Meet SJ Jacobs the founder of Arden Hill Design

Some people find their calling. Others live their way into it.

I grew up surrounded by makers — artists, builders, craftsmen, and horticulturists whose hands shaped the world around them. From them I learned not just how things are made, but how spaces feel. How a room can hold you or exhaust you. How light and texture and the presence of living things change everything about how a person moves through their day.

That education continued through a career that refused to stay in one lane. I crafted visual environments for Ralph Lauren, Macy's, and Southern Living. I founded and ran a retail shop that was equal parts florist, design center, and gallery — a platform for local and international artists and a place where people came to feel something. Eventually I turned my focus to what I love most: helping homeowners and organizations create spaces that are genuinely theirs — functional, beautiful, and alive with intention.

Nature has always been my teacher. Biophilic design — the practice of weaving the natural world into the built environment — is not a trend I adopted. It is how I have always understood spaces to work best. We are biological creatures, and we thrive when our environments reflect that.

...we thrive when our environments reflect that.

I've lived at Arden Hill, my own property, since 2014 — the place this business is named for. It's where that understanding of nature and space stopped being professional theory and became daily life.

In my 50s, two things happened at roughly the same time that changed everything.

I lost my beloved dog Beau on April 15th, and two months later on Father's Day, I lost my father Sandy — after years of walking beside him through Alzheimer's disease as his power of attorney, his advocate, and his daughter. In the Jewish tradition, significant loss is sometimes marked by a name change — an acknowledgment that the person who walks forward is not quite the same as the one who walked before. I became SJ, though most people who know me still call me Shelly.

Around the same time, I received a diagnosis I had spent a lifetime unknowingly living without: I am neurodivergent. The diagnosis came late, as it does for many people — particularly women — but it explained so much. The way I process sensory information. The environments where I thrive and the ones that quietly drain me. The deep, instinctive understanding I had always had of why some spaces feel right and others simply don't.

Simultaneously, I was pursuing my WELL AP accreditation through the International WELL Building Institute — a rigorous credential focused on how the built environment affects human health and wellbeing. The convergence was not coincidental. It was clarifying.

I was not just a designer who had learned about neurodivergent environments. I was someone who had lived inside one their entire life without the language to name it. Now I had both the lived experience and the professional framework. The work became something different — more purposeful, more personal, and more precise.

ARDEN HILL

The business is named after my property, Arden Hill, where I live and where much of this work has taken shape. Naming it after the place wasn't a branding decision — the work and the land were never really separate for me.

More of that story lives on Instagram [@sj_at_ardenhill].

Arden Hill Design operates across two interconnected areas of practice.

For over 20 years I have helped homeowners create spaces that are beautiful, functional, and deeply personal — managing projects across budgets of every size, drawing on an extensive network of vendors, craftsmen, artists, and builders. If you are looking for someone who delivers exceptional results without losing sight of what things actually cost, this is the work I have built my practice on.

For organizations serving neurodivergent populations, trauma-affected individuals, and other needs-based communities — I offer evidence-based environmental assessment and design. This work begins with a comprehensive Environmental Wellness Audit: a structured evaluation of your existing facility through the lens of WELL building principles, sensory design research, and biophilic design — resulting in a prioritized, budget-conscious roadmap for meaningful change.

These are not luxury renovations. They are strategic investments in the people your organization serves and the staff who show up for them every day.

Both lanes of this practice rest on the same foundation: the belief that how a space is designed is never neutral. It either supports the people inside it or it works against them. Good design chooses support — deliberately, measurably, and within the real constraints of real budgets.

Design that looks better, feels better, and works better.

Not for an idealized resident or an abstract user — but for actual human beings, with actual nervous systems, living actual lives. That has always been the work. It just took a lifetime of experience, significant loss, a late diagnosis, and a credential rooted in human wellbeing to say it plainly.