At DiFiore & Partners, design is the process of creatively realizing how stories will be remembered. It is the intentional plan for how you want to recall the sound of your daughter’s first words and the smell of fresh baked cookies. It is prioritizing how a room will capture the nightly bedtime story in your favorite chair. Our process carefully extracts your sensibilities, and through empathy and experience, interprets those into the distinguishing features of your home. The design philosophy of DiFiore & Partners is anchored in decades of creating unique settings around the storylines of our clients. We believe homes should be elegant, inviting, and ultimately a personal reflection of the inhabitants. In addition to the typical services of space planning, furniture layout, the selection of finishes, fixtures, furniture, fabrics, artwork and accessories, we can provide interior architectural services as well. We design the entire three dimensional space. From framing to the finished surface, we can design and detail how that surface looks and how it interfaces with every other surface in the room. This involves understanding how to integrate building systems such as mechanical, electrical and lighting. Mies van der Rohe once said “God is in the details.” Whether you agree with his modernist approach or not, his statement bears true. Details create the uniqueness in all things, whether in a human being, a golden retriever, or our humble abode. And it is this uniqueness, the infinite number of possibilities, that initially intrigued me and has continued to captivate me in the world of interior design. I graduated Magna Cum Laude from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1981. I began my career working for a commercial firm designing golf and country clubs. As commercial clients became residential clients, I started my own practice in 1986. For thirty years I have had the immeasurable pleasure of creating beauty where there was none, finding solutions despite the obstacles, and discovering the uniqueness inherent in each client. I find our built and natural environments an endless source of inspiration and appreciation, a multi dimensional palette to choose from, whether I’m designing architectural elements or selecting color schemes. Traveling the world with my husband has enriched all of my senses – the thrill of riding a thoroughbred through the foothills of the Andes Mountains, experiencing the color of the floating markets in Thailand, viewing the dry, arid beauty of Morocco from a camel’s back, or simply standing in utter awe at the mosaic ceiling of the Duomo in Florence. All of these memories impart a humble awareness of the power of beauty and its ability to transform who we are.