Timeless Design

Interior designer Holly Holden describes Virginia as the Mecca for traditional style.

Holly Holden – Portrait by Gabriella Narus

Decades ago, as a political science major at Mt. Vernon College in Washington, D.C., the now internationally acclaimed interior designer and author Holly Holden envisioned a very different future for herself. “One reason I went there was because I could work on [Capitol] Hill. There were internships, and it was wonderful,” recalls Holden. “I just envisioned myself marrying a senator and living on the Hill, and thank heavens I didn’t do that!”

The daughter of a British father and a mother with a passion for entertaining, Holden lived in Germany, Taiwan, D.C., and Virginia as a child. 

She spent her formative years in Richmond attending St. Catherine’s School. “My dear classmates lived in stunningly designed houses, so firsthand I was smitten with Chippendale sofas and tall tester beds,” she says. “Touring notable historic houses like Monticello, Woodlawn, Kenmore, Wilton House, and Dumbarton Oaks, and being a houseguest at Stratford Hall, all contributed to my appreciation for the decorative details and architecture of these grand abodes.” She says she was essentially learning design by osmosis.

So, it wasn’t entirely surprising that when college friends studying interior design were struggling with assignments, she eagerly chimed in to help them. “It was so easy,” Holden says, laughing. “I guess sometimes when you’re good at something, you just don’t really realize you are.” However, it wasn’t until she had married, completed a business degree at the University of Richmond, and moved to Connecticut that she would turn her talent for creating elegant and timeless designs into the successful business she has nurtured over the past 30 years.

And even then, her career unfolded in an unexpected way. As a newlywed, Holden renovated her first home, a former candy store built in 1860 in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Friends kept asking her how she knew how to transform a house so beautifully and what her sources were. “That kind of put the thought into my mind, that I could actually do this,” says Holden. By the time she and her husband, Stuart, had moved to their second home—an even older home just down the street that also demanded her talents as a designer—she was ready when a friend in the Junior League suggested that they go into the interior design business together. The pair took part in a designer show house featuring noted interior designer Mario Buratta, and their dressing room design drew attention from the press. “Everything just sort of took off from there,” says Holden.

Subtle and often overlooked, proportion is displayed by this formal table, where tall tapers, candelabra, and vases balance the table’s length and add elegance without blocking guests’ views. Photo courtesy of Nivenbreen.

She bought out her partner Susan Peterson’s interest in the business when the latter moved, and Holden-Peterson Design became Holly Holden and Company. 

In an industry that often relies on fleeting trends for direction to create pleasing and inviting living environments, Holden has embraced the unwavering foundation of classic style with a mantra, “Decorate once … for a lifetime.” Although she lives in New England, she is influenced by “the gentility of Southern culture” and describes Virginia as a “Mecca for traditional style. The principles of Georgian architecture are prevalent in many of the historic houses, plantations, and country estates. … Symmetry, balance, and proportion enrich an overall appealing aesthetic. To me, this is what makes the exteriors timelessly traditional and the interiors inviting and timeless. This is, in essence, what I adore and enthusiastically instill in my design projects. … I feel at home when I enter these houses. There is a palpable sense of gracious hospitality from the past that greets my inner psyche, giving me great joy! This is what I attempt to translate into my interior design.”

Photo courtesy of Holly Holden.

In addition to her work for clients all over the world, Holden has executive produced and hosted a public television series, You Are Cordially Invited, which earned an Emmy nomination for an episode at Great Britain’s Highclere Castle—better known as the setting for the popular series Downton Abbey. She has also written two interior design books. The Pretty and Proper Living Room, published in 2013 and now in its second printing, was inspired by her daughter Alexandra’s frequent requests for guidance when setting up her “first big girl house.” The second, Pearls of Palm Beach, was released just last year and provides a peek inside eight exquisite family homes in Florida.

Holden explains that she was enthralled by the “understated elegance that is the perfect expression of grace in each house.” She underscores that refined interiors should never eclipse comfortable and welcoming design. “Perfect design should tell a story,” she says. “People are creatures who instinctively feel if a place is comfortable or not. I like to make certain that a person is comfortable with their interiors, and if they are comfortable, their guests will feel comfortable.”

Several years ago Holden also launched a weekly e-newsletter, Mummy’s Monday Manners, which she describes as an invitation into the “unwritten world of manners and etiquette.” Like many of her projects, it is rooted in an endearing story: Her son and his friends, who were living in Manhattan, started asking her questions like, “How do you serve and clear the plates from the dining room table at a dinner party?” and “Where do you seat your guest or guests of honor at a dinner party?”

“It’s been wonderful to write these lessons for lovely living, not just about etiquette, based on what my mother taught me,” says Holden.

Although she lives in Connecticut, Holden still spends time in Virginia. She mentions recents stays at The Williamsburg Inn (“a place that holds many marvelous memories for me. … My parents would take me there on the weekends to admire the gardens and architecture”) and The Inn at Little Washington. She describes the latter as “one of our most favorite inns in America,” saying that “the practice of polite, gracious hospitality transported me back to the essence of why I love Virginia. A genteel way of living still exists and is practiced.” HollyHolden.com

This article originally appeared in the April 2021 issue.