A wall is not just a wall in Stacy DeMott’s world. A wall is a medium for an immersive experience. Aesthetes seek out the 35-year-old for her ability to create charming, character-filled murals, whether a vibrant Lilly Pulitzer-inspired floral nursery, a foyer painted in gold-veined faux marble or a portico with mangroves snaking up columns.
Stacy’s love for art developed early. As a child, her tiny fingers regularly curled around a crayon, colored pencil or paintbrush, leading her to pursue an undergraduate degree in fine arts at the University of South Florida. Upon graduation, she founded DeMott Design to focus on commissions while working with her mom at the family’s shutter company. In 2021, she purchased her first home and realized she could translate her love of painting to her blank walls. “I could create an entire space you could walk into. It was like an installation you were experiencing all around you,” she says. “I became completely obsessed with it.”
Her newfound excitement to create on a loftier scale exploded onto her guest bathroom wall, with deep shades of jungle green accentuated by gold banana leaves. She proudly posted a photo of her botanical pattern on social media and awoke to a mass of business inquiries the next day.
Her DeMott Design firm specializes in handpainted murals, with Stacy’s Bonita Springs home doubling as a fanciful showroom. Surfaces clad in her designs range from a serene plant-printed wall in her primary bedroom to a floral outdoor rug for her lanai. Though the magic happens in her garage. The space overflows with a kaleidoscope of paints, primed to incite inspiration with each brushstroke. It’s also where Stacy often first meets with clients, tying an apron around their waist as they work together on sample boards, assembling colors and designs. “I’m good at communicating, and I’m good at listening,” she says. “A lot of my clients don’t know how to express what they want, so part of my job is to jump in and be a translator.” People often bring several ideas and samples, which Stacy combines into bespoke paintings.
Unlike wallpapers, which have set designs and come in minuscule sample sizes that make envisioning the final room a challenge, Stacy’s murals can be customized throughout the process. Once the sample board is approved and the installation begins, they can lighten or darken a design or add and delete elements as they go along.
During the conception process, Stacy visits the clients’ homes to familiarize herself with the design, hardware and furniture. “We talk about the mood they want to set, how they want to feel when they step into the space and what effect they are going for. Do they want their friends to come over and say ‘Wow?’ Or, do they want something subtle to calm them?” she muses. She may paint hibiscus flowers in a living room, a modern geometric print in a bathroom, or an optical illusion meant to look like stone. But, children’s rooms are her favorite spaces. “[I like to] make something inspiring and fun that’s going to light up that kid’s face,” Stacy says. She loves to be more playful with a whimsical underwater scene of smiley sea turtles or a landscape of colorful trees, peacocks and cheetahs.
Regardless of age, no two homes will ever have the same wall, and that exclusivity has expanded her reach from Florida to New York. People find her on social media or through word of mouth, and while she mainly does residences, she also enjoys transforming the occasional commercial space, like the floral-and-glitter walls she painted for Bonita Springs’ Top Knot Hair Studio or the mangrove mural she created at 239 Flies. “I’m so grateful I get to use my hands to paint something for somebody,” she says. “Seeing their face when they walk into the room and see their space, that’s the best part of the job.”