Interior Designer in Haverford

JG Interior Design provides in-home interior design in Haverford, PA (19041), the Main Line community that straddles Lower Merion and Haverford townships, led by Julia Ginzburg. She updates early twentieth-century stone homes, Tudors, Victorians, and twins for modern life without stripping their character, starting with a Fresh Eyes Visit and a written plan in 48 hours.

Haverford, between Ardmore and Bryn Mawr

Haverford is one of the older Main Line stops, sitting along Lancaster Avenue and the Paoli/Thorndale rail line between Ardmore to the east and Bryn Mawr to the west. It is not a borough or a township of its own. The 19041 address crosses a county line, with part of Haverford in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, and part in Haverford Township, Delaware County. Neighbors on either side of that line often do not think about it until the tax bill arrives.

Haverford is also easy to mix up with Havertown, which is a separate community inside Haverford Township with its own ZIP code, 19083, and a very different housing stock of mostly twins, rowhomes, and mid-century singles. This page is about Haverford, the Main Line community around Haverford College and Lancaster Avenue.

The college sets much of the tone. Haverford College, founded by Quakers in 1833, has a large, green, wooded campus right in the middle of the community, and the quiet, leafy, settled feel of the surrounding streets owes a lot to it. The homes around it tend to be older, solidly built, and owned for a long time.

The homes of Haverford

A great deal of Haverford was built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the railroad made the Main Line a place to live year round rather than a summer retreat. Builders favored local stone, generous rooms, and formal plans. Later decades filled in the gaps with smaller houses and mid-century homes. What you get today is a mix where character is everywhere and the floor plans were mostly drawn for a different century.

• Stone colonial revivals. The classic Main Line house. Thick stone walls, deep window wells, a center stair, and formal rooms on either side. Beautiful, solid, and often darker inside than their owners would like.
• Tudor revivals. Steep roofs, leaded or divided-light windows, dark beams, and plaster walls. They have huge charm and a tendency to feel heavy, especially in winter.
• Victorians and older shingle-style homes. Tall ceilings, bay windows, porches, and many small rooms, built for a household that ran on formality and, in larger houses, household staff.
• Twins and smaller older homes. Closer to the train and Lancaster Avenue. Narrower plans, shared walls, and every room asked to do more than one job.
• Mid-century and later homes. Some built on land subdivided from larger properties. Lighter and more open, but sometimes feeling plain next to the older houses on the street.

Many of the larger older houses were planned around a way of life that no longer exists: back stairs, butler's pantries, small closed kitchens tucked away from the family rooms, and formal parlors that once served a purpose and now mostly hold furniture. None of that is a flaw. It is just the starting point.

The Haverford problem: beautiful, but dark and formal

Ask Haverford homeowners what bothers them about a house they love and you hear the same few things. It is dark. The rooms feel formal and stiff. The kitchen is cut off from where everyone wants to be. The furniture they inherited or brought from the last house is heavy, and the house is heavy too, so the two together feel like a museum rather than a home.

Stone walls and deep window wells are the main reason for the darkness. Thick masonry pushes the glass back into the wall, and less daylight reaches the middle of the room. Add dark-stained trim, period wallpaper, and a single ceiling fixture in each room, and even a south-facing living room can feel dim by mid-afternoon in winter.

You do not fix that by painting everything white and ripping out the trim. That erases the reason you bought the house. The better approach is to work with the architecture: warm, light wall colors that respect the woodwork, window treatments that frame the windows without blocking glass, mirrors and reflective surfaces placed where they bounce light rather than just decorate, and layered lamps and wall lights at several heights so rooms stay warm after dark. Done carefully, the house still reads as itself, only lighter and easier to live in.

Inherited furniture and a modern life

Homes in Haverford often hold a lot of history: a grandmother's dining set, a wall of books, art collected over decades, rugs that have moved between three houses. Keeping those pieces is often the right call. They give the house depth that nothing new can buy. The trouble comes when everything is kept and nothing is edited, so each room holds too much, and the good pieces get lost among the rest.

A large part of Julia's work in older Main Line homes is that edit. She looks at what you already own first and names the pieces worth building a room around. Then she fills the gaps with a few current pieces, a sofa that is actually comfortable, better lighting, a lighter rug, so the old and new set each other off instead of competing. Books are a good example. A wall of them can make a room or bury it. Arranged with some breathing room and a few objects, a bookcase becomes the best thing in the room. There is more on that in this guide to styling a bookshelf.

Room by room in a Haverford home

The living room with the fireplace

Usually the best-proportioned room in the house and often the least used. The fireplace sits on the short wall, the windows are deep, and the furniture ends up lined up against the walls facing nothing in particular. Pulling seating into a real conversation group around the fireplace, with lamps at the right heights, is often enough to bring the room back into daily use.

The dining room

A formal dining room with a chandelier and a heavy set can still earn its keep. Many families now use it as a homework room, a puzzle table, or a place for long weekend dinners. The trick is making it comfortable for everyday use while keeping it ready to host: better chairs, a dimmable fixture, softer textiles.

The kitchen and the butler's pantry

In many older Haverford homes, the kitchen was originally a service space, closed off and at the back. Whether the answer is a full redesign or a smarter use of the existing room, the goal is a kitchen that connects to the family. A butler's pantry can be one of the most useful rooms in the house when it is planned as a coffee station, a bar, or overflow storage.

The study or library

Plenty of Haverford homes have a small room off the hall that suits a study. With a proper desk light, closed storage for the paperwork, and a chair you can actually read in, it becomes one of the most loved rooms in the house.

The sunroom or sleeping porch

Many older Main Line houses have an enclosed porch or sunroom that turned into a storage room. With the right furniture and some thought about light control, it can be the brightest, most relaxed room you have.

Renovating, or finishing what is already done

Some Haverford projects start after a contractor has opened up the kitchen, added a family room, or restored a porch. The construction is finished and the new space still does not feel connected to the old house. That last stage, choosing lighting, window treatments, rugs, furniture, and a palette that ties new to old, is what Julia's post-renovation interior design covers.

Others are getting ready to sell a home they have lived in for years. In that case the job changes. Staging is about how the house photographs and how buyers move through it, and in an older home that often means editing a great deal and letting the architecture show. Julia's Main Line home staging explains how that works.

What a Fresh Eyes Visit actually looks like

Most projects begin with one visit. Julia spends about ninety minutes in your home, walking it room by room and listening to what feels off before she suggests anything. Owners of older Haverford houses rarely need to be talked into anything big. They need someone to name the two or three changes per room that will make it feel lighter and more like theirs, and to tell them what to keep.

Within 48 hours you get a written, prioritized plan: layout, lighting, the pieces worth buying and the ones you own worth keeping, all in a sensible order and against a budget. You can carry it out yourself over time or bring Julia back to source and install. Either way, you leave with clarity, and if you do not, you do not pay. To talk through scope before booking, start with an interior design consultation on the Main Line.

What Haverford homeowners actually pay

For the full breakdown, see what an interior designer costs. If your project is simple or you would rather start remotely, Julia also offers virtual interior design with the same prioritized plan.

Serving Haverford and the Main Line

Julia works across the Main Line, and Haverford sits in the older eastern stretch of it, where the houses and the design questions are much alike. She designs regularly next door in Ardmore and Bryn Mawr, and close by in Narberth and Gladwyne.

Frequently asked questions