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Ty Larkins received his juris doctor from LSU in 1996, passing the bar the same year. Lately he’s building a reputation for his work of a different sort through residential interiors and exteriors. He’s further poised for national attention with his involvement in HGTV’s reality program, Dream House.

“What I tell people is I chose to be an attorney. Interior design chose me,” he says. “I’m probably different than most/many interior designers to the extent that first of all, I don’t proclaim to have any formal training in interior design.”

As advertised on his Web site, tylarkins.com, Ty Larkins Designs offers “hourly consultations, interior design of entire houses and/or individual rooms, remodeling, new construction consultation and subcontracting, architectural design of new homes and redesign of existing homes or room layouts.”

Can a lawyer⎯or anyone for that matter⎯dabble in design without formal training?

The state’s definition of interior design, which requires licensing from the National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ), means “designs, consultations, studies, drawings, specifications and the administration of design construction contracts relating to nonstructural interior elements of a building or structure.”

“My legal opinion is that I am fully being able to do what it is I do to provide the service and products without being a licensed interior designer in the state of Louisiana,” he says.

“You can’t practice interior design unless you’re licensed,” says registered interior designer T.L. Ritchie, who also serves as secretary of Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Interior Designers and chair of the interior design program at LSU.

“He would be upset if I started calling myself an attorney,” Ritchie adds.

Chicago dream

Title and/or practice debate aside, Larkins has completed work in various capacities on eight residential projects in the Baton Rouge area and one in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton, Ill.

Carmin Coutee Awadzi, an LSU alumna and president of Magnolia Custom Homes, owns the Wheaton home and is responsible for catching HGTV’s eye.

Coutee Awadzi hired Larkins for a few small consultations before she left Louisiana, and she called upon Larkins again in January 2006 when she was ready to build her 54,000-square-foot dream home in Illinois. Around the same time, Coutee Awadzi applied and snagged the opportunity to have her venture in homebuilding chronicled through the Dream House program. Television crews filmed the project from start to finish, even paying visits to Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The eight-episode series began Sept. 23 and airs Sundays at 10 p.m.

On the project, Larkins worked with Coutee Awadzi on the architectural drawings, which came from Nicholas R. DeLuca & Associates of Naperville, Ill. Larkins gave suggestions on room dimensions, window placement and style, interior millwork, interior and exterior color selection and light fixtures.

“In starting my business, I wanted to carve out a niche in doing Southern-style homes,” Coutee Awadzi says. “I needed help with that, and I knew Ty would be able to work with us.”

Coutee Awadzi says the biggest contribution Larkins made to the project was his insistence on increasing the home’s windows by 25% and changing their style to “two over two” pane to reflect her desired Southern feel.

“It took a lot of encouraging and arm-twisting to get her to accept it,” he says.

“I was thinking about the budget,” she says. “But not one month goes by that I don’t tell him, ‘I’m so glad you convinced me to add extra windows.’”

Adding to the Southern feel were elements bought from Louisiana like beams and bricks from Baton Rouge-based Builder’s Antique and gas lanterns from New Orleans-based Bevelo. Larkins says he also injected more Southern flair with 9-foot ceilings on the first floor and 8.5-foot ceilings on the second floor, the highest he could manage within restrictions. Boiserie, or carved wood panels, were also added along with outdoor ceiling fans on the front porch.

In a word, Coutee Awadzi describes Larkins’ style as “sophisticated.”

“He comes across with a sophisticated look that’s a mix of traditional and contemporary,” she says.

Local reality

Larkins’ most recent project is a renovation of a 1950s ranch house between the LSU lakes and the Perkins Road overpass. Owned by Joanne Guidroz, the director of voter registration for the Secretary of State, some of the renovation’s laundry list of tasks included gutting the kitchen and bathroom, removing doors, flooring and walls, adding windows and ceiling panels and bringing in new furnishings, wall coverings, paint and air conditioning.

With Guidroz subcontracting the four-month renovation, a fair share of headaches arose, but Guidroz says it was worth it to update her kitchen, bathroom, sunroom, living room and dining room.

“Sometimes I look around and still can’t believe it’s mine,” she says. “But going through what I did, I never want to do it again. Not unless I could say, ‘Call me when it’s over.’”

Larkins says Guidroz came to him asking for an update that would reflect her personality, creating a space that was feminine, glamorous and sophisticated. Her style leaned toward spaces that were light and airy—with a bit of pink.

From an architectural standpoint, Larkins says, the sunroom was the best room in the house. Some of the revamps included painting the windows’ sashes and muntins black, moving furniture in from the living room, changing out the overhead light fixture, adding textured Tiffany blue ceiling panels and creating a wall of built-in bookcases centered around a writing desk. Most importantly to Guidroz, inside access to the outside “dungeon”⎯where she formerly housed her washer and dryer⎯was closed off, moving the machines into concealed spaces in the kitchen.

The revamped bathroom, however, draws the most response when Larkins and Guidroz show it off in photographs. Guidroz says a friend has already stripped her bathroom in preparation. The bathroom formerly had a pedestal sink and toilet on the left side leading to the bathtub with cabinetry on the right. Now it’s entirely left dominant with a double sink and underneath cabinet storage and has gray marble throughout.

And that pink? It’s in the living room in the form of an oversized circular ottoman and matched in throw pillow detailing. Larkins says the pink ottoman was a surprise because he originally ordered a taupe color that was discontinued.

“I saw it as a sign and opportunity to give it the shot of pink she was asking for,” he says.

Personal style

Larkins says he’s always had an interest in aesthetics and informally started learning about architecture through books and travel. Over time, he says, he became acutely aware of what made certain places and spaces better than others.

His style, he says, is to create spaces that are calm and pared down. He says he leans toward solid colors, generally beige, gray and tan while including splashes of color.

Bill McMillin of Bill McMillin Interiors is a friend of Larkins. He describes Larkins’ style as “classical with a modern twist” and likens it to fashion designer Bill Blass.

When you walk into one of

his spaces, Larkins says, it doesn’t look like granny’s house.

“My idea is to take something like that, update it, make it slightly contemporary to bring it into the 21st century, but still have that really traditional, timeless look,” Larkins says.

How does he fit his side projects in with his current position as policy director for the Louisiana Recovery Authority? He’s an early riser, often working from 4 to 8 a.m. on his side projects before putting in a full day at the office and balancing family life with his wife and 5-year-old twin girls.

“He’s getting to have his cake and eat it, too,” McMillin says.