Oak Brook, Illinois
Dara Agruss Design is a full-service interior design studio working on estate-scale homes in Oak Brook and across Chicago's western suburbs: whole-home furnishing, gut renovations and new construction.
We take on a small number of projects each year so they get our full attention: millwork drawn to the inch, fabrics chosen in person, and an install day when the whole house comes together. Oak Brook houses are large enough that this matters, and a room-by-room approach shows.
Recent work · Oak Brook, IL
A full-home furnishing project on Forest Glen — entry, living and dining rooms designed, sourced and installed by our studio.
Before & after
On a large house the built-in joinery sets the tone for everything placed against it. Here a dark, heavy wall of cabinetry was refinished and restyled before a single piece of furniture was ordered.
What we do
Most of our Oak Brook clients come to us for the whole house, not a single room. Full-service means we carry the project from the first floor plan to the day the last lamp is placed:
You make the decisions that matter to you. We handle the several hundred that don't.
How we work
The same process for every Oak Brook project, whether it's one room or an entire new build.
A short conversation about your home, your timeline and the scope you have in mind. We tell you honestly whether we're the right studio for it.
We walk your home, measure, photograph and talk through how each room actually needs to work for the people in it.
Floor plans, elevations, renderings, finishes and a complete furniture plan, presented together, room by room, in one sitting.
We place every order, track every lead time, receive and inspect every piece, and coordinate directly with your builder and trades.
Everything arrives, gets placed and gets styled. You leave in the morning and come home to a finished house.
Oak Brook houses
Oak Brook zoning keeps lots large — half an acre and up across much of the village — so the houses are correspondingly big. Brook Forest mixes Tudor, Colonial and ranch architecture; Ginger Creek runs from 1960s originals to recent builds reaching 11,000 square feet near Butterfield Country Club.
Rooms at that scale fail in a specific way: they read as empty and echoey unless the furniture plan is drawn for the volume rather than the footprint. We plan seating in groups, use custom pieces where nothing off the floor is large enough, and design the entry to set the tone for the rest.
Full-service means we handle the entire project: space planning, custom millwork and cabinetry, furniture, upholstery, window treatments, finishes, lighting, art and accessories, plus ordering, receiving, delivery coordination and installation. You make the decisions that matter to you; we manage everything behind them.
We work through trade-only showrooms, workrooms and artisans that aren't open to the public, which is where most of the character in a project comes from. See everything included in our services →
Yes. That is most of our Oak Brook work. On houses of this size we design and furnish room by room across the whole plan rather than treating spaces in isolation, so materials, lighting and proportion carry through from the entry to the primary suite.
Custom furniture matters more at this scale, because standard case goods and seating are often simply too small for the rooms. See our Forest Glen project above.
Yes. We come in during framing to select finishes, lighting, plumbing, cabinetry and millwork before anything is ordered, and we coordinate directly with your builder and architect so interior decisions land on the construction schedule rather than after it.
On large new builds this is where the money and the months are won or lost: the change orders that hurt most are the ones triggered after drywall.
Also serving
The same team works across DuPage County, western Cook County and Chicago.
