EP 78: The Story Behind AI for Interior Designers™
How AI for Interior Designers™ Got Started
Hosted by Jenna Gaidusek. A live interview with Julia Reinert, recorded from the Loft in the AI Social Club.
- This is the first episode of the podcast recorded live, in the Loft inside the AI Social Club, so members could watch, chat, and see what Jenna shared on screen in real time.
- Jenna's path into design started with rearranging her bedroom every Sunday in Vermont and building houses in The Sims, and she still resets her space every weekend.
- Graduating into the 2010 recession sent her through years of furniture retail management, where she says she mostly learned how not to run a business, before online design let her go out on her own.
- Everything she teaches is something she has done herself first, usually by breaking it, so she can explain it in designer language instead of developer language.
- She has a love-hate relationship with AI, doesn't trust any single tech company, and builds tools that can swap models and keep your data backed up in your own hands.
AI for Interior Designers™ started as a domain Jenna bought in 2022 because she could see where AI was headed before most of the industry was talking about it. But the real story goes back much further: a kid in Vermont redesigning her room every week, a design grad who hit a recession, an early eDesign believer when the industry looked down on virtual design, and a founder who, as she puts it, builds whenever she can't control something else. In this first live episode, Julia Reinert gets the whole story out of her, sitting in the Loft of the clubhouse Jenna built.
Jenna doesn't really listen to podcasts. She watches them. She's a visual person, and so is most of this industry, so she wanted a way to show things while she talks about them instead of describing them over audio.
Now that the AI Social Club has a live space for it, the Loft, that's exactly what happens. Members can join the recording, chat in real time, and see anything shared on screen. The edited episode then goes out on Saturday mornings to podcast platforms and to YouTube, where you can now see the screen shares too.
"I wanted to be extroverted, but I wanted to do it in my own way. So that is literally why this house or this club exists right now."
Jenna grew up in an artsy, crafty family in Vermont, but interior design wasn't something anyone talked about there. What she did know was that when she was told to clean her room every Sunday, it came out in a totally different configuration, with a big reveal for her parents. It reset her whole week. She still does a version of it every weekend.
The tech side came from The Sims. She didn't care much about the little people, she just wanted to build their houses. Put those two things together and you get, pretty directly, a virtual house where designers come to learn.
She's also honest that she can't draw to save her life. She took AP Art, the only AP class she ever took, specifically to build a portfolio for design school. Her senior project was her own bedroom and a nightclub concept called Escapade. Flipping through her college work live, she noticed something she'd never clocked before: the color palettes and even some of the shapes are basically her brand today.
Jenna studied interior design in Albany, New York, from 2006 to 2010, and graduated straight into a major recession. The plan to go get a design job right away didn't exactly work out. Here's roughly how the next several years went:
Her biggest lesson from those years is exactly what not to do. She doesn't work weekends, doesn't love the phone, and hires great people for the things she's not built for, all because of what she saw in those jobs. Julia's advice for younger designers: put in the time, but eventually set your boundaries and do what's right for you.
eDesign Tribe filled a gap nobody else was talking about. At the time, a lot of the industry didn't consider eDesign real design, or thought of it as the cheap version. Jenna saw it as just a different way to communicate visually. After COVID, the industry finally caught up.
She never builds anything planning to sell it. But during a hard stretch of years growing her family, eDesign Tribe was where she put her energy. "When I can't control something in my personal life, I build, because that's the only thing that I can control." By the time her son arrived, she was ready for a break, and she sold the platform to Sarah and her husband at Mydoma Studio, a designer who had built software for designers and who is still one of her closest friends.
While teaching rendering for Mydoma, Jenna told Sarah that AI was going to be big and asked if she could buy the AI for Interior Designers domain. Sarah told her to do it. That was 2022.
Jenna started out figuring AI out privately, then started making fun of the interior design apps that were popping up, because honestly, most of them were terrible. In 2024 she shared something about AI every single day on Instagram. Her point was never that it was great yet. It was showing where it was going.
"I learn it, I absorb it, I understand it, and I break it, so that I can show you in real time all the different possibilities that could go wrong or how to do something right."
What actually gets her excited isn't image generation, which anyone on the internet can teach. It's consolidating subscriptions, like using what's already inside Google Workspace for e-signatures, scheduling, research, and images instead of paying for four other tools. And it's building custom apps for firms that make the technology feel invisible.
The hate side is real too. She doesn't use ChatGPT, for reasons tied to her own values, and she's clear that none of the big AI companies are in it for designers. So she builds tools as a shell she can plug different models into, and she wants designers to own their systems and keep backups, so that if something ever goes down, their business doesn't go down with it.
Jenna outgrew Teachable a long time ago and then outgrew Squarespace hosting. She tried app builders like Lovable and Base44, and they couldn't do what she needed, so she taught herself to code it, security and databases included. It isn't perfect, and she says so, but it's the best demonstration she can think of that she actually builds what she teaches, without developers.
The house idea had been in her head for years. The technology to build it finally showed up with Fable this summer. The menu is a floor plan, and on the logged-out site, scrolling a room turns a two-dimensional plan into a line-drawn elevation in her brand colors. Why click a link that says "classes" when you can just walk into the Classroom?
Members can now create their own little avatars too, a nod straight back to The Sims. And yes, there's a real-life version of this dream: a small physical education space someday. This is the online beta.
The AI for Interior Designers™ Certificate launched at the beginning of 2026 as a CEU-infused program, with select courses carrying IDCEC continuing education credit. Jenna has never taught the same class twice, because AI changes every day. One member told her she'd taken the same class three times and it was never the same.
And when it gets to be too much screen time? She's been building Lego villages on the weekends to disconnect. Not from the kits, of course. She's an interior designer. She designs her own.
Julia and Jenna also floated a future "history of tech" series, since Jenna keeps all her old phones and Game Boys. Stay tuned.
Jenna is the go-to educator for design professionals who want to use technology without losing their creative edge. A designer turned tech advocate, she is a nationally recognized speaker, podcast host, community builder, and custom app builder based in Charleston, SC.
Her mission: make AI accessible, practical, and ethical for every interior designer, from solopreneurs to established firms.
Julia brings a background in journalism, marketing, brand management, event planning, and writing to the design industry, where she has worked since 2022. She helps designers and brands tell their stories, whether that means blog strategy, social media, sponsor relationships, market planning, or whatever the client needs.
She's worked alongside Jenna for almost two years. Jenna calls her the Greg to her Dharma. If you love the history behind objects, check out The Lifestyle Historian.
The Loft is the upstairs live stage inside the AI Social Club, where live events and podcast recordings happen. This episode was the very first one recorded there.
Join live to watch, chat, and see screen shares as they happen. The edited episode publishes Saturday mornings to podcast platforms and YouTube.
Disclaimer: This blog was written using AI as a recap from the recording then edited by the author for accuracy and details.