Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Dara Agruss Design is a full-service interior design studio working on whole-home projects, gut renovations and new construction in Glen Ellyn 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
Period houses tend to have rooms that were built for one purpose and never revisited. The work is usually colour, lighting and styling on top of joinery that is already good, not knocking it out.
What we do
Most of our Glen Ellyn 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 Glen Ellyn 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.
Glen Ellyn houses
Glen Ellyn's oldest houses date to the 1870s and 1880s, when the village was still called Prospect Park, and the Main Street historic district preserves a run of Queen Anne, Italianate and Gothic Revival buildings from that period. Around the downtown and Lake Ellyn the streets keep that scale: steep rooflines, deep porches, and interiors built room by room rather than open.
Later additions filled in with Tudors, Colonials and mid-century houses, and more recent building has added larger homes on the same compact lots. The design problem is usually the same one: how to make a period plan work for the way a family actually lives without gutting what makes it worth living in.
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. Much of Glen Ellyn's housing stock predates the war: Queen Anne, Italianate, Tudor and Colonial homes with original millwork, plaster walls and rooms that were designed to be separate. We design around that character rather than removing it.
Where a period house has to work harder, the answer is usually built-in storage, careful furniture planning and lighting rather than taking down walls.
Yes, and that is most of what we do. Working across the whole house lets materials, lighting and proportion carry from room to room, which is difficult to achieve if spaces are designed one at a time over several years.
Single-room projects are possible when the room is a significant one: a kitchen, a primary suite, a dining room built for entertaining.
Also serving
The same team works across DuPage County, western Cook County and Chicago.
