Christopher Boutlier Interiors

Christopher Boutlier Interiors at 3214 O Street NW is a residential interior design studio in Georgetown’s residential O Street, between M Street and P Street in the neighborhood above the commercial corridors. The O Street location places the design studio in the Georgetown neighborhood that the studio serves: the Federal-period townhouses, the Victorian-era mansions, and the twentieth-century additions that constitute Georgetown’s residential fabric surround the studio’s address, which means the clients the studio serves may literally walk to the design meeting from their homes.

The residential interior design practice in Georgetown specializes in the specific challenges that the neighborhood’s historical architecture presents: the ceiling heights of the Federal-period room, which are proportioned for the domestic scale of the early nineteenth century; the window dimensions and the light quality of the pre-electricity building; the fireplaces that are original to the structure; and the floor plans that the historical domestic arrangement produced are all different from the contemporary new-construction residential setting that most American interior design practice addresses.

The interior designer who works in Georgetown must understand both the historical context that the neighborhood’s architecture provides and the contemporary expectations of the clients who occupy these historic buildings. The kitchen that must serve the twenty-first-century cook while respecting the Federal-period proportions of the Georgetown townhouse is the defining design challenge of the Georgetown renovation practice.

Christopher Boutlier’s studio on O Street serves this market with the full range of interior design services: the space planning, the furniture selection, the custom upholstery and window treatment, and the material specification that a complete residential interior design project requires.

Hours run Monday through Friday by appointment. The Georgetown interior design practice requires a specific understanding of the Federal-period building that makes the Georgetown specialist different from the general residential interior designer. The symmetry of the Federal style, which the Georgetown townhouse expresses in the balanced window placement, the centered fireplace, and the formal proportions of the principal rooms, creates a design context where the furniture selection must respect and reinforce this symmetry rather than working against it. The O Street address at 3214 gives Christopher Boutlier Interiors a position in the Georgetown residential neighborhood that the studio serves: the Federal-period and Victorian houses of the O Street block and the surrounding streets are the specific building types that the studio’s design practice addresses. The interior design project at a Georgetown home typically begins with the architectural survey of the existing conditions: the ceiling heights, the window dimensions, the fireplace scale, and the floor plan proportions that the existing building provides. The designer who starts from the building’s specific conditions, rather than imposing a design concept onto a generic residential brief, produces the Georgetown interior that feels like it belongs in the neighborhood. Christopher Boutlier Interiors’ position on O Street makes the studio a Georgetown neighbor to its clients as well as their designer, which is the kind of professional relationship that the neighborhood expects. Hours run Monday through Friday by appointment.