Authentic Home

Kathy Banak is an amazing designer. She did a friends house a few years back and it continues to blow me away whenever I visit. Definitely will use her on my next home!

Kathy Banak of Authentic Home was referred to me by my business partner who was thrilled with Kathy’s paint choices for her home, so I scheduled Kathy based on her recommendation when I was ready to choose paint. I, too, was thrilled with the awesome results! Since then we had Kathy select paint colors and carpet for our offices, and the result is truly stunning. We have received many compliments from client visitors on how nice our office looks, and even a request to give them the name of the carpet selection so that they could purchase the same carpet for their office.

I hired Kathy on more than one occasion to work on the drapes in 2 of my rooms. She went above and beyond our unique requests. She came back to us with amazing fabric solutions and we had them installed with no problems. They are the highlight of our favorite rooms. Thank you Kathy!

I’ve struggled for some time in writing this review as my experience with Ms. Banak and Authentic Home was such an overwhelming disappointment I could not put the experience to words.
I contacted Authentic Home about 4 years ago, after buying my first home in West Seattle. I wanted to use a local business to support the neighborhood and had not worked with a design firm before.
I was disappointed from the start. The designer did not seem to «get me» although I was willing to continue to work with her and make the best of it. It got worse from the start. I had to work around the designer’s schedule she did not work with mine. When the products began to arrive to my home, couch pillows were falling apart, fabrics were incorrect and silk curtains were made so poorly a third grader could have done the work.
I do know that the «designer» I worked with decided to leave the company during the process and one of the vendors was let go (at least that’s what Kathy told me)…it was a mess.
What was most disappointing was Kathy Banak’s response to my disappointment in the service.
I spent over 15K for a small room design and after 4 years it turns my stomach when I look at the draperies and recall the whole experience.
I am writing this after such a long time because I think it’s important that anyone looking for a design service take this information into consideration.
Although I would never purchase paint or anything else from Kathy Banak I cannot speak to the paint/​color consulting service Authentic Home provides.
I would highly recommend asking for references, reviewing work and understanding what vendors they work with if you plan to take any advice or order products outside of paint color from Authentic Home.

I love this paint store, they are the best of all worlds. I have always received great help in choosing colors and the right paint. They are not just a paint store but one that cares about the outcome of your project. I highly recommend them and have recommended them to all my friends.

Kathy truly went out of her way to help me as I wanted to paint all the wall on 3 interior floors of my new townhouse. I had heard about her paint line from my interior designer and knew I wanted a beautiful paint palette that would work well together, NOT have a million colors to choose from, and paint that was ZERO VOC! Authentic Home offered Exactly what I was looking for. Kathy herself helped me decide on which colors worked best together is all my different rooms and she offered to have her house painter come out to give a free estimate to have them do the work. Not only that, but Kathy showed up herself along with the painter and we fine tuned and adjusted which colors would be used in which rooms. I truly appreciated having her interior design expertise in such a personal manner. She’s too the point, efficient, and offers a Wonderful product! I highly recommend her paint line and hope you enjoy it as much as I do. There’s no more Beige paint on every wall and my place finally looks like Home!!!

My house is a bit overdue for an exterior paint job (the neighbors are starting to inquire) so I went to Authentic Home to get help in choosing colors. This is a specialty of theirs, and for a fee they’ll send a consultant to your home to help you choose colors for the body, trim, eaves, doors, etc. (They’ll help you with interior colors as well, of course.) I’m fairly clueless when it comes to this sort of thing, so paying an expert $ 350 is far preferable to ending up with a color disaster.
The woman who came out brought along large color sample sheets (8.5×11) rather than the tiny swatches you get in paint stores, so visualizing what the color will look like on a large area was easy to do. (Anyone who has ever based a paint choice on a single square-​inch sample knows how error-​prone that process can be.)
If, unlike me, you trust your own color judgment, just stop by their shop. They carry two lines of paint, Devine and Authentic Home COLOR, both of which come in 2 oz. sample sizes for every color they carry, so you can test it out on a good sized patch before committing to a quart or gallon.
The paint prices are a bit high — a good $ 5/​gallon over what you’d pay for the best quality Benjamin Moore paint — but the Devine brand goes on so thick that you’ll be tempted to stop after a single coat. And given the time and labor investment involved in painting, the cost of the paint itself seems negligible.