Western Living Design Icon 2025: Paul Lavoie

Designer Paul Lavoie  was just a few years out of design school when he first appeared in Western Living: he won our legendary “Search for Style” contest for his own home back  in 1991. “At that age I had gone to every flea market and every second-hand store,” he says. “I didn’t have any money, but my house was still going to be amazing—there was nothing really going to stop me.”

It’s fair to say that nothing did. Lavoie’s work has appeared in the pages of this magazine for over four decades now—and here he is once more, being deservedly celebrated as a 2025 Western Living Design Icon.

Born and raised in Calgary, Lavoie spent his teenage years helping his dad build houses all over the city. “He taught me a lot about being a trade,” he says. “How to shingle a house, wire a house, frame a house.”

He was taking a few electives at Mount Royal University when he met folks in the interior design program. “And I thought, I can do this,” he says. A summer internship at Cridland and Associates (led by Douglas Cridland, our 2024 Design Icon) in 1986 kickstarted his career. “What was amazing about Paul,” says Cridland, “is that he was a good designer but he was a great decorator, too. He was charming, a guy in the industry, which was unusual—and he could close a deal. He was pretty much perfect.”

Lavoie would spend 12 years with Cridland before creating his own firm in 1998, albeit with a suitable amount of nervous anticipation. “I bought a rent-to-own computer at the Brick,” he says with a laugh. “I wasn’t very confident. But from the moment I started I had three to eight clients a day. I’ve been very lucky.”

Nearly twenty-eight years later, that one-man show has grown into a team of 11 with over 100 projects a month, designing spaces that range from restaurants (Luca and Fleetwood are more recent projects) to personal yachts and private planes. But always, residential design is at the heart of his business. In recent years in Western Living, we’ve spotlighted a mere fraction of his boldly colourful spaces, like a house wildly inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and his own home in Calgary’s Bel-Aire neighbourhood (seen below), the latter a California-meets-Calgary eclectic melding of mid-century and antique pieces. (“I like a mix—I like something that makes you scratch your head and think, why?” he says.)

In his most memorable designs, you’ll see bold statements like a cobalt-blue desk or sectional in the living room, or teal velvet Platner chairs in the salon. But you’ll always find quieter moments: neutral wall coverings that showcase the homeowners’ impressive art collection, for example, as seen in a Mount Royal project. “There’s nothing better than a room that’s been executed with colour that’s thoughtful, and the colour itself provides the texture in the room,” he told us back in 2022. “It’s bold, but not overwhelming.”

Ultimately, Lavoie is a gifted designer whose goal, he says, is to help his clients live their best life. “As a designer, if you can do more than just give somebody the right sofa, but teach them how to live in their house in a different way—that’s the most incredible thing.”

Join us as we celebrate Paul Lavoie at our Western Living Designers of the Year Awards: purchase tickets now!