Joy Ejercito’s comfy and colorful interiors

"Functional, comfortable, spare but colorful" is how the president and founder of a successful public relations firm sums up the job that interior designer Joy Ejercito has done for her new office in Makati City.

Ejercito’s clean lines and bright palettes of lime green, fuchsia and lavender give the workspace a compelling look that defines the company’s nature of business – an enviable combination of serious enterprise and glamour.

The decorator‘s sense of correctness is born out of days spent with a client before getting down to the brass tacks of designing a space. In this particular case, interviewing both the head of the company and her all-woman staff helped Ejercito in creating a workplace with just the right amount of oomph.

"You have to explain to the client why they are spending this much. One has to be very patient because some clients can be very factitious," Joy said.

Amazingly, despite the state of the economy, she has not run out of clients. "The economy obviously does not affect some people," she replied, expressing surprise at her own discovery.

Just turned 30, Joy has moved on into the realm of bigger and better, offering services and design insights to a solid residential clientele, including some of Manila’s most visible movers and shakers, office spaces and showrooms.

She’s very much a hands-on worker who forms design concepts and follows up on drawings up to the manufacturing of custom-made furniture, including their delivery.

It helps that her husband’s family operates Diseño Lindo, an interior design business that includes furniture making. Joy often suggests alternatives in order to cut costs. "Labor won’t cut costs, but offering alternative materials can help bring them down without sacrificing the look you want to achieve," she said.

The difference between office furniture and home furnishings lies in the details, Joy said. "Office furniture are much more simple, sleek, straight though bright in colors. Residential homes can show more curves and proportions, but colors are warm and subtle."

She said she has spent a lot of time learning why this piece is better for this interior, why the curve of this leg looks much better for a particular furniture, and why this item costs 10 times more. Her clients appreciate the fact that when Joy suggests some improvements, they are dealing with an honest and sincere person who wants to give them excellent service.

Joy Ejercito belongs to that breed of designers with an unbelievable talent and an eye for detail. They don’t let decorating dominate the objects. The objects should dominate, and the background should remain the background.

Some designers glory in pattern; some in color. Joy’s knack is for purity of line, the impact of texture and the good combination of colors. The two newly-made sofas, one in fuchsia and the other in printed blue and beige, in the office of the public relations executive, for instance, are made of hardy solid fabrics and bold but timeless shapes that tend to be overscale. But they work to perfection as accents in the sparsely decorated office space.

"It is important that each object you see has integrity – not necessarily something expensive, but of good design and quality," she explained. But do not overdo them. "So much decorating is overdone that it becomes uncomfortable. It is vitally important to know when to stop."

Timelessness is the litmus test Ejercito applies in decorating decisions. She tries to avoid what’s "in" but instead provides designs that the interior calls for.

She favors simple, curvy lines sans carvings in designing furniture pieces. And earth colors for the rooms, rounded out with custom-made pieces are her trademarks. Although the sofas tend to be overscale, they pack an aesthetic punch.

A big believer in custom work, she’ll have an object custom-made if it does not exist, drawing heavily on texture to provide continuity throughout a space.

Needless to say, her fees are also custom-made. "My quotations are not standardized. I quote per article since most of the pieces are custom-made. That helps bring down the costs too," she said.