Design Milieu

Karen Bengel's touch is transformative. Faced with the challenge of transforming our dated 80s residence, she masterfully curated a modern space without sacrificing its heart and soul. She has an innate understanding of space, of how light interacts with materials, and of how human beings move and feel within their environment. Her designs resonate with impeccable attention to detail, and her selections always remained respectful of our budget. The results are evident in every corner, every nook of our home—inside and out. There isn't a detail that was overlooked; each element is a testament to her immense skill and meticulous attention. However, what truly sets Karen apart is the energy she brings to the process. Working with her was not just about renovating a house, but experiencing a delightful journey. She exudes passion, positivity, and a sense of humor that makes even the most daunting tasks seem manageable. Beyond her design acumen, Karen's intuitive understanding of our desires, even before we articulated them, was truly impressive. If you're seeking a blend of modern artistry with a personal touch, Karen is your designer.

I can't say enough good about Karen. She is outstanding to work with. She took the unique needs and constraints of our project to heart and then added her own phenomenal taste, while still being receptive to feedback and suggestions. We needed her help with a very large open-plan living space. Karen used her deep experience and expertise to make sure the scale of the furnishings worked perfectly with the scale of the room. The final product is beautiful! Warm, welcoming and comfortable while still being elegant, and filling the room and fitting the surroundings perfectly. We are thrilled and cannot recommend Design Milieu highly enough!

Wow, what to say about Karen! Extremely professional, great vision, easy to work with, wonderful communicator. I have been working with her over the past 4 years pursuing a total remodel of my home. We started at the top floor and have been working down. Now on floor 3 of 4, her vision continues to be implemented and my house looks fantastic! She is able to pivot when a design particular isn't to my taste or thought and then create an exemplary alternate. I can't imagine have this long term experience with anyone else...HIGHLY recommend!

Karen was such joy to work with. She spent time getting to know me and my husband and came up with the ideas for our living space that helped mush our styles and wants together seamlessly. She was flexible with our needs as they evolved and offered great options to fit the budget. Very resourceful and a great collaborator.

Karen Bengel did a great job designing our kitchen and master bath. She did a careful job of studying the original architecture of the house and making sure her designs were in keeping with them. She had an excellent team of contractors who did a very careful job. We could not recommend her more highly.

We cannot recommend Karen highly enough. She brought her own impeccable taste, professional knowledge and creativity to the job, and used that to bring our vision to life in a way that far surpassed what we could have done without her. She is also a total pleasure as a human being which is important when you spend a lot of time with someone! It can be hard to spend money on a designer rather than the furnishings themselves, but her advice was worth every penny. She helped us with multiple projects in our house, from a large kitchen, bath and living room renovation to a basement re-design and refurnishing of our master bedroom. The touches in our home that we are most happy with were all ideas Karen brought to us -- from an unusual expandable round table that we splurged for, to the live edge piece of wood she picked out at the lumber yard for our new mantel, to the barn door closets she designed. We were looking for a Northern European/ California style -- clean, simple lines and simple with a modern feel but incorporating lots of natural materials to keep it warm. Karen totally got what we were looking for and helped us pull it all together. She is also well connected with vendors and sub-contractors so was able to help us find pieces and execute tricky parts of our project. Overall she is just a wonderful person and a great professional and we would recommend her to anyone embarking on a big or small renovation or redecorating!

Karen helped ensure that, with limited square feet, my two bathrooms made the most of the space without feeling cramped. She offered creative solutions (like moving the location of a door) and took into consideration how the remodel would affect the layout of adjacent rooms. Couldn't have been happier with her services.

Karen decorated the main floor and basement of my new house in 2017/18. The project budget was mid-five figures. I am very, very pleased with the results. She started by getting to know my style and then produced a very detailed plan complete with room drawings and a catalog of proposed items with the cost of each broken out. She also divided up the project into three phases so we could tackle it in sensible chunks. There are a couple of things I really appreciated about Karen's approach. The first is that she completely adapted to my style rather than imposing her own (although I think our styles are pretty compatible). Second, she knew where it was important to spend money and where to save money in order to get a great end result within the budget. There were one or two times where I suggested an item was too expensive and she quickly found a suitable substitute. Overall, working with Karen was a great experience. We still have one last bit to go, and I'm looking forward to finishing it.

