Debra Zinn Styling
/Debra Zinn Styling
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Photography by Anna Routh Barzin
While many designers found their own firms, few have founded three successful design businesses on their own. Debra Zinn is a talented interior designer who has recently transitioned from full-service interior design to the realms of interior styling and table styling. With her latest business, Debra Zinn Styling, she provides interior, prop, table, and photo styling services for designers and brands. Her firm’s clientele is predominantly in the Southeast, but Debra is eager to expand into the Boston area.
While Debra’s innate passion for elevated style has always been present, she got an in-depth view of the design industry when she married her husband who came from a family of builders and developers. Over the years, Debra designed and built several of her own homes, irreplaceable opportunities which she counts herself fortunate to have experienced. When interior design as a profession began calling her, Debra’s mother-in-law—a designer and builder herself—and sister-in-law encouraged her to take the leap. Debra started design school, but already friends and friends of friends who’d seen Debra’s past work wanted to hire her. The amount of projects she was offered were so many that she had to leave design school and start work right away!
The idea behind Debra’s second design business came to be when she was hosting her mother’s 80th birthday party in Cape Cod. Unable to access her own collections of dishes and table settings, Debra had to find rental options for china and linens. Greatly disappointed by the items available to rent, Debra recognized a void in the market that she wanted to fill. “I started adding even more new and vintage dishes, glasses, linens, vases, and lots of interesting objects for the table to my collection,” Debra shared with us. “Eventually I was able to parlay my passion for table styling into a business called The Curated Table, and now it has carried over to interior spaces for designers and brands as well. I love creating real-life still lifes!”
With Debra Zinn Styling, Debra has found immense joy in providing interior styling and table styling services to clients. “It can be frustrating as a designer when the client is not always able to finish off the final layer of design,” Debra explained to us. “I love to have the opportunity to support the designer and add in some of those special details and layers that elevate the composition for their portfolio or for an editorial. It may sound like a cliché that details matter in design, but it is so true!” Debra’s design style varies depending on the space she’s working with. When working with different designers, her goal is to help elevate their style. When working from an editorial point of view, her job is to impart to a space a sense of who lives there.
When we asked Debra what projects she would love to see next in her career, she answered, “There are so many incredible designers that I would be honored to work with. There are way too many to list! I would love to style a shoot for Veranda magazine since everything they put out is so gorgeous. I am also a huge fan of Tori Mellott, and she has done an incredible job with Frederic Magazine. There is so much inspiration on each page!” We at JPW Design Studio have full confidence in Debra Zinn and her impeccable attention to detail—we will be cheering her on the whole way!