By Donna Heiderstadt

Growing up on the prairies of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Brittany McQueen didn’t realize a career in interior design could even be a possibility for her. “I always enjoyed watching HGTV, and in my spare time, I would pretend to be on those shows and draw up my future house plans with all the bells and whistles,” she said. But it wasn’t until her parents started taking her to visit local lottery show homes that her future began to fall into place. “Even at a young age, I was mesmerized by all the design features that went into a house. Discovering that there were designers in Saskatoon doing what I’d seen on TV inspired me to keep learning about the industry and how I could become a part of it one day.”

That childhood dream turned into a reality as Brittany studied Interior Design at Lakeland College in Vermilion, Alberta. While there, she entered NKBA’s Student Design Competition and earned second place in the Kitchen category. After graduation, she moved back to her hometown, where stints at diverse Saskatchewan firms earned her valuable experience working one-on-one with clients to develop her customer service and sales skills. She then honed her technical know-how over a five-year period in the cabinetry industry, gaining valuable insight into designing “the heart of the home.”

Today, at age 28, Brittany is the Interior Design Technologist (aka primary designer) for innovative local builder Hometown Homes, where her responsibilities include floor plan development, space planning, rendering creation and furniture staging. “My favorite part of the design process is creating the renderings and seeing clients’ faces light up when they get a glimpse of what their new space will look like before construction even begins,” she noted. “To know I created that experience for them is pretty cool.”

Brittany still counts her first kitchen project — with a client who had failed at a DIY renovation of his small kitchen with windows in odd locations, multiple corners and several bulkheads in the ceiling — as her most memorable. “The homeowner told me how grateful and excited he was to finally have a functioning kitchen back after all that time,” she recalled.

Today, Brittany says she and her husband, Kody, are “slowly working on updating our 1963 house one room at a time.” She describes her own design style as eclectic, but says she’s especially drawn to one specific era. “I love the clean aesthetic of mid-century design and that each piece of furniture has its unique history that it brings to the home,” she said. When she’s not hanging out with Kody and their mix-breed rescue pup, Sadie, Brittany enjoys reading, sports and traveling — with Fiji and Costa Rica being two of her favorite locales. As for the future, her must-dos include traveling somewhere new every year, designing an award-winning kitchen or bath, building her forever home and, of course, seeing Taylor Swift in concert.