Designing Homes in Brentwood and Franklin, Tennessee
Brentwood and Franklin aren't Nashville.
The pace is different. The architecture is different. The scale of what people are building and renovating is different. Williamson County has become one of the most active markets for custom home construction in the entire Southeast, and the clients driving that growth tend to know exactly what they want: a home that's thoughtfully designed, built to last, and personal to them — not a spec house dressed up with a few upgrades.
That's where Gatehouse Studio comes in.
Kim Sankey recently relocated to the Brentwood area after more than twenty years designing homes across Southern California — coastal Orange County, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Malibu. She started Gatehouse Studio in 2004, and over two decades she built a practice around a particular kind of client: one who cares deeply about how their home looks and feels, is investing significantly in getting it right, and wants to work directly with the person making the decisions.
That practice is now available to homeowners and builders in Brentwood, Franklin, and throughout Williamson County.
What makes Williamson County different — and why it matters for design
The homes being built in Brentwood and Franklin today are genuinely ambitious. Custom builds in the $1.5M–$5M range are common in neighborhoods like Governors Club, Annandale, and Witherspoon. Renovations of older Brentwood estates can be equally complex — updating architecture and systems while preserving the scale and character that made the home worth keeping.
Designing for that context requires more than a good eye. It requires experience managing the full scope of a high-investment project: coordinating with architects and builders from the early stages, making material decisions that hold up to scrutiny at the finish level, and knowing which choices are permanent and which ones aren't.
Kim brings that experience from two decades of working at the high end of one of the country's most demanding design markets. The clients in coastal California are exacting. The price points are high. The finishes are inspected closely. That background doesn't disappear when you move to Tennessee — it's exactly the kind of preparation that makes Williamson County custom work feel manageable rather than overwhelming.
Full-service design for new construction
If you're building a custom home in Brentwood or Franklin, the time to bring in a designer is earlier than most people think — ideally at the point when selections are still being made rather than after the framing is up.
Here's why: the decisions that determine how a finished home looks and feels — flooring materials, tile profiles, cabinetry design, hardware, paint, lighting placement — are made during construction. If those decisions are delegated to a builder's preferred vendors and made quickly, the results reflect that. If they're made deliberately, with a designer who's coordinating across all the rooms at once, the home comes together the way it was supposed to.
Gatehouse Studio works directly with builders on new construction projects throughout Williamson County. The process involves:
Early-stage coordination — getting involved before selections are due, so decisions are made with the full picture in mind rather than room by room under deadline pressure.
Finish and material selection — flooring, tile, countertops, cabinetry, hardware, paint. Every surface that defines the finished home.
Furniture and interior specification — space planning, furniture selection, lighting, window treatments, and all the elements that make a house feel like a home once construction is done.
Installation and final styling — Kim is on-site for installation. The final layer of a well-designed home — placement, proportion, how things relate to each other in actual light — is where design lives. It can't be done remotely.
Renovations in Franklin and Brentwood
Not every project is a new build. Brentwood has a significant stock of older homes — 1980s and 1990s construction that's structurally solid and beautifully situated, but in need of updating. Franklin's older neighborhoods have their own character worth preserving.
Renovating these homes well means making decisions that respect what the house already is. Gut-and-replace isn't always the answer. Sometimes the right move is knowing which original details to keep and which ones were never worth keeping in the first place.
Kim has navigated that balance across decades of renovation work in California — updating homes that had value worth preserving while making them functional and beautiful for the people living in them now. That sensibility translates directly to Williamson County renovation work.
Working with Gatehouse Studio
Gatehouse Studio is a boutique practice. Kim is involved in every project personally — from the first consultation through the final installation. There's no junior designer handling your project while someone else's name is on the door.
That matters more than it might sound. Interior design at this level involves hundreds of decisions made over the course of months. The quality of those decisions depends on accumulated knowledge, developed relationships with vendors, and the kind of judgment that only comes from doing this work for a long time. Kim has all of that. And because Gatehouse Studio takes a limited number of projects at a time, you actually get her attention.
She's currently taking new clients for projects in Brentwood, Franklin, Nashville, Belle Meade, and surrounding areas.
Ready to talk about your home?
If you're planning a custom build or renovation in Brentwood or Franklin and want to talk through what the design process looks like, reach out. Kim personally reviews every inquiry and is happy to have a real conversation about your project before anything else.