About Karen

Karen Billman is an interior designer of residential and commercial spaces at her Pasadena-based firm, Billman Designs. She is best known for her use of rich color and lush textures. She balances traditional aesthetic design with contemporary materials and color to bring a cohesive style to any room. She is passionate about helping her clients create their dream design.

When people ask Karen what inspires her, she replies that there isn’t really an easy answer. She says that when spending time getting to know her client at their home, something will usually pop, whether it’s a rug, sofa pillow or even curtains, that helps to inspire her latest designs.

Karen enjoys a challenge, such as a recent home theatre project. She needed to figure out how to blend existing forest green theatre seats into the background. Through testing different colors of paint on the walls and various carpeting options, her team managed to find the right color combinations which would turn the walls into the focal point rather than the theatre seats.

Karen stays on top of the latest colors, fabrics and surface materials through attending industry events and watching vendor presentations. She prides herself on forecasting wallpaper, paint and even fabric trends before they become trendy. As an example, she recently completed a bedroom for one of her client’s little girls, picking a very special, unique wallpaper. About a month later, that same paper was featured in People magazine as the wallpaper for the kids’ room on “Black-ish.”

Her current projects include the renovation of a gym suite, complete with bathroom and hall closet, for the Pasadena Showcase House; a remodel of a living room, bedroom space in Pasadena; and custom-designed window treatments for two homes in San Marino and Tujunga.

Karen studied communications at Oakland University and the University of Michigan before moving on to the UCLA Architecture & Interior Design program. In her spare time, Karen and her husband Deano, enjoy traveling the world, admiring art and architecture. They both are actively involved in the Pasadena civic community.