ALPHARETTA, GA — Beverly Murphy, 55, president of Beverly Murphy Home, died Monday, Jan. 3 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, FL., of injuries sustained in a car accident.
Murphy spent many years in the carpet and rug business and was formerly president of Prince Street Carpet, a designer-oriented contract carpet country.
She left Prince Street to form Beverly Murphy Home, a multi-product lifestyle approach to home furnishings. She was featured on the Home Shopping Network, where she specialized in tours of rooms she designed with her Beverly Murphy Home product line
She also appeared on popular decorating programs such as "The Christopher Lowell Show" on the Discovery Channel. Her articles on design concepts appeared in such magazines as Good Housekeeping, House Beautiful and Better Homes & Gardens. Her book, Flawless Interior Decorating, was released by McGraw-Hill in November, 2004. At the time of her death, she was also planning her own TV show.
Born in Knoxville, TN, she settled in metropolitan Atlanta in the late 1970s. Before concentrating on interior design, she managed a jewelry store, designed and marketed products for the carpet industry, and ran her own company, Invision Carpet System.
She founded Beverly Murphy Home in 1998. Her goal was to make decorating fun and easy.
Murphy devised a color coordinating system where every product she designed -- from furniture and wallpaper to rugs and rooster lamps -- had a tag with one or more numbers, said her husband, David Murphy. The numbers told what went with what. For example, any item with the number 7 would coordinate with any other item with that number
In addition to her husband, survivors include her mother and stepfather Jean and Vince Pelligrino, and two sisters.