St. Louis has architecture that other American cities would be envious of—the Craftsman bungalows of Webster Groves, the Queen Anne and Italianate homes of Lafayette Square, the grand brick colonials of Ladue and Clayton, the mid-century moderns tucked into the hills of Frontenac. Designing interiors for historic homes is one of the most satisfying challenges in this work. It’s also one of the most commonly botched. The two failure modes are mirror opposites: treating the house as a museum, frozen in its original period; or treating it as a blank canvas and destroying everything that makes it worth owning.

First: identify what’s original and what’s been added

Most St. Louis historic homes have been through multiple owners and multiple renovations. The first job is always triage: what is original and irreplaceable, what is a period addition that has become part of the home’s character, and what is later modification with no relationship to the home’s authentic identity?

Original elements to protect at nearly all cost: original millwork (baseboard, crown, door and window casings), original hardwood floors, original built-ins, original hardware, any original plasterwork or decorative ceilings. These are what make a historic home irreplaceable.

The millwork question

In pre-war St. Louis homes, the millwork is often the most valuable thing in the room. Wide baseboards, built-up crown molding, paneled doors with original hardware, deep window surrounds with interior sills wide enough to sit on—these create the proportional language of the interior. Everything else in the room should respond to them.

For painted millwork in historic homes, I almost always recommend a warm white—Farrow & Ball Pointing, Benjamin Moore White Dove, or Sherwin-Williams Alabaster—against a wall color with enough body to make the trim read as architectural. The millwork should frame the room. The color on the walls should fill it.

Bringing contemporary furniture into historic rooms

The principle I work from: contemporary furniture reads beautifully in historic rooms when the contemporary pieces are honest about their own time and the historic elements are allowed to anchor the space. A clean-lined linen sofa in a room with original crown molding creates productive tension—both elements are clearly of their moment, and they respect each other. A reproduction Victorian settee in the same room just creates confusion about whose house it is.

Antique and vintage pieces work beautifully for the same reason—they’re honest about their origin. A 1930s French armchair in a 1910 Craftsman reads as layered and collected. A brand-new reproduction of the same chair reads as costume.

Color in historic homes

Period-correct paint colors are often more saturated and complex than contemporary taste expects. The Victorians used deep, rich colors—forest greens, burgundies, golds, complex blues—and they were right to do so. A contemporary cool gray in a Victorian parlor flattens everything and makes the ornate millwork look stranded. You don’t have to paint your 1890 home in period-correct colors, but the principle that historic homes benefit from more color, more saturation, and more complexity than modern interiors generally holds.

The best St. Louis historic homes I’ve designed feel like they’ve always been exactly the way they are. That comes from listening to what the architecture is telling you, and then responding to it rather than overriding it.

Rachel Blindauer is an award-winning interior designer based in St. Louis with projects across the United States and internationally. Book a consultation at rachelblindauer.com.

I have designed homes in San Francisco, Sarasota, Nantucket, and internationally. I have walked into rooms built in 1890 and rooms built last year. But I keep returning to St. Louis, because this city has something most design markets don’t: genuine character baked into its bones. And genuine character demands a different kind of attention.

This is not a guide for people who want to decorate their St. Louis home the way they saw it done in a California design magazine. This is a guide for people who want their home to work—beautifully, practically, and specifically here.

The humidity problem nobody talks about

St. Louis summers are punishing on certain materials. What looks gorgeous in a Palm Beach showroom can warp, crack, or swell in a Missouri July. Before I specify any solid wood furniture for a St. Louis client, I ask two questions: Is the home well air-conditioned? And do they open the windows?

The answers change everything. Solid hardwoods with tight joinery—walnut, white oak, cherry—perform beautifully in a climate-controlled home. But if a client loves cross-breezes in June, I lean toward quarter-sawn oak (dimensionally more stable) or furniture with engineered wood cores and solid wood faces. Beautiful and durable are not in conflict. You just have to know the conditions.

The same logic applies to upholstery. Velvet—which I love dearly—shows every impression, every water spot, every paw print with more drama in high-humidity environments. In St. Louis, I balance velvet accents with performance-weave or high-count linen on the pieces that take daily use. The velvet still makes the room. It just doesn’t carry it alone.

The light here is different—and most designers don’t account for it

Midwestern light is not coastal light. It doesn’t bounce off water. It doesn’t have the golden warmth of a California afternoon or the sharp clarity of a Nantucket morning. St. Louis light—especially in older homes with deep window surrounds and covered porches—tends to be filtered, indirect, and slightly warm.

This is good news if you know what to do with it. Warm, filtered light makes earthy neutrals sing—putty whites, warm greige, soft taupe read rich rather than muddy. Walnut furniture and amber textiles feel like evening even at noon.

What it doesn’t do is flatter cool, bright colors. That icy white you saw in a Malibu magazine shoot? In a north-facing St. Louis living room, it reads lavender-gray in winter. Those pale-blue kitchen cabinets? Depending on your exposure, they look dingy by 3pm in February. I always ask clients to live with paint samples for a full week—morning light, afternoon light, evening lamp light—before committing. St. Louis light rewards patience.

The architecture here is irreplaceable—treat it that way

One of the most common mistakes I see in St. Louis is homeowners trying to make their 1910 Craftsman or their 1955 brick ranch look like something it isn’t. The proportions of original St. Louis architecture are specific and meaningful: high ceilings in pre-war homes, smaller windows in mid-century ranches, deeply inset doorways, brick columns on porches with a particular rhythm. When you fight those proportions, you lose. When you work with them, you win completely.

In a Webster Groves foursquare from 1908, the right move is almost always to honor the trim. Paint it white if it’s oak with filler in the grain, or strip it if the wood is worthy—but don’t replace it with something more modern. Those proportions are the reason the room has presence. In a mid-century ranch in Creve Coeur, the right move is usually the opposite: remove the fussy additions later owners installed—the ornate valances, the oversized fireplace surrounds—and let the horizontal elegance of the original architecture breathe again.

Know what you have before you try to change it. St. Louis has extraordinary architectural bones. Most of it just needs editing, not replacement.

What the Midwestern lifestyle actually demands from a home

St. Louis families use their homes. This is not a city where people host for show. People gather here with genuine hospitality—big Sunday dinners, kids running through the house, dogs underfoot, neighbors staying late. A beautiful home in St. Louis has to be a livable home, or it’s just a showroom nobody uses.

This shapes how I specify materials differently here. I look for performance fabrics that are cleanable and durable at the same level I look for beautiful ones. Wool rugs perform brilliantly in St. Louis interiors—durable, forgiving of spills, beautiful for decades. Stone and quartz countertops over marble in kitchens that actually cook. None of this means sacrificing beauty. It means building beauty that lasts—which is the only kind worth having.

The neighborhoods have personalities—and your design should respond to them

Clayton wants to be elegant. Webster Groves wants to feel settled and smart. The Hill wants warmth and tradition. Ladue wants understated luxury that doesn’t announce itself. Lafayette Square wants historical romance. Kirkwood wants cheerful livability. These aren’t stereotypes—they’re the accumulated personality of a neighborhood’s architecture, topography, and community character.

I pay attention to these personalities not because design should be generic to location, but because the best interiors are in conversation with their context. The most satisfying rooms feel inevitable. They feel like they belong exactly where they are.

Rachel Blindauer is an award-winning interior designer based in St. Louis, Missouri, with projects across the United States and internationally. Book a consultation at rachelblindauer.com.