Interior Designer

About Mellow Mellow is a premium garage transformation brand based in North County San Diego. We curate complete garage makeovers for design-conscious coastal homeowners — the kind of people who care deeply about every room in their house, including the garage. Our aesthetic is elevated Scandinavian coastal: clean lines, warm natural materials, livable and welcoming. We are explicitly not industrial, not gear-head, not diamond plate. Think indoor-outdoor California living extended into the garage.

Our model is kit-based — we develop a curated product kit paired with a certified GC network for installation. That means your designs are not one-off concepts. They need to be modular and repeatable: a design system a GC can execute reliably across many homes, with flexibility in specific item placement, but consistency in the overall look, product selection, and feel.

What We’re Hiring For

We need a residential interior designer who specializes in design-led product curation and material sourcing for high-end coastal Southern California homes. The output is three complete garage design packages — but the work is residential interior design first, with product sourcing and material curation as the core competency, and rendering as the means of communicating your design decisions, not the primary deliverable.

This is not a mood board job, and it is not a 3D visualization job. It sits squarely at the intersection of residential design judgment and real product specification: you need to research and select real, currently purchasable products, verify they are high quality, durable, and appropriate for a garage environment, and then produce renderings using those exact items. The end deliverable must both sell a homeowner on the vision and hand a GC a clear picture of exactly what gets installed.

The Three Design Packages

Package 1 — The Addition The garage as a beautiful bonus room. Assume the homeowner has a shed and attic for bikes and holiday storage — this garage is lean on visible storage. Cabinets and organization are present but understated and largely concealed. The goal is a space the whole family actually wants to spend time in. Renderings must show multiple scenes: kids playing on the floor, car parked in, car out with the full room visible, a desk setup functioning as a home office, and an entertaining scene with adults and guests. Deliver for both 2-car and 3-car garage footprints.

Package 2 — The Addition, Equipped Same livable, design-forward family room feel as The Addition, but built for a family that needs serious storage — bikes, holiday decorations, sports gear, all of it. The design challenge is making heavy storage still look beautiful and intentional rather than cluttered. Both packages can and should include personality pieces like surfboard racks that feel native to the Mellow brand. Same multi-scene rendering set as Package 1. Deliver for both 2-car and 3-car footprints.

Package 3 — The Wellness Bay Designed for a minimum two-car garage. One car bay remains a fully functional car space. The other becomes a dedicated wellness area. Source ceiling-mounted options (TRX anchor point, pull-up bar), a full-length body mirror, and a floor surface you determine works best for a space that accommodates both a parked car and a workout zone — whether that’s a coated floor, interlocking tile, LVP, or a combination. Also source any other wellness-appropriate items that would make sense to retail as part of a Mellow kit (cold plunge if space allows, etc.). Do not source weights or traditional gym machines — the homeowner brings those. Deliver for both 2-car and 3-car footprints.

Product Sourcing Requirements (All Three Packages)

For every item in the design you must:

• Confirm it is currently available for purchase

• Verify it is high quality, built to last, and appropriate for a garage environment (humidity, temperature swings, vehicle traffic where applicable)

• Confirm the aesthetic is cohesive with the overall Mellow design direction

• Provide a direct purchase link

• Use that exact product in your renderings — no stand-ins or visual approximations

Cabinets specifically: source off-the-shelf products designed and warranted for garage environments (brands like NewAge Products, Gladiator, Vipp, or equivalent). Custom or semi-custom cabinetry is not in scope — we need products a GC can order and install from existing inventory.

Product categories to source across all applicable packages:

• Slatwall panels and accessories

• Shelving (multiple types: open, floating, heavy-duty, decorative)

• Overhead and ceiling storage where appropriate

• Off-the-shelf garage-grade cabinets (flagship item — source premium, not builder-grade)

• TV and mount, or frame TV equivalent

• Aesthetic wall paneling (decorative, not slatwall — for visual warmth and interest)

• Surfboard racks and board display shelving

• Lighting fixtures (overhead and accent)

• Floor coating color palette (polyurea/polyaspartic — provide multiple color options)

• Full-length body mirror (Package 3)

• Retractable screen system (allows garage door to remain fully open while containing kids and pets — find the best available product and show it in renderings)

• Ceiling-mounted wellness anchors: TRX strap anchor, pull-up bar (Package 3)

• Any additional items you identify that belong in a complete, livable Mellow garage

Rendering Requirements

Renderings must communicate the design clearly enough that a homeowner can genuinely imagine living in the space. Composition, aesthetic clarity, and accurate representation of sourced products matter more than maximum photorealism. Software demo-style 3D renders are not acceptable. Each scene must reflect the actual sourced products, not generic placeholders. Multiple scenes are required per package as described above.

Final Deliverable

For each of the three packages:

• Complete residential interior design with detailed product kit — item name, direct purchase link, unit price, and brief garage-environment validation

• Brief design rationale (one short paragraph) explaining the intent and how it fits the Mellow aesthetic

• Multiple scene renderings using the exact sourced products

How We’ll Evaluate Your Application

We score proposals on three dimensions, weighted as follows:

1. Residential design judgment (50%) — Does your portfolio demonstrate clear, intentional design decisions in residential spaces? Can we see your taste? Do you make defensible aesthetic choices, or do you produce technically competent but generic work?

2. Product sourcing and specification capability (30%) — Does your portfolio show evidence of curating real, sourceable products into cohesive designs? Have you worked with residential supplier ecosystems?

3. Rendering execution (20%) — Are your visualizations clear, compositionally strong, and aesthetically aligned with the design intent? Photorealism is not required; we prioritize design clarity over technical render quality.

To Apply

Please share examples of past residential projects that demonstrate both your design decision-making and product sourcing — ideally projects where you sourced and specified the actual products visible in the design.

Portfolios consisting primarily of commercial visualization (stadiums, retail centers, hospitality, large-scale architectural renderings) are not what we’re looking for, even if technically impressive. We want to see how you make design decisions in homes.

In your application, please describe two or three residential projects where you were responsible for product sourcing and specification — not just design. Tell us which suppliers you used, why you chose them, and what you learned.