Western Springs, Illinois
Dara Agruss Design is a full-service interior design studio working on whole-home projects, gut renovations and new construction in Western Springs 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
A well-built older house usually needs editing rather than rebuilding. The cabinetry here was sound, so it was refinished and restyled instead of replaced. A faster, quieter and far less wasteful route to the same result.
What we do
Most of our Western Springs 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 Western Springs 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.
Western Springs houses
Western Springs holds an unusually wide range of housing for a village its size: Victorian-era houses with deep front porches, American Foursquares and Tudors, mid-century bungalows, and twenty-first-century traditional homes built to look as though they have always been there.
That mix is the interesting part. A Foursquare and a new traditional build on the next street ask for very different things: one wants its original woodwork and compact rooms respected, the other needs character added deliberately, ideally chosen before the drywall goes up.
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. Victorians, Foursquares, Tudors and mid-century bungalows all come with original millwork, plaster and rooms designed to be separate. We design around that character rather than stripping it out, and plan for the realities of a house built a century ago.
Where an older house has to work harder for a modern family, we solve it with built-in millwork and furniture planning before we consider moving walls.
During framing, before finishes are ordered. That is when we select tile, lighting, plumbing, cabinetry and millwork, and coordinate them with your builder so the decisions land on the construction schedule rather than after it.
New traditional houses in particular benefit from early involvement, because the details that make them feel authentic — trim profiles, stair parts, cabinetry proportions — are specified long before anyone thinks about furniture.
Also serving
The same team works across DuPage County, western Cook County and Chicago.
