Thirty Under 30: Kingsley Catalucci, AKBD

Meet Kingsley Catalucci, AKBD, one of the outstanding young professionals of NKBA’s Thirty Under 30 Class of 2021, in this exclusive series.

By Donna Heiderstadt

Kingsley Catalucci, AKBD

RI Kitchen & Bath Design+Build

Northern New England Chapter

“What do you like to do?” When asked that simple question by her high school guidance counselor, Kingsley Catalucci didn’t hesitate to answer. “I like to rearrange my room a lot,” she replied, acknowledging now that her fervor for redecorating at all hours of the night would drive her parents crazy. But it also resulted in her choosing a career that she absolutely loves. Kingsley graduated in 2014 with a B.S. in Interior Design from Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology and worked in commercial design and flooring sales in the city before joining RIKB Design Build in 2018 as a Design Assistant, being promoted to Design Consultant just five months later, and generating $1,050,000 in sales in the first nine months after that.

“I love combining soft textures and patterns, like a rich oriental rug, with harder edges, like concrete countertops.”

Kingsley describes herself as “reliable,” says her favorite part of her job is the teamwork and “comic relief” of her RIKB co-workers, and professes to love kitchen and bath design because it involves spaces that people “work/live/host/prep” in every day. Her favorite project was a custom kitchen that required an addition to accommodate an interior brick oven and featured a rich cabinet color, wood accents and distressed brick.

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As for her own home, this AKBD-certified designer, who typically dresses entirely in black, prefers to be surrounded by color — a style she describes as edgy/eclectic. “I love combining soft textures and patterns, like a rich oriental rug, with harder edges, like concrete countertops,” she says. “My dream kitchen would incorporate a combination of mixed metals, natural stone and/or concrete countertops, black cabinets and wide plank pine wood flooring.” Her other passions are travel (Italy is a favorite spot, but she says “I’ll go anywhere once!”), plants (“my house is a bit of a jungle”) and working as a barre/Pilates instructor on the side. And when the time is right, this “total dog lover” plans to adopt a pup of her own.