Our Designer Interview Series Continues With Patrick Ediger

More than just a resource for the best of modern furniture, Modern Resale also wants to be your destination for understanding the importance of these designs in creating contemporary, livable spaces. With that in mind, we’ve tapped into Los Angeles’s vast and varied network of interior designers, asking them for their perspective on modern design, how they integrate these pieces into their work and their thoughts on how to incorporate it into your home.   

In the continuation of our series, we introduce Patrick Ediger of Patrick Ediger Interior Design.   

Interior Living Room by Patrick Ediger 

Ediger, who created a window for this year’s La Cienega Design Quarter Legends Event and is currently working on a home for superstar basketball coach Phil Jackson, has a penchant for the dramatic and for taking risks. No wonder his client roster includes Christina Aguilera, Cheryl Tiegs, EMM Restaurant Group, and W Hotels 

Even from a young age, it was clear that Ediger had the sophisticated spatial sense of an interior designer, manipulating the furniture in his childhood home to achieve its ultimate elegance. The Nebraska native attended university as a theatre major and was drawn to both directing and to set design, intrigued with the relationship between environment and performer. After graduation he worked creating custom wall finishes for clients, including Venetian plaster and intricate stencil designs, before moving to Los Angeles in 2004. His experience as a project manager and then as a design lead, propelled him to launch a successful wallpaper company, French American Wallpaper, as well as his own atelier in 2009.  

Drawing on his background in theatre, Ediger is able to instill a vitality to his spaces that animates them, making them feel vividly alive. Bringing his finely honed aesthetic and his tightly tuned sense of space and scale to bear in every project he takes on, his eclectic modernism is informed by the clean lines of midcentury masters, softened and elevated with the voluptuousness of bohemian textures and palettes, and touched with the refinement of artistic intrigue. Underlying this is a strong foundation in traditional design fundamentals.  

And, whether he’s experimenting with scale or color, rethinking a floor plan or planning a remodel, his work is always grounded in the understanding that home is, ultimately, the space against which we play out our lives and launch our dreams. It should offer both comfort and inspiration and be a place of luxurious renewal.   

What role does contemporary/modern design play in the scope of your interior design work? 

The more I mature and develop my eye as a designer, the more contemporary design influences my work and personal aesthetic. While my work has never been what I would consider traditional, it’s always been rooted in classic design styles. And, while that still rings pretty true for the most part, over time I’ve become less concerned with sticking to the rules and far more interested and excited in telling the story of a piece of architecture or my clients' lives than sticking to age old guidelines of how a room is “supposed" to look. That’s where creative innovation and the influence of contemporary design come into play for me. If I can slip in an unexpected contemporary piece into an otherwise traditional space, it creates automatic exhilaration.  

When you look at current modern design, what gets you excited and why? 

There are so many exciting things happening today in contemporary design and more innovation than we’ve ever seen in human history, not just in architecture and interiors but especially in product design. Partly influenced by the global world we live in today and also the huge advancements in technology, designers can now create their designs almost instantly with innovations in 3D and digital printing and the like. It’s very exciting to me that we’re able to manufacture, or at the very least prototype, on a more micro and instantaneous level. The implications for the future are really thrilling! 

Most designers that use the brands that Modern Resale primarily works with are also very interested in vintage design. When does something from the past become interesting again?   

In the right context anything from the past becomes en vogue again. It’s really all about the right setting and how a vintage item relates to its surroundings. For example I wouldn’t recommend pairing a C. Jeré vintage wall sculpture with a fully traditional interior — it would feel very out of place and thoughtless. But in an industrial interior or contemporary setting it would look fresh and give the space warmth and style. As long as the overall balance is harmonious between a specific vintage piece and its setting, I don’t really think anything falls truly out of style.  

What is it about a piece of current design that makes you think it is still going to be relevant in 20 years? 

My hard and fast rule on what makes a lasting piece of furniture is its quality — that’s the bottom-line. With so many options for trendy, relatively inexpensive furniture and accessories today from online (and brick and mortar) retailers like CB2, West Elm and Restoration Hardware, it’s pretty easy to fully furnish your home with the click of a button. The question is ‘how long is any of that stuff actually going to last?’ Aside from the fact that trends today change with the wind, the quality of the vast majority of those pieces is not tip-top. You’re lucky if they last a few years. I always recommend to my clients that quality comes first - even before form and function. Sure, you’ll probably spend two to three times (or more) what you might pay for a credenza at a trendy retailer for a good quality new or vintage one but you’ll also still have that quality piece in 20, 30, 40, 50+ years. For me it’s the difference between filling your home with a beautiful collection of art and decor, illustrating the story of your life and creating cherished memories, and just gathering a bunch of meaningless stuff that’s just going to end up in a landfill one day.  

What furniture designer that is currently producing work inspires you the most? OR What is your favorite contemporary brand? 

My mantra lately has been “shop small,” as in, I prefer to work with small shops and artisans. That’s where I find the biggest and most interesting innovations and the highest quality control. I’m currently enamored with the work of a small lighting designer, Studio PGRB out of Miami. Their work is sculptural, cutting edge and ingenious — and extremely versatile. Their collection may not be enormous but it’s absolutely stunning!  I just ordered their CONCENTRIC 9 chandelier for my own home, I was so taken by the design.  

Interior Living Room by Patrick Ediger 

More in our series can be found here.