Seattle Design 100+
Jean Jongeward
A Northwest design icon, Jongeward's influence can still be felt

It’s easy to take interior designer Jean Jongeward’s trademark style for granted today: a muted color palette, materials reflective of the outside environment, contemporary lines and signature art—all in clean, open spaces. She helped introduce this now ubiquitous approach in a time when colorful, decorative and traditional interiors dominated. Her style was “a breath of fresh air,” says interior designer and longtime admirer Steven Hensel. “She really set the tone of Northwest interiors and a lot of designers followed her lead,” agrees Seattle city editor for Metropolitan Home Linda Humphrey.

Though Jongeward died in 2000, today’s designers are still in awe of her. An intelligent and dynamic woman with a great sense of humor, she was tough and demanding about her work.

Remarkably, she had little formal design training. Born in 1917, Jongeward grew up in Minnesota and North Dakota and studied journalism at the University of South Dakota. She moved to Seattle during World War II and worked for Frederick & Nelson as a “home planner” in their interior design department. Architect and fellow Northwest design icon Roland Terry hired her seven years later. 

She later opened her own firm below architect Ralph Anderson’s office on South Jackson Street. Architecture in turn informed much of her work. She emphasized colors and materials inspired by stone, pewter, steel, driftwood and oyster shells. “I had never seen anything like that,” says interior designer Terry Hunziker, who worked for her for 13 years. “Jean just had a really great eye for everything.”