DESIGNER PACITA WILSON IS DRIVEN BY HER PASSIONS—INTERIOR DESIGN, cooking and entertaining. She has turned her creative pursuits into a successful brand that spreads joy as she serves both homeowners and design professionals through Pineapple Park Home, the 15,000-square-foot retail home décor showroom in Woodstock, Georgia, that she opened in 2010. It shares space with her successful full-service interior design studio, Pineapple Park.
Wilson discovered her love of design many years ago when she and her husband built a custom home in Florida. “I started on a wing and a prayer,” she says about her design career. “I had just sold my hair salon and took on the management of the entire construction project of our new home, including working with the architect and hiring the contractors.” When the home was finished, she began hosting dinner parties for her husband’s clients, several of whom were quick to notice her home’s finishes and furnishings. It was from one of those parties that she procured an initial opportunity, when a physician’s wife asked who designed her home and then hired her on the spot. “Redesigning her entire home was my first project,” says Wilson. “Within six months, I had opened a design studio.”
She grew the business quickly but eventually sold it when she relocated to Georgia to launch Pineapple Park Home. It was a chance to build a design brand that spoke directly to her passions and her childhood influences, when her parents lit the design spark early. “My father was a builder, so I was always around new construction,” Wilson says. “I watched the entire process from blueprint to completion and spent my days riding around in his truck checking on projects. We moved a lot, and my mom let me design my own spaces. When they sold homes, they always sold them fully furnished. That was where the idea of turnkey design began for me.”
While Pineapple Park provides turnkey design services—down to stocking the pots and pans in a home before the final reveal—Wilson takes this full-service idea a step further at the Pineapple Park Home showroom. She provides everything homeowners need to design their interiors, including furniture, lighting, rugs, antiques, vintage finds, accessories and a design center that houses more than a thousand fabric and wallcovering books full of samples. “We have $1.5 million in inventory on the floor at any one time,” she explains. “I order four out of five days of the week, so there is always something new to see.”
Pineapple Park Home carries products from high-end suppliers selling new and vintage furniture and furnishings at High Point, Atlanta, Dallas, New York and Los Angeles markets. Wilson enjoys making these furnishings, which are sold exclusively to the trade, available to all of her shoppers.
The ever-changing showroom floor sells furnishings on a cash-and-carry basis. “People love the instant gratification of taking home décor that they don’t have to order and wait for,” she says. “And I love watching them cherry-pick their special finds.”
For those who want a more comprehensive design experience, Wilson and her staff help homeowners select furnishings, order window treatments, arrange for furniture to be custom-upholstered and handle the entire in-home installation process.
The showroom offers an abundance of inspiration. Wilson and her team thoughtfully arrange furnishings and accessories into curated vignettes that make the shopping experience effortless. Though Wilson has a particular affinity for antiques and always keeps a selection on hand, her offerings also encompass new pieces in a range of design styles. For Wilson, the art lies in bringing those elements together. “It’s important to mix styles when designing,” she says. “Doing so creates a story so the room doesn’t fall flat. Everything shouldn’t be the same style.”
Pineapple Park Home carries beloved specialty items, such as wildlife mounts, vintage baskets, new vintage-look benches and one-of-a-kind antique chairs—all of which the shop always has in stock. “I include at least one antique chair in every room I design,” Wilson says. “It’s something you can have that no one else will be able to replicate. I find that everyone can afford a beautiful antique chair no matter their budget.”
It’s pure pleasure and entertainment to browse the showroom with so many design details—including 200 hanging chandeliers and pendants at any one time and a large inventory of vintage rugs and runners.
To fulfill her passion for cooking and entertaining, Wilson has hosted charcuterie classes in the past, teaching attendees how to design food boards to bring color (and deliciousness) to a special event. She carries everything needed to create a beautifully appointed kitchen, from elegant dinnerware and flatware to an assortment of stemware for creating distinctive tablescapes.
Fall begins a busy season at Pineapple Park Home. This time of the year, the showroom staff brings in arrangements of pumpkins and foliage for those who need to add a seasonal boost to their home décor. A special focus on holiday decorating follows closely on its heels. It’s the time of year that patrons anticipate annually. “We close the showroom for three days and completely redecorate it for Christmas,” Wilson explains. “Anything and everything that homeowners and designers need for holiday decorating is here—from bedding and dinnerware to Christmas trees and accessories. The day we open is our biggest sales day of the year; people line up three hours before we open the first day of the holiday displays.”
Many homeowners who shop at Pineapple Park Home are drawn to Wilson’s design aesthetic and ultimately turn to her to design or redesign their entire home. Professional interior designers appreciate Pineapple Park Home’s wide product selection. It’s a place where they also can order custom pieces or pick up last-minute accessories to finish a home. Because of multiple requests from those designers, Wilson is launching a membership-based trade program, Pineapple Park Partners, where designers can enjoy a discount on everything in the showroom. By launching the trade program, Wilson solves a current pain point for the industry: receiving, warehousing and delivery. Shipping headaches—including slow deliveries and damaged goods—are causing many designers to look for alternative ways to receive goods from reliable sources. Established showrooms, such as Pineapple Park Home, have an advantage because they are already set up to handle logistics. In this case, Wilson is extending her network and expertise to other designers. “We have the buying power in place and can order at the lowest price points,” she says. “We are already receiving and warehousing products and can easily receive and deliver products ordered by other designers for their own projects. This makes Pineapple Park Home a one-stop shop for the trade community.”
Wilson also encourages homeowners to take advantage of her studio’s turnkey services. “We can install an entire home in one day,” she explains. “While we’ll get the painting or wallpapering done ahead of our arrival, we install all of the furniture, rugs, lighting, window treatments and accessories in a single day, anywhere in the United States. This timeline removes the need for long waiting periods and eases the design process for a large number of our clients.”
Wilson and her design team dedicate themselves to creating an experience defined by thoughtful guidance, personalized attention and inspiration. Whether selecting pieces from the showroom or reimagining an entire home, clients benefit from their discerning eye and commitment to making every space feel distinctly bespoke. As one reviewer puts it, “Pineapple Park has helped make my house a home!” *
Dana W. Todd is a professional writer specializing in interior design, real estate, luxury homebuilding, landscape design, architecture and fine art.
