Ray Booth Design

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Nashville, TN
Ray Booth Design

To dream, to see, to make. Interior & Architectural designer. Partner McAlpine House. Collections with Hickory Chair + Visual Comfort & Co.

10/15/2026

This is the collection I designed with Hickory Chair, and what I wanted most was furniture that could hold its own next to real books, real art, and real collections. The idea was to take classical forms and bring them into the present, while keeping the level of refinement you notice when you get close.
That mattered especially with the chairs. I wanted a shape that feels classical from across the room, but clearly of right now once you’re sitting in it. The upholstery needed to do the same thing, to hold color quietly rather than demand attention. A chair is one of the pieces of furniture people interact with most, so it has to feel as good as it looks and earn its place in the room.

Check out my collection at the link in bio.

Furniture: Hickory Chair, Ray Booth Collection
Interiors: Ray Booth Design of McALPINE
Photographer: David Meredith

10/08/2026

I still draw by hand because a pencil makes me slow down long enough to actually see the house before it exists. Drawing isn't documentation, it's discovery. Every proportion gets tested and reworked until it actually holds together, long before anything gets built. It's a slow, thoughtful process, one that still takes my hand and forty years of practice to get right.

Interiors: Ray Booth Design of McALPINE
Architecture: Ray Booth Design of McALPINE
Landscape: Kaiser Trabue Landscape Architecture
Photographer: Lisa Romerein
As featured in: MILIEU Magazine

10/06/2026

One of the things architecture has to do is reach out and offer you a sense of place. This lot faces south, so that became the mandate for the whole design: the rooms had to reach up to let that southern light wash into them. Two mature Japanese maples already on the property gave me the framing device, a double-height great room flanked by two wings. Everything after that, the windows, the French doors, the skylights over the loggia, is really just architecture staying in conversation with the ground it's sitting on.

As featured in Luxe, July–August 2025

Interiors: Ray Booth Design of McALPINE
Architecture: Ray Booth Design, McALPINE
DOP: Dane Deaner
Video Production: Meena Consulting
As featured in: LUXE magazine

10/03/2026

My clients were leaving a house where they had raised their family for twenty-five years. What they wanted next was not a smaller version of that life. They wanted a house built for the next chapter of it.
A place for old friends, future generations, long evenings that run longer than anyone planned. So I started with the furniture, because good furniture is the foundation for good conversation. Generous scale, hardworking wools and chenilles, pieces you can curl up on or throw a leg over the arm of at the end of a long night. Nothing precious. Nothing you need to sit up straight for.
A house for the next chapter is a house that makes room for the way you want live.

Interiors: Ray Booth Design of McALPINE
Architecture: The Pursley Dixon Studio
Photographer: Emily Followill Photography
As featured in: Southern Home Magazine

10/01/2026

My Nashville home told me almost everything about itself before I drew a single line. The site sits high on a hilltop, with the land falling away on every side and the city stretching out in the distance. That view became the starting point for nearly every decision I made.
From the street, the house is quiet and composed. Stone-colored brick follows the slope of the hill, keeping that side of the home intentionally private. But around back, everything opens up. Glass takes over, box bay windows reach toward the view, and entire corners seem to disappear. I wanted the house to keep its composure from the street and lose it a little once it saw the city.

As seen in Poetry of Place, 'Lantern,' page 66, and in my book, Evocative Interiors, 'Travelers Ridge,' page 144

Architecture: Ray Booth Design, McALPINE, Renovation Architecture: Ray Booth Design of McALPINE
As featured in: Architectural Digest

09/27/2026

I love revisiting early work like this and reflecting on how I've grown, not just as a designer but as a person. This Nashville house holds the same instinct I still design from today: a room should feel found, not styled. I think that's true of people too. The version of you that feels most real is never the one you performed your way into. It's the one you grew into, the same way a house earns its stone and its light over time.

Interiors: Ray Booth Design of McALPINE
Architecture: McALPINE
Photographer: Mick Hales

09/26/2026

Some of the best conversations in design happen when makers sit down together and talk honestly about the work, and this October in High Point, North Carolina, Ray joins Susan Hable and David Phoenix at the Hickory Chair showroom for one. Moderated by Jessica Bennett and Suzanne Hall of the Dear Alice podcast (Alice Lane Interior Design), the panel pulls back the curtain on what it means to design new wood and upholstered pieces for a company with 115 years of history. Friday, October 16th, 3 to 4 pm at 200 N. Hamilton, South Court #300. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will be served. RSVP at the link in bio.

Address

225 Polk Avenue, Suite 220
Nashville, TN
37203

Website

http://www.mcalpinehouse.com/, https://rayboothdesign.com/

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