Design-led · Portland-based · est. 2025
ElliotCalloway
Interior & Renovation Designer
Room-by-room design and renovation, from a Portland desk. My co-founder Soren reviews the plans; I work on what happens inside them — light, materials, flow, and the small moves that make a finished home feel like the one you pictured. My job here is simple: show you how a space actually lives once the walls are up.
The Story
The project that really taught me my job wasn't a build — it was a redo. A young couple had just moved into a brand-new, perfectly-drawn townhouse, and six months in they still couldn't settle in the living room. Nothing was wrong on the plan. Everything was wrong in the room: the daylight landed in the wrong place, the only good sofa wall faced a blank corner, and the open kitchen echoed every dinner conversation into the rafters.
A good plan and a good room are not the same thing.
I trained in interior design and spent my early years on new-build interiors and finish packages — the glossy part. That townhouse pushed me toward the harder, more honest work: renovation and right-fixing. Not gut jobs for their own sake, but the targeted moves that make a finished space finally work — relocating the light, fixing the flow, choosing materials that age warmly instead of loudly.
By 2021 most of my work was interiors and renovation studies: kitchens sized to the cook, living rooms that actually gather people, bedrooms built for rest, and the in-between rooms — entries, mudrooms, reading nooks — that quietly decide whether a home feels calm or chaotic.
I started writing it down, and then I met Soren Whitlock — a working architect obsessed with the same idea from the other side of the wall. We launched Home Plans Ideas together in 2025: he takes the plans, I take the rooms. Honest design studies, real before-and-after transformations, and the room-by-room thinking that turns a good house into a home you don't want to leave.
The Four Pillars
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01
The Room, Not the Render
A space has to work at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday, not only in a styled photo. I judge every room by how it is actually lived in — not how it shoots.
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02
Light First, Finishes Second
Where daylight lands decides a room long before any paint color does. Get the light and the flow right, and the materials almost choose themselves.
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03
Renovate the Right 20%
Most rooms don't need a gut job — they need the few targeted changes that unlock the rest. I look for the smallest move with the biggest payoff.
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04
Warm Modern, Always
Clean and modern should still receive you. Texture, wood, and a little softness keep a minimal room from reading cold or clinical.
Areas of Expertise
Kitchens & Baths
The hardest-working rooms in the house — layout, storage, lighting, and the finishes that survive daily use without going cold.
Living & Dining
Gather-worthy rooms: seating that actually works, honest sight lines, and the balance of comfort and calm that makes people stay.
Bedrooms & Kids
Restful primary suites and rooms that grow with a child — quiet, uncluttered, and built around how the day actually starts and ends.
Renovation Studies
Real before-and-after projects mapped move by move — what changed, what it took, and what the room gained for the effort.
Interior & Exterior Studies
Material, light and detail examined up close — facades, curb appeal, and the small moments that make a house read as finished.
Outdoor Rooms
Courtyards, porches and backyards treated as rooms — extending the living space past the walls and into the weather.
Where I Work
My desk is in Portland, but the rooms I design and the homes I write about pull me up and down the West Coast and across the modern-compact corridor. Climate, light, and the way people actually live reshape what a room needs — a Portland infill kitchen does not solve like a Bend mountain great-room, and a Seattle primary suite does not rest like a Boulder one.
Most of my projects and references land within this radius:
Portland, OR·Seattle, WA·Bend, OR·Eugene, OR·Tacoma, WA·Bellingham, WA·Boise, ID·Boulder, CO·Bozeman, MT·Salt Lake City, UT
The Journey
Into Interiors
Started in interior design — new-build interiors and finish packages, learning how materials, light and layout decide whether a room works.
The Renovation Turn
Moved from styling new builds to fixing finished ones — the targeted-renovation work that became the heart of what I do.
Portland, Room by Room
Settled in Portland, working almost entirely on interiors and renovation studies across the Northwest and the modern-compact corridor.
Started Writing
Began publishing room-by-room design studies and before-and-after breakdowns. The readers came faster than I expected.
Home Plans Ideas, Together
Co-founded Home Plans Ideas with architect Soren Whitlock. He takes the plans; I take the rooms. One home, covered from blueprint to finishes.
§ 06 — Connect
Find me where you scroll
Room-by-room design studies, real renovation before-and-afters, and warm-modern interior thinking — shared on the platforms you already use.