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DC-based interior designer, frequent guest on FOX5DC, freelance home & design contributor, wife, mom, Brit, Italophile, art historian, antique buff

10/29/2026

If Thanksgiving is at your house this year, the decisions that matter most should be made before November begins. Four weeks out is the time to count your guests honestly and check that your table, chairs, and china can hold them, because extra leaves, borrowed chairs, and rented glassware all take time to arrange.

It is also the moment to choose a palette, since every purchase afterward becomes easier when you know what it must work with.

Two weeks out, order flowers and anything you are missing, and press the linens. The week before, set the table completely, once, as a rehearsal. You will find the chipped plate, the candle that is too tall, the chair that wobbles, and you will still have time to fix them. On the day itself, the table should already be finished, leaving you free for the kitchen and your guests.

Most Thanksgiving stress comes from leaving the table until Wednesday night, when it becomes one more thing competing with the turkey.

What is the one Thanksgiving task you always leave too late? And if you would rather hand the table over entirely, we have a few styling dates remaining - send us a message.

10/28/2026

Thank you to 5 DC and Mikea Turner for having me on to talk about Halloween entertaining with a little more drama and a lot less orange.

The table started with a story. Here it was Venice, with antique-style masks set among gold, deep purple, and vintage pieces, but any chapter of history will do. A seafaring theme, for instance, invites old maps, brass, and sailors’ curiosities. A story gives the table a point of view, which is what separates a styled table from a pile of decorations.

From there, three things did the work. Natural elements, like bare branches brought in from outside, give height and texture without adding clutter. Lighting creates the atmosphere, so think of it the way a theater designer would, with twinkle lights and candlelight placed for drama rather than brightness. And restraint matters most of all. The most common mistake I see is over-decorating, so give your statement pieces room to breathe and they will become the focal point on their own. Even the food can join in: long grapes and a few seasonal touches on the cheese board carried the palette right across the buffet.

The same principles hold for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and any celebration in between. We design and install holiday interiors for homes across the DMV, from the table to the mantel, so you can simply enjoy the evening. Send us a message to talk through your holidays.
Which piece of history would you build a table around?
Mikea Turner Fox 5 DC

10/28/2026

Why your room still feels unfinished after buying new furniture

You buy a lovely lamp, then a rug, then a few cushions, hoping each purchase will finally bring the room together. Somehow it still does not feel finished. By the time you have saved another twenty pictures, you are wondering if the sofa needs to go too.

I would pause right there. Before spending anything else, I want to understand what you love about the pieces you already have and what is actually bothering you about the room.

Sometimes it is the arrangement.
Sometimes the proportions are working against each other.
Sometimes there is one missing element that no amount of extra cushions will solve.

That is where having an interior designer look at the whole room with you makes the difference.

If you are hoping to feel settled in your home before the holidays, book a discovery call with me. Tell me where you are stuck, and we can talk through how I could help you move forward.

Thank you to 5 DC and Mikea Turner for having me on to talk about Halloween entertaining with a little more drama and a...

10/28/2026

Before a single garland goes up, every holiday installation we do begins with a walkthrough and a sketch. I walk the house with the client and photograph the places where the season will live - the front door, the stair, the mantel, the dining table, sometimes a window seen from the street.

Then we go through what they already own, which is usually more than they remember. The boxes in the attic tend to hold a few genuine treasures among the tangled lights.

From there I draw each vignette on my iPad, to scale, so we can agree on proportion before anything is purchased. A garland that looks generous in a shop can vanish on a nine-foot colonial staircase, and a mantel arrangement needs to relate to the art above it rather than compete with it. Ribbon, velvet, and linen samples are pulled against the room’s existing fabrics so the holiday scheme feels as though it grew from the house.

Only then do we source what is missing. It is the same process we use for a full room, simply on a shorter timeline, and it is why the result never looks as though it arrived in a box. Which part of your home is hardest to decorate each year?

10/27/2026

Every holiday scheme I design begins never begins with decorations but with color.

