“Follow the path with a heart.”

This famous piece of advice originally came from a Yaqui Indian wise man named Don Juan. But when Hawai‘i-based interior designer Michelle Uchiyama embarked on her unconventional career in interior design, she didn’t need any guru’s guidance.

Heeding the inner promptings of her own heart, Uchiyama took an unconventional path, skipping traditional schooling in favor of a more direct – and far more intuitive -- route. Along the way, she quickly blossomed from gifted amateur to highly accomplished professional.

Uchiyama’s initial foray into design work came almost by accident. It was an experiment in home staging, intended to help a relative’s friend sell her house., When formal offers of interior design assignments followed, Uchiyama allowed herself to be led by her creative instincts and sensitivity to client needs. Her resulting style can best be described as eclectic, reflected in every aspect of her business -- from the projects she tackles and the customers she serves, right down to her company name, Eclectix Design.

A native of Sacramento, California, Uchiyama moved to Hawaii in the early ‘90s to be with her new husband. She took a job in hotel sales, working for the Hyatt Waikiki and later the Lodge at Koele and Manele Bay Hotel. Five years into this new career and looking for more personally rewarding work, Uchiyama encountered that first home staging opportunity. The house sold within a week in a down market, prompting the realtor to seek her help on another property.

As fate would have it, the seller of that second property was building a new house from the ground up and, impressed with Uchiyama’s taste, he asked if she would be the project’s interior designer. As she remembers it, “He showed me the blueprints and I literally didn’t know which end was up.”

She took the blueprints (and her reservations) to a general contractor she had befriended through her hotel position and asked for his advice. He encouraged her to pursue the opportunity and offered to help. As a first step, he set up a meeting with an experienced designer he knew.

She remembers that meeting as being quite disheartening, “I found him so intimidating that I just sat there and listened to him tell me all the things I needed to do to become a designer. He said, ‘You need to go back to school and take a four year course to get your degree in Interior Design.’ I just couldn’t see that path for me so I told him, ‘I’m going in a different direction. I’ve got to go with my heart.’”

It was a life-changing decision. She jumped into the design project and began learning on the job. She explains, “I was able to learn by being hands on -- literally thrown into this new field and into the mud. I worked closely with the architect and the homeowner and the results landed on the cover Honolulu magazine. From that point on doors just started to open.”

A few projects later, even as she was still getting the knack of things, another challenge presented itself. She recalls, “I was doing a client’s home in Makawa, on the island of Maui. The day we finished selecting his furniture package, he nudged me and said he had just purchased The Park Royal Hotel in Tahiti. Then he turned to me and said, ‘I want you to help me on the interior design and furniture package.’ I tried to persuade him out of it but he encouraged me saying, ‘Just think of the guest rooms as master bedrooms and master baths and the restaurant as one large dining room.’ He took me by the hand and said, ‘I will help you do this.’”

The renovation was a big success, Uchiyama still prefers working on residential projects with individuals she can really get to know. “We become very close, like family or friends, which allows me to stay true to my intuition and to design from the heart,” she says. “I design to create, and or enhance, based on the personality of the homeowner and their lifestyle.”

She adds, “Many of my clients have a little quirkiness to them and do not follow the normal design rules. They want a mix of so-called styles, but want it to blend and flow without being contrived. People say the thing they like about my style is you can’t really put a label on it. Each room has a different feel, but it all blends together.”

In explaining that approach, she says, “I tend to mix tropical, modern, Asian, and Balinese influences in many of my projects. For example, just when you think the vibe is tropical Hawaiian in one room, another room leads you into a retro/vintage Hawaiian style by way of artwork, but I will have furnished it with more modern furniture pieces that will then lead into another area that has an Asian influence or Balinese kick to it.”

One predominant element in her repertoire is reliably local: Hawaiian artwork.Uchiyama generously shares the credit for much of her success with artists from the Aloha State. “The Hawaiian culture, tradition and lifestyle complete my work and I am very biased when it comes to art,” she asserts.“I favor the local artists here in Hawaii. Whether it is carved Ohia woodwork or bronze work or oil on canvas, I love them all. My favorite local artists are John Koga, Mark Kadota, Steve Jensen, Snowden Hodges, Ed Lane, Shinko Arakai, Kelly Sueda, Furtado, Shirley Russel and Madge Tennant.”