I’m Heather Shields, and I learned materials with my own hands.
I’m the interior and exterior designer for Ceci Bates Custom Homes on Lake Texoma. I trained as an artist, and I spent years on job sites getting my hands dirty — actually applying the finishes — long before I was the one choosing them.
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I grew up making things
I grew up in Paris, Texas, in a family of artists rather than athletes. My dad is an artist and a musician, and from the time I was little we were always drawing, painting, and making something together — he’d make t-shirts for teams and let me help, and we made big hand-painted signs for every birthday and event. I was the kid who couldn’t keep her hands off the textiles, the colors, the textures. That never really went away.
The other thing my family gave me was a love of people. My grandfather would talk to anybody — he’d strike up a conversation with a stranger at a gas station like they were an old friend — and I grew up believing there’s never a reason not to make someone smile. A small kindness can turn a whole day around. I still believe that, and it’s a big part of how I work.
Color got its hooks in me
I studied fine arts at Cal Poly and took a little of everything — drawing, printmaking, design, screen printing. Printmaking is where color got its hooks in me: you build the exact color you want by layering one pigment over another, and once you start seeing color that way, you can’t un-see it. That led me into color theory, and to the thing I tell clients all the time — there’s no such thing as one white. There are fifty, and the right one comes down to its undertone.
I took a single glass-blowing class, too, though people sometimes think it was my whole focus. It taught me how light and color move across a surface — something I think about with every tile and every slab. And my mentor there, George Gersitch, taught me the hardest lesson of all: when you feel strongly about a choice, you trust it and commit. I’m still working on that one, but it stuck.
There’s no such thing as one white. There are fifty.
Getting my hands dirty
Most designers come to this work through the front door. I came in through the job site. After college I moved to Austin and went to work for a finishing company, doing the work with my own two hands — old-world and Venetian plaster, faux finishes, textural walls, staining cabinets, painting murals. I was inside some of the city’s most high-profile interiors, not as the designer but as the person actually applying the finish. That’s where I learned how materials really behave — how a stain’s viscosity changes everything, how oak can shift pinker on you depending on the tree.
Eventually a few of us broke off and started our own company. We painted a mural in the grand ballroom of the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas and painted buildings across the SMU campus. Running your own shop teaches you fast: you never really clock out, and you learn to talk to the trades as one of them, because you’ve stood on that side of the work. When my husband and I moved up to Sherman, I took a job at a paint store — and people started hiring me right off the floor to help with their whole houses. I painted murals around town, the schools, my church, and little by little, choosing the colors became the whole job.
How I landed at Ceci Bates
Scott Bates walked into that paint store one day — I was probably helping him with tile or paint — and offered me a job more or less on the spot. He snagged me, and I haven’t looked back since. That was 2020, so it’s been about six years now, and it felt natural from the very first client, like sitting down with someone to help them pick out their home.
have a reason behind them, and Scott and the whole Ceci Bates crew who build it all. I think of my part as the finishing details on Roberth’s architecture: the colors, the materials, and the textures that complete what he’s drawn. The company genuinely feels like family — we look out for each other, and for the people we build for, long after the keys change hands.
What I love most is that I don’t do any of it alone. I work inside a tight team — Roberth Jordan, our architect, whose drawings always
The way I think about a home
After enough homes, I realized I could see the finished room before any of it was installed — I can look at a floor plan and a few selections and picture the whole space, then work backward to it. It’s the closest thing I have to a superpower, and it’s how I keep a home cohesive instead of a pile of pretty things that don’t talk to each other. I almost always start with the countertop. To me a slab is a piece of jewelry — all that movement and veining — and once we find the one you love, everything else has something to flow around.
The home is always yours, not mine. I’ll give you my honest opinion, backed by a lot of homes, but I’m never going to tell you what to do — if something gives me pause, I’ll just offer a different idea. And the part I love most isn’t the finishes at all. It’s the people. The relationships I build on these projects turn into real friendships, and the moment you walk your finished home and the stress finally lifts — that’s what I’m in this for.
Left to my own devices
For the record, my own style is a little wild. Left to my own devices, I go eclectic and colorful, with a lot of mid-century and vintage — pretty much the opposite of what most of my clients want. And that’s exactly why I love this work. I get to climb into someone else’s head, learn how
they want to live, and help them build something that’s completely theirs. Getting it right for you will always mean more to me than doing what I’d do for myself.
Let’s talk about
your home
If you’re planning a custom home on Lake Texoma, I’d love to hear what you have in mind. Whether you know exactly what you want or you’re starting from a blank page, there’s no pressure — just a conversation about your home, and how I can help you get it right.
Tell me about your vision