I found Karen (Design Milieu) on Houzz after looking at lots of other interior designers' portfolios and having a hard time finding someone whose aesthetic sensibilities matched mine. I loved the pictures in her portfolio. I knew I was taking a gamble by hiring someone without a personal referral, but when Karen came by for a consultation, she was clearly capable, knowledgable and very professional. I am SO glad I hired her. She was responsive, flexible, and most importantly, she did a FANTASTIC job. She is a genius when it comes to how to best use a space. We had a large, empty living area, and she understood my vision of turning it into three separate spaces (dining, living room and study area) and had ideas I never would have thought of myself. She also really got my aesthetic style and was very patient working with both me and my husband to address all our concerns and work within our budget. As an added bonus, she has a whole crew of extremely good, professional contractors, electricians and project managers, who all did impeccable work. I could not recommend Karen and Design Milieu more highly.

Karen has a great eye for design! She understands her clients and delivers full-service and brings to life the designs. She is smart, efficient and manages the whole project. Fully endorse her.

Karen Bengel oversaw the complete refurbishment of my 1-bedroom condo in Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., in a building that is more than 100 years old. The unit, 600 square feet, had last been remodeled in the 1970s, from the best I could tell. I had lived there for 15 years, for part of that as a renter, until I bought it in 2005. Since it had been a rental for a very long time, it had a lot of dents and dings and very old appliances - we deemed it a complete gut-and-rebuild. But I was in love with the essential character of the space because it had a certain urban charm, including built-in bookshelves and a window seat that gave the place a good vibe. I told Karen I did not want to lose that. She listened. Every feature of my home that meant a lot to me was transformed into something improved, yet intact with its previous feel. This was done through careful attention to materials, colors, lighting and context. The result is a completely redone kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room and home office. We also insulated the exterior walls and did acoustic attenuation insulation in the interior walls and ceiling, since there is another floor of residents above us in this small building where noise travels easily downward. Karen did a terrific job of managing this project, which included many sub-contractors and a project manager. Karen is always bubbling with ideas of her own, which is essential. But just as important, she worked well with the whole team of professionals and was a constant resource for all of us. Karen was invaluable to us due to her experience and simply because of her passion for architecture and design.

I highly recommend Karen Bengel as an interior designer. She worked with me in redoing my dining and living room, including adding a storage closest that actually made the space feel more open, as well as selecting new light fixtures both inside and outside. She immediately understood my style and provided several options to choose from without overwhelming me with choices. All of the contractors that she works with are incredibly professional and knowledgeable. Karen was genuinely invested in ensuring in creating a beautiful, livable environment and I could not be happier with the result!

Karen was the design architect on my full home renovation (3 story 100 year old home) in Washington, D.C. She was invaluable on the project, attentive to our requests and our ideas for the home, and translating our key priorities into a wonderful set of plans that incorporated modern amenities all the while respecting the historic origin of our home. She is poised, thoughtful, organized and responsive, traits when cannot be underestimated on large projects with numerous moving pieces. Karen offers ideas, thoughts, options without being over bearing - we could not have done this without her guidance.

I would enthusiastically recommend Design Milieu for any project requiring architectural and design work. The prices were reasonable. The creativity was great. Design Milieu found space in my house that I just didn't know was there and turned it into beautiful usable, livable space. The collaborative working relationship was fabulous. I get "oohs and aahhs" and major compliments whenever anyone walks into my house who has not been there before, or who has not seen the remodel. Design Milieu worked well with the contractor -- that was their first collaboration and they have worked together since then. I would not let anyone but these folks touch my house for future work!

