WL Design 25 Winners 2025: The Cat’s Meow

Photos by Janis Nicolay

No question: this has to be the hardest-working room in the house. Designers Trish Knight and Nicole Varga of Knight Varga were tasked with creating a classic catch-all room for a family of four—complete with two teenaged kids and, perhaps just as importantly for the room’s design, two cats. The clients enter this space from the garage, so it’s designed to be a perfect trifecta of mud room, laundry room and space to store the litterboxes for the four-legged family members.

Millwork in a cool and moody Homburg Gray from Sherwin-Williams provides ample storage for coats and boots—along with a bench for seating when slipping off the latter—and, in one corner, a playful cat-shaped cutout disguises an entry for the little guys to sneak in and out of their litterboxes. And, inside the closet, there’s another feline nod in the design: “Cat Study” wallpaper from Anthropologie lines the interior. Materials were chosen to be durable for a high-traffic space—shiplap behind the bench, for example, offers sturdy support—and to blend seamlessly into the design of the rest of the home. A purrfect mud room indeed.

Project: Purrfect mud room
Designer: Knight Varga Interiors
Collaborators: McQueen Construction
Location: Comox, B.C.

Meet all of the 2025 WL Design 25 winners here.