Ray Booth’s career is the epitome of a full-circle moment. Raised in Huntsville, Alabama, he studied architecture at Auburn University, where he met Bobby McAlpine (a professor of his) and soon became one of the architect’s first interns. “Bobby is such a personable and approachable and humble creature. This talent ... has been fuel for me ... on how to do beautiful, poetic, emotionally evocative work,” Booth tells host Dennis Scully on the latest episode of The Business of Home Podcast.

After graduating, he made his way to New York and landed jobs with the designers John Saladino and Clodagh, where he learned valuable design skills. Ten years into Booth’s career, he moved back to Alabama in 1999 and became a partner at McAlpine’s firm, and has never looked back. “You sometimes find what you’re most looking for by looking in the opposite direction of where you think it lies,” he says. “And for me, that was to come home to Bobby and Greg [Tankersley, a McAlpine partner] and Alabama.”

Despite working at McAlpine’s firm, where he is principle in charge of both the New York and Nashville design studios, Booth has been able to carve out his own design identity—starting with his 2018 monograph, Evocative Interiors. Since then, he has collaborated on collections with Hickory Chair and Visual Comfort, and he just launched a new book, The Expressive Home. “How exciting and how fortunate,” he says. “It was not something that I was conscientiously pursuing. Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t. … We create these interiors and this architecture. We have a document, which is photography, so I just wanted to do the best work that I could. And I’ve had these champions who have [encouraged me to] take on the mantle, [saying], ‘Oh, no, there’s more you can do.’ Not that I’m lazy, but I wasn’t driven to do all these things. I was not pursuing it, and I have these beautiful people who have come into my life who have helped me evolve and grow as a designer.”

Crucial insight: In the age of technological innovations, from AI to social media, Booth has found that some clients have become harder to work with because of the information now at their fingertips. “I think clients used to hire you to do what you do, and they would allow you to do it. Now, through more social media, more exposure, more technology, a lot of clients—not all clients—are more engaged. I welcome engagement. I want it to be a collaboration: I learn something, you learn something,” he says. “But there are some clients that it becomes an obstruction and you’re not able to make a decision. And ultimately, I’m a doer. I don’t want to go through so many versions of any design that it gets watered down into something that is just not strong. So I guess what I would hope for, but I don’t know that I see coming, is to have more faith in us as designers. If you hire us, let us do what we do. Doesn’t mean that you’re not a part of it, but you’ve got to let the process work. And I think so many people are so hyped up and so engaged that it doesn’t always benefit the end result.”

Key quote: “I always say that beauty is a byproduct. I think if we really do this work, and we get this work right, I think that it is the emotion that people feel that moves them: It’s beyond beauty, beyond what you see with your eye. It is what you feel. We strive to do that, [and] that’s how we know we’ve gotten it right—if we really move people in that way, [so that] they’re seeing something about themselves reflected in the work that we’re doing.”

This episode is sponsored by Loloi and Crypton. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The Thursday Show

Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world, including the history of the shelter magazine, a British design invasion, and how a warehouse fire is impacting Brooklyn’s artisan community. Later, stylist and author Colin King joins the show to talk about slowing down, starting a Substack, and breaking out of the “beige box” the industry put him in.

This episode is sponsored by Serena & Lily and Hartmann&Forbes. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.