The Styled Domicile-Interior Design

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The Styled Domicile-Interior Design

Out-of-the-ordinary interiors for those who dare to stand out.

The Styled Domicile offers highly personalized interior design in Northern Virginia & beyond for unapologetic women. Jess Harrell, founder and lead designer, creates more meaning in your home by celebrating who you are.

09/02/2026

HOME SHOULD BE THE PLACE WHERE YOU DON’T HAVE TO EDIT YOURSELF TO BELONG

(Sorry for yelling, but it kinda needs to be shouted from the rooftops.)

Hi, I’m Jess, the interior designer behind The Styled Domicile, and that’s really what my approach to design comes down to.

We aren’t born with a natural inclination to edit what we like; we learn it. When we’re kids, we just like what we like. Then one day someone tells you your purple-and-green winter coat is ugly (rude!), and suddenly you realize there are rules you didn’t know existed.

So you start learning them. What’s cool, what’s weird, what’s tasteful, what’s too much. And little by little, you learn to second-guess what you like before anyone else even gets the chance.

And that way of making decisions becomes so ingrained, we bring it into our homes too. We see something and immediately think, OMG I LOVE THAT... followed closely by, But is it too weird? Will I get sick of it? What will people think?

We’ve learned to edit ourselves for other people, even in the one place that’s supposed to be ours.

I see interior design as a way to find your way back to yourself. To trust what you love. To make decisions rooted in meaning instead of outside approval. To create a home that supports the way you actually live and surrounds you with your stories, your quirks, and things that bring you joy.

Because if you can’t be your biggest, weirdest self at home, where the hell can you be?

And when a home is built from all of that, the personality comes naturally. It becomes layered and collected, colorful and meaningful, playful and a little weird, because that’s what happens when you design for a real human being instead of some imaginary idea of what a home is supposed to look like.

The goal isn’t a home that everyone will like.
It’s a home where you feel like you belong.

📸 Architectural and Interiors Photographer

09/01/2026

I wanted this bathroom to feel as special as any other room in the house. And that was really the whole idea behind the design.

Because bathrooms have a funny way of announcing themselves as BATHROOMS. Everything is hard, shiny, practical, wipeable. The art is an afterthought or nonexistent. The lighting is there to help you pluck that chin hair that reappears every few days (just me?) and find the toilet in the middle of the night. Bathrooms are often treated as purely functional spaces. We put a whole lot of thought into how our living rooms and bedrooms feel, but bathrooms? They just don’t always get that same attention. And that’s sad!

I wanted something different for this one. Less sterile and utilitarian. More warmth, pattern, art, personality, and things you actually want to look at. I started calling it the unbathroom.

The wood vanity brings in the warmth of furniture. The wallpaper in the water closet adds pattern and movement. Vintage art makes it feel collected rather than decorated. And instead of treating all the practical bathroom necessities as the main event, they became part of a room that feels layered, personal, and lived in.

Of course, it still had to work beautifully as a bathroom. Cause pretty loses its charm real fast when you don’t have anywhere to put all your potions and products. But function was never the finish line here.

I want every room I design to feel like it belongs to the people who live there. Even the bathroom. Actually, scratch that! Especially the damn bathroom:)

📸 Amanda Archibald | Interiors Photographer

08/17/2026

Dear Diary,

We need to talk about Sterling Point. Top-notch acting, fresh new faces (helloooo Mark Ruffalo’s son), and a twist I did not see coming (I watch A LOT of TV, and I can usually call that s**t from a mile away). But the real star for me was Gordon’s lake house. Ugh! I want to go to there! But I’ll settle for designing a quaint little cottage for a really cool client.

Picture a house tucked among huge old trees.

Cozy wood-paneled walls, a staircase with canoe-paddle-shaped balusters, old wood floors literally filled with character (tile strips or inlaid rope used to fill in the gaps!).

Clever storage tucked into every possible nook and cranny.

Nights spent gathered around an old farm table with hand-painted details, playing board games.

A sweet bunk room where the kids crash out after a day of cliff diving.

A screened-in porch where you can wrap up in a blanket and sip your morning coffee while listening to the loons.

The chemical toilet can stay in the show, though.

So this is me putting it into the universe.

