For 20 years interior designer Grace Lin has been changing the look of Southern California homes large and small by merging the beauty and aesthetics of two seemingly separate cultures.

Lin’s Orange County-based Big Square Interiors combines her extensive knowledge and love of both Asian and Western European artwork, culture and tradition in a seamless way that creates a look of unparalleled beauty.  

But it does even more than that. The designs she has created for the hundreds of homes she has reinvented throughout Orange County and parts of Los Angeles County over the past 20 years have infused each one with a look that is truly unique.

 “I create furniture that is custom-made,” she said running her hand across a beautiful lacquered table at one recently redesigned home. “I draw it, I have my carpenter make it to my specifications and I design it so nobody else has anything like it.”

Such designs encompass not only tables but bookcases, sofas and other furniture as well as rugs, curtains, drapes and shutters, each piece uniquely designed and many hand-crafted to order.

In an addition to holding degrees from the Interior Design Institute of Newport Beach and Saddleback College, Lin has a general contractor’s license that allows her to work directly with carpenters, electricians and others in creating from scratch a look that is unique to every house she works on.

Doing so not only allows Lin to save a client money but to create a design that fits gracefully into each home as well as gives it its own imprint. The end result is a look and feel designed to provide relaxation and elegance as well as functionality.

“Paintings, porcelain vases, wallpapers, chandeliers, accessories, etc., I join these items to create a beautiful Eastern and Western juxtaposition that resonates harmony in an area,” she says. “One will see this style flow continuously from the front of the house to the back of the house, almost like the way a melody dances and echoes from an instrument across the room.

“ I think home should be a warm, comfortable space,” she continues. “Home should allow people to ease, unwind and relax.”

 The wife and mother of two began designing Orange County homes 20 years ago, beginning with her own. Growing up in Taiwan, she had always been fascinated with design.

“At age 10, when other kids were still playing with their toys, I was playing with my mom’s sewing machine,” she recalled. “I would sew my mom’s old duvets together with different designs and turn them into drapery for our windows.”

After moving to the U.S. and raising a family, she began to develop an equal  fascination with Western culture. Soon she was traveling frequently, to Italy especially, to take in works by the great masters like Michelangelo and others found at the Sistine Chapel, throughout the Vatican and elsewhere.

Over the years, as Orange County has become a place of diversity itself, more and more people have begun to take notice of Lin-designed homes with their multicultural look, giving Grace Lin a word-of-mouth reputation as one of the area’s most creative designers.