ERIN SPARKS never intended to be a social media influencer. In fact, in fall 2020, when she began to decorate the Myers Park home she shares with her husband, Will, all she really wanted to do was pull together a design board for each room.
“I loved looking at other home decor Instagram accounts for inspiration,” she says. “I have a background in graphic design, so I started to create room schemes, and then I realized I could be building those on an account for other people to be inspired.”
She began the account humbly, never intending to create a following. She simply wanted to inspire others who may be decorating their own homes. As her feed began to grow, so did her followers: today she has nearly 34,000 followers on her Instagram account @byerinsparks. And her fans have inspired her as well; during her home’s renovation, which she and her husband oversaw themselves, she loved reading comments about the process. “I posted a lot of befores-and afters of our home and received such kind feedback,” she says. “People were so encouraging when I posted reels or stories of the progress. In general, the home design
community online is very positive, which, of course, makes it fun to share.”
Since completing the renovation, she and Will, who is a chairman and professor at Queens University, love to host casual cocktails and dinner parties with family and friends. A Charlotte native, Sparks often invites her parents and her brother—all of whom live within walking distance—over for family dinners. “Most of the time, Will and my dad are doing the cooking,” laughs Sparks. But when the couple have friends over, most of their entertaining takes place around the newly renovated kitchen, in the nearby breakfast nook, or in the adjacent study. There, Will serves up his signature vodka gimlets while Sparks plays hostess.
The Sparks will be welcoming their first baby in January, and the nursery is already underway—a testament to a home being a work in progress. “We’ve really made this home into something we love,” she says. “It definitely took some finessing to bring it from our unimpressive first walk-through to where it is now, but it just keeps getting better and better.”