For more than 30 years, April Jensen has been helping clients imbue style and function into their homes. Now, with a recent move to a studio space at 51 N. Gore, she’s celebrating the start of a new chapter for her own design firm ADJ Interiors.
It didn’t take long for Jensen to realize that the 3,000-square-foot building in Webster Groves was the one. “This is it,” she recalls thinking. Her previous studio in Brentwood was located up three flights of stairs, she says, and she wasn’t going to miss lugging armloads of heavy samples up all of those steps. It was time, she adds, to find a more accessible space with room to grow.
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In the new studio, Jensen and her team work from an open concept layout, which is exciting to the designer after having her team siloed in separate offices for so long. She describes the studio aesthetic as polished with “a little bit of whimsy.”
The walls are painted mostly Sherwin-Williams “Pure White.” A wall of built-ins displays the designer’s extensive milk glass collection and it forms the backdrop for two long tables where her team takes meetings with clients. The countertops and waterfall edge, crafted by DiPrimo Fabricators, are made from Carrara marble.
“When we’re presenting, we don’t want to take away from what we’re showing clients,” says Jensen. “We always use “Pure White,” and then we have amazing light so that we can see all the nuances of color and texture.”
Ever the designer, Jensen made sure not to leave out two of her favorite colors—red and pink–which sing throughout the studio. The storage cabinets under the conference tables are painted “Lipstick on the Mirror” and “Barragán-Cito,” both from paint company Backdrop. She’s also incorporated the work of local artists, whom she supports in many of her projects, by displaying works by Mays Mayhew and Kenneth Kudulis Digital Painting.
While many items in the studio are new, Jensen made room for an old black-and-white desk that she acquired years ago when she was at a different stage in her career. “We just keep breaking it down and taking it with us. So, I guess I’m a little nostalgic, even though I love progress,” she says.
That nostalgia carries through to the Curtis Mathes Prototype Console, which has been refurbished to play both vinyl records and music over Bluetooth. Jensen and her husband love listening to vinyl, and he gave the console to her shortly before the studio officially opened.
During the designing of the space, Jensen drew from many of the vendors that she and her team like to use in their work. She also carved out a space for her extensive library of reference books. Both make it easy to show to clients.
“To go from my basement to a 10-by-20-foot space to the studio in Brentwood to now owning my own building, is really exciting,” Jensen says. “I love creating a place where people can come work … in a place that looks so pretty and feels so good.”
Hear more from April Jensen on the House of Lou podcast.
