Katherine Beckwith Design and its subsidiary Beach Cities Staging provide Curated Interior Design Services as well as Professional Home Staging in Southern California.  Based in Manhattan Beach, Kathy easily services clients in the South Bay Communities of Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, El Segundo, Palos Verdes, Torrance and throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties. 

Kathy’s mission is to create beautiful, comfortable, yet functional spaces that reflect the unique character of her individual clients with designs inspired by nature’s elements and guided by the principles of Biophilic Design.  She is passionate about our human desire to connect with nature and makes use of light and color together with sustainable materials and textiles to create spaces that are clean, modern, and relaxed, appealing to a wide range of design clients and prospective home buyers in the Southern California area. 

Whether you are interested in full scale design services for a prospective build or are planning a renovation of your well-loved home, Kathy will guide and manage all stages of your project with professionalism, creativity, and passion.

After several decades working within the corporate design industry as well as designing and managing the full renovation of several of her own properties, Kathy redirected her focus in 2020 toward her true passion, creating beautiful and functional living spaces for residential customers.

Aesthetics and human nature, the way we perceive and understand the world around us, has always been a passion for Kathy, leading her to earn her B.A. in Philosophy and Art History at the University of Southern California in 1999 during which she spent a portion of her studies in Florence, Italy. She continued her love for design, art, and architecture in Chicago where she earned a second degree in Interior Design at Harrington College of Design while working for Herman Miller, distributor of some of the world’s most iconic office and residential furniture and textiles by Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, George Nelson and Alexander Girard. In Chicago she spent countless hours at the famous Merchandise Mart developing close relationships with vendors and ensuring the best possible selection for her clients. Her career in commercial design continued in Southern California where she served as Business Development Manager and Technical Designer for Westfall Commercial Furniture and as A+D Sales Manager at Herman Miller in Los Angeles.  

Kathy’s experience working on large scale furniture design projects for corporate clients such as Whole Foods, Disney, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros, THQ and Interthinx, the Rusnak Auto Group, Uber, Deckers Brands, 72 and Sunny, Colliers International, The Staubach Company, CBRE, the State Bar of California as well as for her alma mater, the University of Southern California, has given her the design and project management skills necessary to manage residential projects with a level of professionalism and meticulous attention to detail unmatched by her competition. 

Working together with top architects and designers over many years, Kathy has a talent for visualizing space and developing creative design solutions with a level of competency that sets her a level above the average residential design professional.  She has worked closely with interior designers and architects at some of the world’s largest and most prestigious design firms, such as Gensler, HOK, HLW, AECOM, HKS, DLR Group, Ware Malcomb, Cannon Design, ZGF, Perkins + Will, Rapt Studio and Wolcott Interiors. 

Before designing a space, Kathy spends a significant amount of time in the ‘Pre-Design’ Phase before moving into Schematic Design and Design Development. During this phase, a Program is delivered, which is a written document that summarizes user interviews and serves as a record of all the details necessary to execute a successful project, including budget allowances and how the space is used.  Kathy believes this is the most overlooked and important phase of a project as it puts her clients at ease, knowing she has taken extra time to understand necessary and desired elements, as well as project constraints.

Kathy believes we should furnish our homes with things we love and love the spaces in which we choose to live and work.  Her passion for beautiful space, love for nature and human connection continues outside of her professional life together with her husband, a successful entrepreneur, and 2 young children. When not engrossed in her work you will find her hiking the California coast, shopping at the Los Angeles Flower Market, playing tennis with her friends in Manhattan Beach, or (most often) loudly cheering her kids on from the sidelines of the soccer pitch or baseball diamond.