Love,
Jess

08/05/2026

Not to downplay the magic of seeing everything come together, but all the swoon-worthy fabric swatches, finish samples, and room boards represent something else most people never think about…

07/13/2026

Shared these pics in my stories a few weeks ago, and I was sad when they disappeared, so here they are again 😉

I had stopped by this almost-finished project to get some preliminary shots to share with my photographer (btw, I cannot wait to give these spaces the professional photography they deserve), and I could not stop taking pictures. It was like I wanted my camera to be able to capture the feeling I had standing in these spaces with my client, both of us geeking out over every little detail and hearing all about how the renovation has completely changed the quality of their day-to-day life. And while the pics can capture how beautiful the spaces are, they’ll never convey just how satisfying it is when a home finally feels like it belongs to the people who live there. And that’s always the goal.

Stay tuned for the glamour shots.

07/07/2026

Oh, just a few personality-filled things that got my pulse racing lately 🥵

Knowing you’re supposed to make “timeless” design choices but deciding to create a home that’s memorable instead is the kind of rebellion I live for.

Because nobody’s ever walked into a room and said, “Wow. This is so timeless.”

They remember the chair with the giant tassels. The wood floor with colorful resin inlay sprinkled throughout. The quirky little side table. The rug with animals all over it. The colorful lizard hidden in the tabletop.

They remember how the room made them feel.

And the person who matters most (ahem, that’s YOU) walks through the door every single day and thinks, “This feels like me!”

That’s the kind of home you’ll never get tired of.

05/18/2026

Why yes, I am trying to bring back the Ryan Gosling “hey, girl” meme trend from 2016.

We deserve it.

04/17/2026

I call this dump “what inspired me to take a pic in Belize + one decent pic of me + what every other pic of me looks like cause teenagers & husbands can’t take a flattering pic to save their lives” 😮‍💨

1-Gimme all the thatched roofs & turquoise water, please. 2-The cutest wicket door in a gate. And now I can’t stop imagining ways to use wicket doors in my work. 3-Dreamy, moody sunset colors 4-Murals on courtyard walls 5-The blurred lines between inside and outside at (the same flooring flowing inside and out!) Doors just wide open, it felt so welcoming and inviting. 6-Tiled baseboards (the grout looks lilac, but it’s just the lighting, it totally SHOULD be lilac though) 7-Rustic isn’t normally my thing, but I loved this Spanish/Mediterranean-style towel bar. 8-I grew up in a “USE A COASTER!” house, and something about the drink rings on this table in a hotel lobby just delighted me. It’s like they were saying, “Bruh, relax. You’re allowed to exist here.”🤣 9-Perfectly placed pelican. Say that 10 times fast. 10-It’s not a gaggle of geese, it’s a sh!tload of sharks. 11-Cutie little low-key business sign on a low-key beach. 12-Zoom in and you’ll see the sign on this restaurant’s bathroom (which was basically a shack behind someone’s house with INCREDIBLE food) said “Best Toilet.” 13-A painting I couldn’t resist buying! 14-The funky architecture of the building on the right! 15-A decent pic my 14-year-old took of me 16-18-What every other pic of me on vacation looks like 🙈 They did me dirty. Why is it always me eating??

02/24/2026

Hey-o! Finally cracking open this book I got for Christmas, and having way too much fun playing around with it. So, I thought I’d turn it into a series of sorts.

But first, a little backstory on the book.

If you don’t know, A Dictionary of Color Combinations is a collection of 348 beautifully considered palettes that somehow feel both vintage and completely new. Flipping through every page, I’m basically Bridesmaids-era Kristen Wiig with her pink lemonade: “Goddamnit, that’s good.” “Sh*t, that is FRESH.” It’s heaven.

And this book has been around. It’s derived from the original 1933 six-volume work by Sanzo Wada (a Japanese painter and costume designer who truly made studying color his thing). He created this collection during a time when Japan was navigating rapid modernization and growing Western influence, figuring out what stayed, what shifted, and what something new could look like.

From 1933 to today, the combinations absolutely still hold up.

So, here’s round one of me rambling about a few of the palettes and turning them into rooms. Stay tuned for more 🤓

02/17/2026

When the perfect chair doesn’t exist, I make it.

(Ok, ok so I’m not exactly the one in the workshop covered in sawdust…but I do know who to call.)

But custom doesn’t go from “add to cart” to your front door in 48 hours. It takes coordination, craftsmanship, and patience. And in this case, a few different timezones 🤪

From order to delivery, these custom chairs took a little over three months.

And that’s after the client said, “Yes, order them!” The fabric hunting, silhouette obsessing, and detail tweaking? That all happened beforehand. This is just the ex*****on chapter.

And as my client so beautifully put it: “The good stuff is always worth the wait.”

Swipe for the journey.

Address

Sterling, VA

Website

http://www.thestyleddomicile.com/

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