Michelle Woolley Sauter
Interior Designer in Summerville, SC
Timeless | Balanced | Thoughtful
One Coast Design is an award-winning residential interior design studio in historic downtown Summerville, just minutes from Charleston.
We create one-of-a-kind interiors from the ground up. Full design schemes, furnishings, antiques, lighting, fabrics, flooring, wall coverings, and original framed art, all chosen to feel like no one else’s home but yours. As an award-winning artist as well as an interior designer, Michelle Woolley Sauter brings something rare to every project: bespoke, commissioned artwork created for the very rooms it lives in.
Meet the Designer
Michelle Woolley Sauter is the owner and principal designer of One Coast Design, an award-winning residential studio in historic downtown Summerville, just minutes from Charleston. With more than twenty-five years of experience, she designs full-home interiors, kitchens and baths, new construction, and historic restorations for clients throughout the Lowcountry…and for the many families relocating here who long for a home that feels rooted from the very first day.
Her work has earned a place in the 2026 Architectural Digest AD PRO Directory, eleven consecutive Best of Houzz awards, and features in Southern Living, Better Homes & Gardens, and Forbes Home.
“As a professional interior designer and artist, I step into a client’s world to see a space not only for its design, but for its lifestyle potential. Stepping back and taking the broad view lets me study the bones of a home and offer solutions that open up exciting possibilities for the people who live there.”
Long before the accolades, there was the art. Michelle comes from a long lineage of artists…her father an accomplished watercolorist, her grandmother a successful interior designer, and her French great-grandfather a gifted and celebrated painter. With those influences guiding her, she earned a BFA from Florida Atlantic University, where she sharpened the natural eye for space and color that still defines every project she touches. Creating large-scale commissioned artwork became a defining passion in those years, and it has never left her.
Her Background in the Arts
That passion carried her into the gallery world, where she managed and curated spectacular collections from Palm Beach to Miami, up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and across the Caribbean. It was here that her path quietly turned. Gallery clients and friends kept noticing Michelle’s eye for interior design…her instinct for marrying the perfect color palette to a room, for layering texture and style into spaces that simply felt right. Her own renovated historic home in South Florida became the proof of what she could do.
From there, the work grew in every direction at once. She painted commissioned canvases for collectors while creating exceptional spaces for high-end design clients around the world. She designed yacht interiors, bespoke furniture, and wallpaper lines. She created a collection of framed original artwork for Tommy Bahama International, a stunning installation for Swarovski, and hand-painted environments for Walt Disney World International.
Through all of it, interior design was never far from her heart. So when she and her husband moved north to the Carolinas, she made the decision to put it front and center…and she has never looked back.
“I absolutely love creating spaces that are as unique as my clients. We moved to Charleston and everything fell into place. We secured the most wonderful historic home in Summerville, SC, and did a complete abstract on the property to find every single family who had ever lived there. It was important to me to understand the lineage so a proper name could be bestowed upon her.”
The newly named Coburn Hutchinson House needed a great deal of work, but it was the perfect passion project to launch her design firm in the Charleston area…and she was off to the races!
Color is My First Language
Ask Michelle what sets her work apart, and the answer is color. Not color as decoration, but color as atmosphere…the quiet difference between a room that restores you and one that subtly drains you. It is a fluency built over twenty-five years and a lifetime as a painter: standing inside real rooms, mixing pigment by hand, watching the same green read one way at seven in the morning and another entirely at dusk.
That artist’s eye is what lets her see what most people miss. The undertone in your flooring is already in conversation with every wall in your home. The warm, rosy cast of Lowcountry light does something particular to a cool blue or a crisp white that no paint chip under store lighting will ever reveal. Reading those relationships, and designing with them rather than against them, is the heart of what she does.
It is also where her signature technique was born. Michelle coined Color Ebbing™ to describe a move she reaches for constantly: dialing a color back to a percentage of its full strength so it keeps its undertone and its soul but settles softly into a space, as though it had always been there. One small dial, with a big, atmospheric payoff…and exactly the kind of hard-won knowledge she loves to share.
In fact, she has distilled that lifetime of color intuition into something you can hold in your hands. The Color Confidence Guide teaches you to read your own light, spot an undertone, and build a palette that feels collected and intentional rather than accidental…the very framework her clients pay for, written for the home lover tackling a refresh, renovation, or new build on their own.
Bringing Both Worlds Together
Of all the accolades, Michelle’s greatest joy comes from working closely and one-on-one with her clients to create the homes of their dreams, weaving the cherished stories of their lives into rooms through treasured family heirlooms. Her clients come away feeling delighted, at ease, and deeply understood…experiencing the warmth of their personal history woven seamlessly into a fresh beginning. This is the heart of why so many families relocating to the Lowcountry seek her out. A move can feel like leaving your story behind, and Michelle’s gift is making certain it comes with you…so a brand-new house feels like home from the very first morning. She firmly believes a home should be your sanctuary, a mirror of the tapestry of your life, where every thread represents a memory. With deep-seated pride, she watches her clients settle into their perfect Lowcountry space…a home designed to capture their essence and honor their heritage.
When she’s not designing or dreaming up something new, Michelle and her engineer husband Brian set off on escapades with their mini golden-doodles, Charlie and Summer, the unofficial mascots of One Coast Design. Renowned for their mastery in restoring historic homes, the two have poured that love into the Coburn Hutchinson House, an exquisite, art-adorned 1859 home in historic downtown Summerville and one of only three Charleston Single houses in the town. Their residence reflects their distinctive style and stands as a testament to their commitment to preserving heritage. The name itself captures the essence of their journey…where the past intertwines with the present, just like the stories woven into the very fabric of their designs.
