Rising Stars: Meet Sarah Birckhead of Ohio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Birckhead.

Hi Sarah, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My love for interior design started long before I ever imagined it becoming my career. As a kid, I was constantly thinking about how a room could be rearranged, improved, or made more beautiful. I would spend hours drawing houses and rooms, imagining different layouts, and finding ways to transform the spaces around me. I was always creative. I loved fashion, drawing, painting, and anything that gave me the opportunity to take something from my imagination and turn it into something tangible and beautiful. But when it came time for college, I took what felt like the more practical route and studied business. For a long time, I assumed interior design would simply be something I loved on the side.

After college, I entered the corporate world and built a career in business, sales, and marketing. While it may have seemed completely separate from design at the time, I look back now and realize how valuable those years were. I learned how to connect with people, communicate an idea, understand what someone truly needs, market a service, and ultimately build trust. All of those skills have helped me immensely as I’ve launched a business of my own. At the time, though, being in the corporate world often felt like I was on the completely wrong path. I just couldn’t yet see how much of what I was learning would eventually become part of my story.

The pull toward design never went away, and eventually I was given an opportunity to enter the industry professionally, working in high-end residential design and construction in Cleveland. It was the chance I had been hoping for, and once I was immersed in the work, I knew I wanted to take my commitment to design even further. While continuing to work full time, I went back to school to study interior design and architecture. Balancing both was challenging, but it felt incredibly meaningful to be able to apply what I was learning in school to real projects and, at the same time, bring the experience I was gaining in the field into the classroom.

Over the next several years, I became immersed in projects ranging from full-scale, down-to-the-studs renovations to sourcing, selections, project coordination, installation, and styling. Being involved in so many different stages of the process taught me not only how to create a beautiful space, but how much thought, communication, problem-solving, and coordination it takes to bring an idea all the way to completion.

As I grew within the industry, I also started thinking more and more about what I wanted my own approach to design to look and feel like. I’ve always believed that having a beautiful, thoughtful home shouldn’t feel intimidating or out of reach. I wanted to create a studio where people could seek professional design help whether they were transforming an entire home or simply needed guidance pulling one room together. I wanted the process to feel personal, approachable, and tailored to the way each client actually lives. That ultimately led me to create Orchard & Olive Interior Design Studio.

Starting my own studio has felt very full-circle. In a way, I’ve been able to bring together all of the different parts of my path: the little girl who was constantly rearranging rooms in her head, the business, sales, and marketing knowledge I gained in the corporate world, the professional experience I gained working in residential design and construction, and the decision to further my education in design and architecture while working full time. What once felt like a winding path makes much more sense to me now. Each chapter gave me something different that I’m able to bring to Orchard & Olive today.

I’m still at the beginning of this chapter, which is incredibly exciting, but I’m so grateful that I finally gave myself permission to take the risk and build a career around something I had loved all along.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t been a completely smooth road. Launching a business can be very humbling! I think one of the biggest challenges has simply been learning to trust myself. Choosing a path outside of the traditional 9-to-5 structure and deciding to fully bet on yourself comes with a lot of uncertainty. There have absolutely been moments when I’ve wondered, “Can I really do this? Am I good enough? Am I crazy for taking this risk?” Walking away from the predictability of a more conventional career path requires a very different kind of confidence, and I’m still learning that confidence doesn’t necessarily mean never having doubts. Sometimes it just means continuing to move forward despite them.

Another challenge I didn’t fully understand until I started was how much work happens before anyone on the outside ever sees the business. Launching Orchard & Olive meant building my website from scratch, creating marketing materials and social media content, and handling all of the countless administrative details that come with starting a business to name just a few. In many ways, building the business itself becomes a full-time job before the business is even paying you like one. Learning how to manage that workload while still maintaining the rest of my life has probably been one of the biggest practical challenges.

