profile
Design Darling
Montclair’s Blanche Garcia knows that the space is the star
B
ullying: It’s something
many kids face today.
Montclair’s Blanche
Garcia, 38, dealt with it
as a high school student,
too. She wanted to leave
school, but her mother told her she
first had to figure out what she wanted
to do with her career.
Garcia knew she wanted to become
a designer. “I enjoyed sketching,
helping my mom decorate for parties,
and I had a flair for decorating my
bedroom,” she says. “I thought interior
design was a perfect fit,” she says. At
16, she got her GED, and took classes
at Berkeley College in N.J. and the
Wilsey Institute of Interior Design in
New York City, where she received her
degree. “Since I was too young to have
a license, my mother drove me to every
class,” she recalls.
Now the owner of B. Garcia Designs
in Montclair, Garcia’s world is full of
beautifully designed homes she helps
create, and innovative home-design
collaborations. Calling her style “clean,
effortless, classic and bold,” she has
designed various homes in the area,
and has even worked on the living
spaces of celebrities, including NFL
athletes Kerry Rhodes, Dustin Keller,
Jerricho Cotchery and Calvin Pace.
“Style always has to be true to the
space,” she says. “The space has to be
the star, or I haven’t done it justice.”
Her design style caught the eye of
the production company that created
the show Hotel Impossible; Garcia
starred on the show from 2012-2015.
“To this day, it’s one of the most
grueling experiences I ever had,” she
says. “Like design boot camp, minus
the camp.”
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FALL 2017 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE
“I THINK THAT THE HOMES OF
MONTCLAIR UTILIZE A LOT
MORE COLOR THAN HOMES IN
ANY OTHER AREA THAT I
WORK IN. ALSO, YOU WILL
FIND A LOT MORE USE
OF LOCAL ARTISANS.
MONTCLAIR RESIDENTS
LOVE TO SUPPORT
EACH OTHER IN DESIGN
AND IN ARTISTRY.
AND WHY NOT? WE HAVE
SO MUCH TO OFFER.”
BLANCHE GARCIA
Now, with her reality TV days
behind her, she has time to collabo-
rate with her boyfriend Shaun
Killman of Endless Design in
Clifton. Killman, who appeared on
HGTV’s All American Handyman,
is an artisan woodworker and
craftsman. He and Garcia connect-
ed online while both were appear-
ing in their respective reality shows.
“We started collaborating on my
office design in Montclair,” she
says. “We worked together for three
years before we became a couple.”
Now they often join forces on
each other’s projects. “Right now
we are working on the new
Wyndham TRYP Hotel slated to
open in Newark this coming fall or
winter,” Garcia says. “We bring
each other in on the more unique
items that you can’t find anywhere
else. For instance, for the new
hotel, Shaun and I are collaborating
on a life-sized acrylic lightbulb art
installation piece I designed;
patrons can take pictures from
inside it. These are the types
of things that we specialize in
as a team.”
Garcia is also consulting with
real estate developer Steven Plofker,
the husband of makeup artist Bobbi
Brown (the couple are longtime
residents of Montclair), on a new
local hotel, The George. And she
just started working on an 8,000-
square-foot wedding venue space
for The Crossed Keys Inn in
Andover, slated to open in 2019.
So which is her favorite project?
“To be honest, it’s usually the one
that I am working on at the
moment.”
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WRITTEN BY LAURA ADAMS STIANSEN