Centered By Design

We worked with Claire for the majority of 2017 to design our first daughters nursery and the first level of our home, including living room, entry hall, dining room, family room, and kitchen eat in area. She was an absolute pleasure to work with and very professional. I enjoyed all our interactions and she always responded to our questions and requests in a timely manner. Our house turned out beautifully, we receive compliments from everyone who comes over. Claire did a great job getting to know us and blending our preferences with her design style. She was great at pushing us out of our box but also incorporating feedback. We couldn’t have been happier with both the experience of working with Claire and the outcome. Looking forward to hopefully working with Claire soon on the second level of our home!

We had a fantastic experience working with Claire. Design is not our specialty, and Claire was able to help us both define our style and create a beautiful, functional space. Claire has a great eye. She is responsive, friendly and saw our project through within budget from start to finish.

Claire with Centered by Design offers a refreshing approach to the interior design process. Her attention to detail, artistic design eye and calm demeanor made for a stress-free (and risk-free!) experience. She was an advocate for our vision and shared her strong connections with the finest vendors to ensure a seamless process from start to finish. Her knowledge of the interior design industry coupled with her professionalism and work ethic make it easy to recommend her services for projects both big and small.

We thoroughly enjoyed our experience with Claire! She is both a great designer and wonderful person to work with. Claire listened to our needs while implementing her design expertise and flair for great style. She provided unique design options, easily understood what we wanted, and was mindful of keeping our young family as the focus of the living area and basement. Claire created an awesome space and we look forward to working with her again in the future.

I worked with Claire when we were renovating and decorating our small house in Logan Square, and I have nothing but great things to say about the experience. Claire did a wonderful job understanding my taste and finding furniture, accessories and colors that I would have never chosen myself. I also appreciated that she was able to incorporate our existing furniture and found pieces that were high quality but reasonably priced. Also, her husband Luke created a custom wood headboard for our master bedroom and leaning ladder - both made from old wood that we salvaged while doing some demo on the house. They turned out great, and it's cool to have pieces that incorporate the history of our home. I'd recommend Centered By Design to anyone looking for a responsive, thoughtful and creative designer in Chicago!

When we moved into a single family home that was 3x the size of our old condo, I knew I needed some help with decorating and filling the rooms to make it a comfortable home for me, my husband and 2 kids. Claire was a pleasure to work with. She has a very thoughtful and easy-going way about her that makes working on something like this especially fun. She helped to design and pick out pieces for our main living space, kitchen/dining rooms and 3 bedrooms. She was professional and thorough during the process and was mindful to only recommended things that were both functional and beautiful, with thought to our limited budget as well. I was not able to execute all of her ideas (for budgetary reasons), but look forward to slowing purchasing things and putting our home together over time. I would recommend Claire to anyone wanting help to make their place into a home.

I worked with Claire when she designed the entry way to my home, my dining/bar area, and fire place mantel -- all three areas are focal points of my home's first level. She was wonderful to work with, really understood what I was hoping to achieve and the aesthetic I like, and delivered a beautiful, stylish result. Our entry way leads right into the home's open floorplan, which makes it difficult to distinguish the entry from the dining area and sitting area. However, she creatively solved this visual issue with a gorgeous, very long, very skinny entry table under the stairs that really makes a statement. In fact, her talented husband MADE the custom table! It is rustic (made from an old floor board), elegant and modern all at the same time. The table is the anchor for the space, and she styled it beautifully; mixing in practical elements (like a marble dish for keys, baskets for umbrellas, etc) with art and accessories. She really made our dining room pop with a modern brass bar cart. These seem very "in" lately, but Claire has a way of layering styles so that the end result is timeless rather than trendy. She created a gallery wall of old and new art, mixed the glassware and barware so visually everything was distinct yet cohesive, and added pops of personalization with things like fresh fruit and flowers, and classic cocktail recipe books. In my living room, I had a big fireplace surrounded my nice marble, but no mantel. Claire found an inexpensive yet attractive mantle to install, which gives the fireplace a space to decorate and display. She added vintage mirrors around a painting I had, and styled the mantel with picture frames, fun nick-knacks, and plants. The whole wall went from boring and bare to colorful and unique. Her work in a relatively small area really changed the feeling of the whole entire room. Overall, Claire was a joy to work with. She came to the table with her own sense of style and ideas, but also was very attentive to my own point of view. I loved the way she incorporates antique with modern, eclectic with mid-century. She has a great eye and an even better attitude. I would not hesitate to recommend her to anyone for any job, big or small!

Claire was amazing to work with. She has a great sense of style and took us through the entire process of turning a living room that had sat empty for two years to a space that we now use all the time. We were initially struggling to balance the character of our century-old home and our more modern tastes. Claire helped us to first clarify our overall design aesthetic and vision for the project, before working with us on turning that vision into a reality. Her work encompassed all aspects of the project; from setting a budget to picking fabrics and colors, as well as styling the finished project. Claire is very easy to work with. She balanced keeping us focused on the project, while respecting our need for time to reflect on certain key decisions. Claire was also very respectful of our busy schedules and, just as importantly, our budget. The final result is a space that reflects our personal style and that we love to spend time in with our family and friends.