In 2007, I purchased 2 adjacent condominiums in a brand new development in Arlington, VA. My objective was to work with the builder to develop a very elegant, luxurious home - my dream home. I was attracted to the development for it's vision and approach, then considered out of market for the Washington area. It is great space with tremendous volume and natural light, loosely considered a "loft." It was necessary to purchase two units to have enough space to meet my practical needs and fulfill my vision. Although the builder promoted the development as having high-end, luxury finishes, I learned we had very different definitions for "high-end" and "luxury." If left to the builder I would've ended up with no more than an obviously co-joined, "cookie cutter" condo... albeit a large one. Having worked with Design Milieu on a previous home project, I new that this new project required a thoughtful and talented professional who could help extract the vision of my mind's eye and turn it into a spectacular dream home. The result is nothing less than that. From the earliest phases of the project during which Design Milieu worked directly with the builder to shape the "bones" of the combined units to fit an architecturally appealing vision and design through the ending phases of selecting, procuring and installing finishes, fixtures and furnishings, I always felt that I was in good care and knew the end result would be extraordinary. The designer had an incredible knack for working "with" me on the details that were important to me, and "for" me when it was necessary to defer to her professional opinion. This was perfectly balanced, and I think an important aspect to consider -- when you embark on a project such as this, you want the end result to feel like it's yours, a part of you, your "home" --- not an interior design "project." Although I consider the end result a work of art, it is certainly home. I still pause, often, to admire the final product and appreciate the subtlety of the personal touches. I am an extremely satisfied client.

I used this company to design a screened in porch, for which a variance was needed--the designer handled all aspects of getting the variance. She also remodeled the kitchen, bathroom and dining room. Her work and designs were very workable and look fabulous.

Karen is an excellent designer and architect. While anyone with taste can pick out colors and furniture, Karen has an eye for the best use of space and integrating style into structure. We started with a large project; one that touched almost every room in our rowhouse in Washington, DC. While some rooms simply needed minor changes, others needed significant work. We had two old fireplaces with enormous hearths that we were unhappy with. Also, we had a kitchen that, while well-finished by the previous owners, was much too dark and uninviting. Our style is always evolving, but we sit somewhere between mid century and more modern. At the same time, we have a house built in 1908, so it couldn't be over the top in any stylistic direction. Finally, it was very important for our home to be bright and inviting. Karen's initial design was ambitious, and a bit out of our price range for a single project. Thankfully, we were able to work together to phase the project. First, we took care of the fireplaces and the less intense work in the various rooms (installing closet doors, art hanging, etc.). The fireplaces that Karen chose are fantastic, more than one of our friends has decided to install the same fireplaces in their homes. Second, we tackled the kitchen. Instead of building a new island from scratch, Karen was able to re-purpose our current island with some reconfiguration. This saved us a great amount of money and ended up with a great design. We had a large amount of custom work including stainless steel shelves and trim and a glass backsplash. The final result has been a great mix of our styles and has given us a truly one-of-a-kind home that is still not too "special" that others can't appreciate it. I believe if we went to sell our home today, we would recoup more than the cost of the renovation. Finally, something that I didn't realize was so important at the beginning of this process is the quality of the contractors. Karen has access to some outstanding contractors whose attention to detail was outstanding. Unfortunately, almost every renovation project encounters a bump in the road at some point. We did as well, one of the contractors overstated their abilities and became uncommunicative when we tried to follow-up. Karen was able to find another contractor to handle the situation and eventually got it resolved in a timely manner. We would absolutely recommend Karen.

Our basement had been a playroom for our (then) young children. We wanted to update and modernize the space into a fun place where teenagers would want to hang out but would be sophisticated enough for the adults to entertain. The space was blessed with excellent natural lighting from windows on two walls and large french doors leading to the backyard. I had seen Karen's work in a design magazine and admired her aesthetic. Karen had an inspired vision for the space that I could never have imagined on my own. It is now the most popular place in the house! We completely accomplished our objective...our house is filled with our teenaged children and their friends each weekend! One space has been artfully arranged to allow for a media area, a cozy lounging area in front of the updated fireplace, and separate music and billiards area. I had asked for alternatives in architectural and design elements and Karen provided these in her proposal, so we were able to have some flexibility in terms of design and budget. The bathroom was updated, so now guests staying in our spare bedroom say they feel as if they are in an upscale hotel. Karen shared our concern with re-using and recycling as much as possible. Karen was a pleasure to work with in every way.

Karen has helped is both lay out furniture designs for our living room (which exceed all expectations, taking the room from seldom used to our main hangout area) and she also completely redesigned my home office. She did such a fantastic job that now the rest of our house needs a makeover in comparison.

Design Milieu was an excellent firm to work with on the redesign of the office in our 125 year old Victorian. Karen Bengel, the owner, took a very odd layout and revamped it in a way that's beautiful and versatile. It was exceedingly easy to work with Karen since she truly took into account our needs and preferences. The end result was a beautiful space that works for our family. I would highly recommend Design Milieu to anyone looking for a designer.