Annie Elliott knows people. She has to in order to be a successful interior decorator. Elliot believes that "the best complement a client can give me when we’re finished is, ‘it looks like (the client), only better.'"

Elliott has been working as an interior decorator for seven years. After working at the Smithsonian Institution for several years doing fundraising and corporate development, she realized she had strayed from her passion—decorating homes.

“It took a lot of thought, guts and support from my husband to say, 'I’m not in fundraising anymore, I’m an interior decorator,'” Elliott acknowledges. And from that day forward, she got positive support.

It started with a friend who had recently moved and needed help with color choices for her new home. Then, she renovated the small kitchen in her Cleveland Park home. Friends came over, saw what she had done and asked for decorating consultations for their own homes' renovations. From that point on, her business grew quickly.

Elliott describes Chevy Chase as having “a character of its own. It’s historic, it’s friendly … it’s a real community and neighbors watch out for each other. That’s why people move there. They want a sense of family and community.”

Chevy Chase homes are typically on the older side. (Elliott considers any house built before 1950 to be an old house.) Elliott finds that her Chevy Chase clients generally want to preserve the character of their old homes.

“Clients don’t always know if something is original or a cheap add-on.” Elliott helps them assess whether something is worth holding on to or not.

As far as trends, Elliott sees more traditional than contemporary decorating in Chevy Chase. “It’s not your grandmother’s traditional, as much as we love our grandmothers. It’s starting with traditional style and then contemporary interpretations of that. I don’t mean to say that in a critical or disparaging way…There is a lot more you can do with color, fabric and pattern [with a traditional style]. It’s a lot more forgiving and a more fun place to start than ultra-modern contemporary.”

Two Chevy Chase homes have received particular attention from Elliott, who decorated each home for five years, starting with when the clients moved in. With this intense level of involvement, Elliot believes, “you get to develop an aesthetic that carries through the whole house."

"When you go into someone’s house and touch every room from soup to nuts or maybe just a new light fixture ... and you think it’s beautiful and they think it’s beautiful … and you still love the client and they still love you, that is a success.”

Elliot says that Chevy Chase clients don’t want to spend money on the wrong thing. “It’s not that every piece needs to be a bargain. It’s about priorities.”

All interior decorators have their not-so-successful projects. For example, Elliott had a client who said she loved color and wanted to paint every room in her house a different bold color. “Part of my job is to save people from themselves.”

Recently, Elliott worked on a home in the Village of Martin’s Additions, and broke her rule of getting the big pieces in first and then painting the walls. The window treatments were brown, and initially, Elliott thought the walls would need to be a shade of brown, such as camel. But, in the middle of the night, Elliott woke up with another option—blue walls—and it worked, as illustrated in the accompaning photo.

As in any business, there are difficult clients. Elliot once worked with a contentious couple with divergent tastes. The wife wanted French Country while her husband wanted a museum-like decor. In the end, Elliott stopped working with them. But, this has only happened once in seven years of interior decorating.

Another time, a husband and wife were deciding on wallpaper. The wife felt like she had a knack for decorating, but as it ended up, the husband’s wallpaper choice was better. Both choices were in the same book, so were not entirely disparate. Fortunately, in this case, “The wife was mentally in the position to throw him that bone.”

When asked what her favorite part of the job is, Elliott responds, “I could spend three days looking at (a piece of) fabric ... I love fabric … feeling it, looking at it … it’s such a visceral experience.”

And not surprisingly, Elliott adds, “ I love working with my clients. If I go too many days without them, I get lonely. The more time I spend in their space, the better. I see something different every time.”