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By Cynthia Marone
It’s a small world after all, as the Disney World ride’s theme song tell us, and Kylie White is a big deal in it. The five-year Jamison resident’s dollhouse renovations have ignited imaginations across the internet, but when it comes to the pieces that fill each carefully curated design, Kylie likes to keep it real. “My dad and I both love realism, and we try to make things look as realistic as possible. That's really why we started this because I feel like a lot of the dollhouse furniture being sold online or in major retailers, it looks like dollhouse furniture,” Kylie, 34, said. “It kind of looks like a toy.”
“This” is modern miniature design studio WhiteSpace Miniatures that the artist, designer, miniaturist, user-generated content creator, digital growth strategist and photographer co-founded two years ago with her father, Ralph, a retired architectural scale model builder. What the two are doing with tiny room aesthetics—from wee wraparound kitchens to micro candlesticks—certainly isn’t child’s play. Neither was Kylie’s sophisticated take on dollhouse décor, which sparked the internet’s interest when she chronicled it in 2022, that initially came from a place of disappointment at what could have been to full-on grief at what was lost.
Two years prior, Kylie had moved into her first home and then the world promptly shut down due to COVID-19. She loved decorating every nook and cranny of her Philadelphia space, but it wasn’t meant to be. She left it nine months later for her current digs in Jamison, but her designing mind quickly filled every inch that her new rental would allow, so much so that she ran out of room. She took her ideas to a unique place, which unwittingly helped her heal but also connected with so many others online who felt just as lost.
Kylie’s playground was her childhood Playskool Victorian dollhouse, which had been sitting at her parents’ house for decades, patiently waiting for her. “One day I pulled the dollhouse out of the attic and thought, ‘What if I renovate this instead?’ It was in pretty rough shape, so dusty and discolored,” Kylie, a 2010 graduate of William Tennent High School in Warminster and a 2014 graduate of Temple University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in media studies and production said, “At the time, I thought I was just giving myself a creative project, but looking back, it was absolutely a coping mechanism. It allowed me to keep creating and designing during a chapter of life that felt really uncertain.”
Kylie had been a designing presence online since the 2018 launch of @kyliewhitespace, which showcased her first apartment in Montgomery County and its unpaintable white walls that ultimately became her creative canvas. She thought it might be fun to show a sophisticated reno of a beloved toy to her social media followers, which she said numbered just a few at the time.
As the process got under way, her TikTok and Instagram views swelled to the millions. Most recently, her followers numbered 82,000 on TikTok and 70,000 each on Facebook and Instagram—and the digits keep growing by the day. It may have been the crossroads of wistfulness, wishful thinking and curiosity that drove people to see what Kylie would do next with that first dollhouse, but it was her story and authenticity in telling it that hit different. “So many people commented saying they had that same Playskool dollhouse growing up, which is why I think it went viral. In many ways, it was like watching the house grow up with all of us,” said Kylie, who shares her home with Sage, a black Maine Coon that is, as Kylie puts it, her “soul cat.” “I also think people connected with the story behind it. It's not really about dollhouses. It's about creativity, reinvention and finding a way to keep building your dream life, even when life doesn't go according to plan.”
It’s not the first time Kylie has connected with people by getting real. She has applied the same genuine take to her work with KylieWhiteSpace, which helps brands and audiences connect through creative storytelling, digital strategy and design. She has collaborated with Newtown cosmetics company Doll 10 Beauty, online marketplace Temu, Saatva mattresses, specialized lighting brand Modern Lantern and bedding retailer Linens & Hutch. When it comes to WhiteSpace Miniatures, which was launched after Kylie found it nearly impossible to find modern, design-forward dollhouse furniture, she is the visionary, while Ralph brings the pieces to real life for their global customer base.
“My dad has been building architectural models for over 40 years, so miniatures were always part of my childhood. I loved going to his workshop as a kid and coming home with handfuls of miniatures and building little room boxes. Working together now has been really special because we've come full circle,” Kylie, who moved with her family from Philadelphia to Southampton when she was 11, said. “When he was working in the industry, he was cutting everything by hand with an X-Acto knife and, like, blueprints. It was a different world. Now the tables have completely turned, and we are building this business together using laser cutters and 3D printers. We've really been bouncing ideas back and forth and co-collaborating in a way we never thought we would.”
Kylie finds inspiration for her designs from all over—Pinterest, HGTV, her travels, trends, her imagination, the gut feeling she gets about a space, homes she has seen — and creates a vision board that puts realism above all else. “They’re strictly design projects for me. For me, they're definitely not toys,” Kylie, whose hobbies include hiking and kayaking in local spots like Peace Valley Park in New Britain, Tyler State Park in Newtown and Lake Nockamixon in Nockamixon State Park in Quakertown, but also throughout the National Park System with visits to Zion, Bryce Canyon, Grand Teton and North Cascades, said. “They're miniature model homes for me, and I'm just using them as if I were to live here what would I do to this space.”
Kylie rarely needs to look far for dollhouses in need of rehab. They seem to always be in her orbit, waiting to be found — like her PlaySkool rediscovery — but some pieces make their way to her like she has some sort of gravitational pull. “My dad and I found the second one in the attic of his workshop, and we kind of just looked at each other like, ‘I think we have to do another one. I think this is fate,’” Kylie said, adding, from start to finish, each renovation takes months. “I found two or three in the community dumpster of my apartment complex. It was another one of those fated moments where I was just in the kitchen, I looked out the window and there was a dollhouse staring me in the face.”
It’s only a matter of time before Kylie’s dream home dollhouse becomes her real house. In the meantime, she has big plans for her audience, customers and followers by moving into custom-created mini-dream homes, educational content, digital resources and starter kits, whether those seeking guidance are newbies or hobbyists with history. “One of my favorite things is showing people that creativity doesn't have to fit into a box. Whether it’s a dollhouse, a piece of furniture, a DIY project or a future home, it's all part of the same creative journey,” Kylie White said. “I have so many plans for expansion for this little business, but I'm really excited to see where it takes me. I never anticipated this would be my life. It was like a happy accident the way it kind of fell into place. When it comes to the next couple years, I'm kind of just keeping an open mind and wherever it takes me, I'll be eager to go.”
For more information about Kylie White, visit kyliewhitespace.com. For more information about WhiteSpace Miniatures, visit etsy.com/shop/WhiteSpaceMiniatures.
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Cynthia Marone is a freelance writer who lives in Lower Bucks County.