Curated, Created: An Inside Look into Curated Pawleys and Susan Teachey, Interior Designer and Owner

by Ashley Daniels

When it comes to curating items, content, or collections, curating in the design world means carefully selecting, organizing, and presenting anything and everything in a space. And that’s exactly the foundation of interior designer Susan Teachey and her lifestyle and décor store, Curated Pawleys, in Pawleys Island.

“I wanted something that fit what I was going after, and curated means thoughtfully put together,” she says. “I am very, very thoughtful about what goes in the shop. I try to have items that are not in other places, and oftentimes, I’ll find things as I’m looking for furniture or other elements through interior design. I have a lot of resources where I get my accessories, so it’s not something that you would see as you’re shopping in any store.”

Teachey originally graduated from North Carolina State University with a degree in sociology, but she always had a thing for interior design, so she went back to school for a few years to earn a degree in the field. She also honed her skills by working for a furniture company and then a design studio that focused on commercial and residential design in Wilmington, North Carolina, for the next six years.

But Teachey took a break from design until 2021. In the meantime, she raised two daughters and worked as a social media and marketing content creator for a real estate company.

“I have always loved homes, and my husband and I have moved seven times,” she says, laughing. “I fell in love with a house that we moved into in Anniston, Alabama, where we moved for my husband’s job. I started back designing for other people and launched Susan Teachey Design. … When I wasn’t designing for other people, I was redesigning our homes and then we’d sell and move, so I was very familiar with real estate staging and updating homes, but we never flipped a home. That was never our goal, but we just always did well with selling a house.”

In June 2024, Teachey and her husband moved from Alabama to Pawleys Island to be closer to her parents, who own a home in Litchfield Beach, a special place to her that has always been like her second home. In fact, one of her first projects when she was fresh out of design school was renovating her parents’ home 20 years ago; she’s in the middle of updating and refreshing that same home now for a full-circle moment.

Teachey says her modern coastal design style is a perfect fit for the Pawleys Island area, but opening her own business happened out of the blue, albeit quickly, in November 2024.

“It was not on my radar right away, but I had the opportunity to take over a business that was in this spot, and I absolutely love the location,” she says. “We are on the outer part of our building, so I have a lot of beautiful natural light that flows in. From a design perspective, I fell in love with this space, and I’ve always wanted to have a store and thought that I could put the design studio and shop combined. … Over the past year, each month, it’s getting busier and busier, which is really exciting.”

Curated Pawleys is not your typical design shop destination. Teachey intentionally creates visual moments throughout the store’s comfy layout for customers to picture how they can transform them into their own spaces instead of generic merchandising. Expect to see rugs, décor elements, gifts, bedding, pillows, artwork, fabrics, wallpaper, and more for sale.

“For the interior design studio at Curated Pawleys, I have resources that I can find a lot of custom furniture for the right size and fit for colors,” she says. “And I love color.”

Teachey breaks down her design services into a trio of Design Road Maps: The Coastal Edit for a single room/space that needs professional direction; The Room Refresh, a more detailed, one-room redesign that extends into layout, materials, furnishings, and investment before purchasing begins; or the Signature Road Map, a more comprehensive service that covers large-scale layouts for materials, cabinetry, lighting, furnishings and overall investment before construction begins.

“What I’ve learned with working with people is that no two projects are the same,” she says. “My goal is to fit the basic needs up to a full-service need. The reason I have the roadmaps is that a lot of folks have grand plans with their homes, but not everybody can get it all done at one time.”

Teachey says her design projects encompass everything from new builds to virtual design for out-of-state clients to existing renovations – especially dated bathrooms from the surge of development in the early 2000s common in the area. She was actually one of 40 people just invited to go on an exclusive trip alongside kitchen and bath designers to network with them.

Curated Pawleys is the site for a monthly Pawleys Island women’s business owner networking “Lunch Bunch” event and hosts a variety of other events. For more info and updates, visit Susanteacheydesign.com.