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CREATURE COMFORTS
Interior designer Jessica Love shares her tips for pet-proofing your home. BY COURTNEY RUNN
Bringing home a new pet is like bringing home a baby: Suddenly, your home is an obstacle course of sharp edges and stainable surfaces. As the principal of Austin-based Urbane Design, Jessica Love is used to accommodating her clients’ pets and has two rescue dogs of her own, Bowie and Cornelius. “I’m a huge advocate for rescues,” she says. “But I love all animals.” Whether you’re bringing home a bright-eyed pup or a furry senior citizen or moving homes with your pets in tow, here’s what Love recommends when decorating.
SOURCE VINTAGE RUGS.
“When it comes to rugs, I recommend 100 percent wool rugs, which not every designer would, but I love vintage rugs,” Love says. “If you have a rug that’s been around for 100 years, a pet’s not going to mess it up…so I always push for hand-tufted wool rugs.” INSTALL PET DOORS.
If your dog weighs more than 50 pounds, Love suggests vinyl, laminate or tile to avoid their nails scratching up hardwood floors.
“Cats can be really smelly creatures, so it was always really important for me to have a cat door installed either to a garage or to a utility room to act as the cat’s own potty room. So, I think [pet doors] can be really useful in the home,” Love says. If you’re concerned about racoons or possums taking up residence through pet doors accessing the outdoors, look for models that are triggered by magnets in your pet’s collar.
CHOOSE DURABLE FABRICS.
INSTALL ASTROTURF OUTSIDE.
Leather couches and kittens don’t mix well. When choosing sofa fabrics, Love recommends high-performance fabrics and fabrics with tighter weaves for pets prone to scratching and clawing at furniture. She also discourages linen or cotton. “They’re very, very hard to clean and do stretch easily,” she says, “so I definitely avoid those on finishes with pets or children.”
Love recently installed AstroTurf in parts of her own yard for easy dog maintenance and cleanup. “One, I don’t have to mow the grass, and two, it has a porous layer underneath, so...if [my dogs] urinate on it, I can spray it down with a water hose and soft cleaner, and it doesn’t absorb smells,” she says.
Photo by Sarah Natsumi Moore.
AVOID HARDWOOD FLOORS WITH LARGE PETS.
38 | AUSTIN WOMAN | OCTOBER 2019