About Red House West

Welcome! We’re Mera (on the left) and Katie, and together we write Red House West.

We met 20 years ago on the first day of college and instantly became friends.  Since that fateful day we have lived together all over the country, including in Massachusetts and rural Alaska.  Sadly these days we’re living thousands of miles apart – Mera in Anchorage, Alaska and Katie in Eugene, Oregon – but by chance we both own sweet and quirky 1930s and 40s era red houses.

Red House West || About Us

Katie’s house in Eugene (left), and Mera’s in Anchorage (right)

The many, many conversations we had as we first began working on our houses were the jumping off point for this blog, and since we started writing RHW in mid-2014 it has grown to also include all the new things we’re learning about interior design.  While we’re not trained designers, we are inveterate researchers, and as we delve into our own home projects we are learning a lot about design history and principles.  We’re as susceptible to trends as anyone, but we’re also interested in why they happen in the first place, where they come from, and why we love or hate them (for an example of trends we can’t abide, click here).  These are the conversations that run up our phone bills and fill up our email inboxes, and we share it all here.

This is a casual place, just a couple of old friends and an amazing group of readers, so please feel free to jump into the conversation! We love seeing your comments, or you can also get in touch via the contact link at the top of our page. If you have a design question you’re puzzling over, we’d love to help! You can see one example of an answer to a reader’s question here, and we’re planning to do lots more in 2016.

Red House West || Photo by the Weaver House

We post here every Wednesday, and you can also find us over on Instagram and Pinterest. Thanks for visiting Red House West!

A few quick words about our terms of use and policies:  All images posted on Red House West are taken by either Mera or Katie, or are otherwise credited with a source.  Feel free to use our images for non-commercial use, but please make sure to credit us and link back to Red House West where possible.  When featuring images that are not our own we do our best to properly credit them to the original source, but please let us know if you see something that should be changed and we’ll make the correction!