Before a single ornament or garland is chosen, I look at the rooms themselves: the fabrics already on the sofa, the wood tones, the art on the walls, the way the light falls in the late afternoon. The holiday palette is drawn from what is already there, so the season feels like a natural extension of the house rather than something brought in from a shop. Ribbons, linens, flowers, and candles are then pulled against those colors until everything speaks to everything else.

The second question is always about the family. What do you celebrate, who comes to stay, and what pieces come out of storage every year because the holidays would not feel right without them? Those answers shape the scheme far more than any trend ever could.

A holiday home should feel like yours, only more so. What is the one thing your home is never without in December?

If you would like help planning your home for the season, send us a message and we will talk it through.

10/26/2026

Making your dining room more inviting before Thanksgiving

If you love your dining table but rarely use the room it lives in, I would start by looking at what happens once you sit down. Are the chairs comfortable. Does the lighting feel right for the room, not just for photos. Is there enough space to pull out a chair without bumping into the sideboard.

These are the questions worth answering before Thanksgiving arrives, not after. Many clients have inherited the whole dining set, and there is often real sentimental attachment to it.

I want to know which pieces matter most to you before anything else is discussed. From there we can explore upholstery, lighting, or simply the arrangement of the room, and for custom pieces, I check timing honestly before making any promises about the holidays.

Even a lighting change or a shift in furniture placement can make a real difference this season. The table stays exactly where your memories are, while the room around it finally earns its place.

What would make you want to linger at your own table a little longer?

10/26/2026

The guest room is the most honest room in the house. It is where family and old friends form their lasting impression of your hospitality, and it is usually the room that inherited the leftover furniture.

A good guest room deserves the same care as the main bedroom.

A proper headboard or comfy cushions to lean on makes sitting up with a book comfortable. Cushions layered in colors drawn from the art above the bed make the room feel considered rather than decorated.

A lamp within easy reach of the pillow means no one has to cross a dark room to find a switch.

None of it is extravagant. All of it tells a guest they were expected.

The English hosting tradition has always understood this: a good guest room offers a proper reading light, somewhere to set down a suitcase, and a chair you would genuinely sit in. A tray on the bed with a glass for water and some towels placed nearby or a hair dryer communicates thought to your guests because you thought of their experience and the details.

With family arriving in the weeks ahead, a guest room is also one of the most achievable spaces to refresh before the holidays.

What is the one thing you always wish a guest room had?

10/25/2026

Adding autumn colour to a room with existing pattern and colour

When your room already has patterned rugs, art, and plenty of colour, seasonal decorating can feel like one more puzzle to solve. You find something lovely in a shop, bring it home, and it never quite settles in alongside everything else. I always start with the colours already living in the room.

There might be a rusty red running through the rug, or a soft gold tucked into a painting, and that becomes the starting point for autumn flowers, foliage, or a single textile.

From there I put a few options together and see how they read in the room's own light. Often one arrangement and a different cushion cover is all the seasonal refresh you needed.

What I love most is when a small addition sends your eye back to something you already own, and suddenly you notice that touch of gold in the painting again.

Is there a colour already in your room that autumn could bring forward?

10/25/2026

When I styled this autumn table for WUSA9’s Great Day Washington, I used the same principles I will bring to Thanksgiving tables across the DMV next month.

Start with what you already own and love - the inherited china, the linen that comes out once a year - and build around it rather than replacing it.

Keep centerpieces low enough that conversation can cross the table, and let height come from candlesticks instead. Mix textures deliberately: a linen cloth, a glaze with some depth, the warmth of brass or wood. Let one element carry the season, whether it is the palette, the flowers, or the fruit, rather than asking every piece to announce it.

A beautiful table is not a matched set bought for the occasion. It is a considered collection that looks as though it has been gathered over years, because often it has.

This November we are styling a limited number of Thanksgiving tables in homes across Bethesda, Potomac, Georgetown, and McLean, designed around your own pieces with anything missing sourced for you.

If you would like your table to be the one your family remembers, send us a message to reserve your styling appointment.

Address

4520 Harling Lane
Bethesda, MD
20814

Telephone

+12029999910

Website

http://www.chelt-interiors.com/

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