question derailed the entire plan: where's the yellow? "I was randomly, fiercely craving yellow," she says—an impulse that landed a pair of floral lounge chairs in the living room. The bold move wasn't tossing in another color at the last second; it was trusting her own gut. Along the way she'd catch herself wondering, "Has someone else done this? Is this even allowed?" Doing up her own home taught her the answer barely mattered. Those sunny chairs weren't just a design choice—they were proof she could trust her own eye.
Some of the California native's earliest design memories involve trailing her mother—also an interior designer—through San Francisco's design center as a kid. The payoff for patiently surviving fabric appointments was lunch at The Cheesecake Factory or a detour to FAO Schwarz. Decades later, she's basically rebooting the ritual with her oldest daughter, Freya, who now tags along to estate sales and antique fairs before the two grab something fun on the way home. "I've turned into my mother," Jackson says with a laugh.
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