Wakefield Home

On South 8th Street in downtown Opelika, Wakefield Home describes itself as an interiors and lifestyle boutique, and the description fits: the small storefront blends home furnishings with seasonal clothing, jewelry and handcrafted accessories in a way that makes a single visit hard to categorize as either a home store or a clothing shop. The business is owned by Wake and Joan Asbury, whose family has been part of downtown Opelika’s commercial life since 1946, when it first took over what became Alabama Office Supply Co. in the same building on South 8th Street. Wakefield Home represents a later evolution of that long family presence, a switch from office supplies to interiors and lifestyle goods, and it has operated in its current form for more than ten years, which makes the Asburys one of the longer continuous retail presences on the block even as the merchandise around them has changed completely.

The furniture side of the store includes designer pieces such as Gabby Home upholstery and case goods, arranged in room-like groupings rather than a straight showroom layout, which lets shoppers see how a chair or a chandelier might actually work in a space rather than imagining it in isolation. Design assistance is part of the offering as well, available by appointment for customers who want help pulling a room together beyond what they can piece together from the sales floor alone, with sourcing relationships that reach into national furniture markets like High Point, which lets the shop bring in pieces that would otherwise be hard to find outside a major metro design district. That kind of sourcing access is a meaningful difference between Wakefield Home and a purely local decor shop, since it means a client’s order is not limited to whatever happens to already be on the floor.

The clothing and accessories side changes with the seasons, dresses and matching sets in spring and summer, ponchos and outerwear as the weather turns, from labels including Joh and Leisi Lerch, along with handwoven clutches, jewelry and small locally made items. Among the more distinctive of those local pieces are hand-foraged baskets woven from vines gathered locally by Dr. Phil Raley, the kind of small-batch item that shows up around the holidays and rarely repeats from one season to the next. It is the kind of selection that rewards repeat visits rather than a single trip, since the mix on the floor shifts noticeably as the seasons change.

Wakefield Home keeps weekday hours, nine to five, Monday through Friday, that suit a lunch-hour browse for downtown Opelika workers as much as a weekend shopping trip, and its location on South 8th Street puts it a short walk from the rest of the historic district’s boutiques, antique shops and galleries, part of the same downtown core that Opelika Main Street has worked to revitalize since 1987. The Asburys describe their goal simply as providing helpful design assistance and a good shopping experience, and that dual focus, part furniture showroom and part clothing boutique, is what carries through from the sales floor to the design appointments booked in back. Because the shop occupies a building the family has owned since the years just after World War II, the sense of continuity is real rather than a marketing line, even as the inventory has moved from filing cabinets and office ledgers to Gabby Home sofas and hand-foraged baskets. For anyone furnishing a first home, refreshing a single room, or simply looking for a well-made gift, Wakefield Home offers a version of downtown Opelika shopping shaped by eight decades of the same family’s presence on the block, with upholstery orders occasionally running behind schedule, a normal byproduct of custom-order furniture that the shop is upfront about with customers.