Creating the brand itself was also a huge learning process. I had a very clear feeling for what I wanted Orchard & Olive to represent, but I also had so much inspiration and so many ideas in my head that creatively channeling all of them into one cohesive brand identity could be incredibly overwhelming. I wanted every element to feel connected and unmistakably authentic to me. However, like any creative process, there was a lot of trial and error, but creating something entirely on your own also makes it very easy to become your own worst critic. There were definitely moments when I found myself hyperfixating on the smallest details, like a font size or the placement of something on a page, simply because I had been looking at it for so long. Finding the balance between being intentional and knowing when to stop refining was something I had to learn. Luckily, I have an incredible support system of friends, family, and mentors whose opinions I trust, and their feedback before launching the brand was invaluable. It helped me step outside of my own head and see the work more objectively.

Probably the most personal challenge has been vulnerability. When you create something of your own, you are putting your ideas, your taste, your work, and ultimately a piece of yourself in front of other people and asking them to connect with it. That can feel incredibly vulnerable, especially in a world where social media makes it so easy to compare yourself to what everyone else is doing. I’ve had to learn how to tune out that outside noise and stay grounded in my own creative vision. I’ve always been someone who is much more focused on becoming better than I was yesterday than on competing with anyone else, and that mindset has helped me stay true to what feels authentic to me while continuing to grow.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m an interior designer and the founder of Orchard & Olive Interior Design Studio. I primarily specialize in residential interiors, working with clients on projects ranging all the way from renovations and larger-scale transformations to cosmetic updates, furnishing, sourcing, and styling.

One thing that is especially important to me is making the design process feel approachable and fun for the client. I think a lot of people are intimidated by the idea of working with an interior designer, whether they are overwhelmed by all of the options, or simply feel like they don’t know what their “style” is. I love helping clients recognize that they already have instincts about what they are drawn to, even if they don’t yet have the language to define it. My job is to help uncover those preferences and translate them into a home that feels personal to them. Your home is your sanctuary, so I want the process to feel fun, collaborative, and as stress-free as possible.

Aesthetically, I love layering fabric, pattern, texture, and color, and mixing pieces from different places and periods. I’m a big believer in high-low design and in incorporating existing pieces alongside new ones. Some of the most interesting interiors come from combining something “elevated” with something unexpected, vintage, or found.

With that said, and perhaps something I am known for, is antique and vintage sourcing. This is a big part of both my personal life and my work. After spending years searching antique stores, estate sales, resale marketplaces, and vintage sources, I’ve developed a strong eye for pieces that are special, well-made, and worth bringing home. I love showing clients that everything does not need to be brand new or prohibitively expensive. Often, secondhand pieces bring a character and history to a room that is difficult to replicate with something new.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
I’m still learning so much myself, and I always will be. My biggest advice would be to stay humble and be a sponge. You have to let go of any ego, because you are going to mess up, make the wrong call sometimes, and come across things you simply don’t know yet. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust yourself or have boundaries, but you have to be okay with always being a student which inevitability means being wrong, and not knowing at times. Now, I view that as a good thing because the more I’ve learned to lean into the unknown instead of getting frustrated by it, the more I’ve evolved. Never mistakes only life lessons – I apply that to my personal life and my business.

I’ve also learned that things take time. There have been, and will be, moments where I question everything and wonder if I am doing the right thing, because starting a business of any kind is not instantly “gratifying”, (if anything it’s quite the opposite), so this can create a space where you can become super susceptible to self-doubt. However, I’ve realized that it is in these moments specifically, that it is most crucial to keep pushing forward. That is growth, which is almost always uncomfortable. So embrace the discomfort and give yourself grace. Instead of getting caught up in where you think you should be, focus on what you can do each day to keep moving forward.

And lastly, remember your why. When I feel overwhelmed or disconnected from what I’m working toward, I try to think about why I started in the first place. I also think about how proud my younger self would be of me for even trying. That always puts things back into perspective for me. I definitely don’t have everything figured out, but I’m learning that I don’t need to. I just need to keep learning, keep growing, and keep going. I feel so thankful, lucky, and proud to be working towards this, with gratitude one day at a time.

Pricing:

• I offer free 30-minute phone call design consultations, and I have more information on my website!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.orchardandolivestudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orchard.and.olive.design/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@sarahtheinteriordesigner?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc