Downers Grove, Illinois
Dara Agruss Design is a full-service interior design studio working on whole-home projects, gut renovations and new construction in Downers Grove and across Chicago's western suburbs.
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.
Recent work
A studio in Elmhurst working on whole-home projects, gut renovations and new construction throughout DuPage and western Cook County.
Before & after
Smaller period houses reward precision rather than demolition. Here the existing built-ins stayed exactly where they were and did far more once the finish, the lighting and the storage were rethought.
What we do
Most of our Downers Grove 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 Downers Grove 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.
Downers Grove houses
Downers Grove has one of the country's better-known concentrations of Sears kit houses — more than twenty of them, catalogued on a village tour — ordered by rail between 1908 and 1940 and arriving as precut lumber, staircases and hardware. Alongside them the historic district holds Victorians dating to the 1890s with the woodwork and stair halls to match.
Kit houses and early Victorians share a particular quality: they are modest in footprint and generous in detail. The work is usually about making a compact, well-built plan function for a modern family — storage, lighting and furniture scale — without erasing the reason the house is interesting.
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. Downers Grove's early houses — Sears kit homes from 1908 to 1940 and Victorians from the 1890s — are compact, well built and full of original detail. We design around that woodwork and those room proportions rather than stripping them out.
In houses of this age we plan for plaster, tight stair halls and walls that are rarely square, and we solve storage with built-in millwork designed for the specific room.
Yes, and it is a common brief here. The answer is rarely to open everything up. It is usually custom built-ins, a furniture plan drawn for the real dimensions of the room, and lighting that makes a compact space feel considered rather than cramped.
Where a wall genuinely should come down, we plan it with your architect and builder as part of the whole-house design rather than as an isolated change.
Also serving
The same team works across DuPage County, western Cook County and Chicago.
