‘I had to become a morning person’: Shea McGee on how she carves out space for creative thinking

On the day I talk to Shea McGee, we cover a lot of ground: her love of Moleskine notebooks, the new Martha documentary on Netflix, and her approach to collaboration. She’s at home, where she says she’s most focused and creative, and she’s quick to admit that her design business came as a total surprise nearly 10 years ago.

McGee was a fresh-out-of-college newlywed when Domino magazine launched. Armed with not much more than a passion for personal style and an apartment full of hand-me-down furniture, McGee says she became obsessed with interiors and relied on the magazine and the then-new world of style blogs to hone her budding creative practice. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” she says. “I had this passion I never knew existed.”

As cofounder and chief creative officer of Studio McGee, the design and interiors business she started with her husband, Syd, in 2014, McGee is one of the industry’s most notable tastemakers, turning her modern, classic design perspective into a more-than-$80-million brand. At the root of her business, though, is her ability to iterate on and tap into the magic she found decorating that first apartment, as well as her willingness to see even the tiniest bit of tension as an opportunity for a creative sprint.

I still love magazines. I love the tactile quality, tearing out pages. I use Pinterest and I am on social media. Those things help me stay on the pulse of what’s trending, but when I am designing, I try to block that out and think, “What does this room or home want to be?” Sometimes that means clearing the clutter in my brain to bring that to life.

I think creativity is the process of building up this stockpile of imagery in your brain. You wait for an opportunity to use a small idea. I take so many photos. I always have a Moleskine. I’m very tactile. I like to write everything down.

When I first started out, late night was a very creative time for me. It was so unhealthy. I had to become a morning person. I realized what I was craving was quiet and stillness; blocks of time. I can’t be creative in a span of 20-minute blocks between meetings.

My periods of low inspiration are usually because I’m too busy. I like to be busy. I like to be productive. Too much down time also isn’t good. We have had periods of time during the growth of our business when we were stretched and trying to do everything. We felt like we were fighting this uphill battle, filming a TV show and having a baby all at the same time. It was at that point, I wasn’t able to carve out time to sit with my thoughts, or get things on paper. I would feel very uninspired. As we have grown and I have been able to delegate, that has evolved and I’ve been able to carve out an hour to be more creative during my day.

I have to work really hard for creative time. It gets overrun so easily. I have to say, “Hey, you’re expecting me to bring ideas, but there has been no time in my schedule for it. I have to work hard. About once or twice a week, I work with my assistant to block out time. It’s essentially like I’m in a meeting, but really, it’s time when I have no other distractions. I turn off my phone completely. I’m a home person. I want to be in my home, in my studio. I like total silence and quiet.

As a creative and entrepreneur, one of my main roles is to have an instinct as to where the brand should go. There’s a gut feeling for what’s right and wrong for our business, especially in the creative aspect. Taste evolves. That’s one of my very favorite things about design—you have the freedom and flexibility to be inspired. We have created a brand that’s got a signature aesthetic. How do we make that McGee? What are we passing on? For us, if I view a trend as something coming around again because it has history, it’s relevant. I’m seeing images with this trend from 100 years ago; a checkerboard floor. I think that’s a great example. Trends are best done in small doses. We won’t revamp an entire line based on a trend.

I create one digital design board a day. Back in the day, it was pinning things on actual poster boards. I like tactile samples, but it is much easier to put all of my imagery in one place. It allows us to collaborate as a team. It’s incredible.

I love to travel somewhere that I know will relate to interiors in some shape or form, even if it’s just through nature or architecture. Food, too. That’s a big part of my life. We tend to take trips instead of gifts. We went to Mallorca a year or two ago and I was so inspired by that trip. We also recently went to Blackberry Farm. I’m still thinking about it: The food and the presentation, and just how thoughtful the design was. It was calm and peaceful. It wasn’t so fancy that you didn’t feel comfortable. It was the perfect marriage of things I love.

I usually listen to audiobooks when I go for a walk. I just finished Ina Garten’s memoir. That was probably my favorite book of 2024. I grew up watching Barefoot Contessa with my mom. Although our paths are different, they are very similar in developing your own style and finding your own way as a tastemaker.

I am so inspired by two very different people: Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren. They are my idols when it comes to entrepreneurs who have taken their personal style and infused it into a broad-reaching brand in a very livable and aspirational way.

I want everything to be beautiful and livable at the same time. My design philosophy mirrors how I design. It’s a challenge and sometimes there’s tension there. I genuinely love collaboration. I see my job as bringing everyone together on the same page: architects, builders, the client, and the designer. There will be some tension, but you have to dive into the why of each, especially in homes. If we can understand the why behind each perspective, then we can look for other possibilities that can come from it.

One of our values at Studio McGee is creativity and problem-solving. Creativity doesn’t only apply to creative work like the arts or creating products or interiors. It also applies to how we are going to reach our audience and solve a problem within our company. It used to frustrate me when clients would look at our design board and see something different. It doesn’t frustrate me now. If we haven’t found it yet, we have to keep being creative until we get there.