For the owners of a 1915 Capitol Hill row home, it was a chance encounter at an open house that set the wheel of fate in motion. “A woman sat down next to me and started speaking Italian,” relays the wife. “I happen to speak Italian, too, so we chatted about how beautiful the house was and how it had a definite soul. There was an energy in the house that I hadn’t experienced. Within 15 seconds of walking through the door, I knew we would buy it.”

The couple—he works in finance and she in tech—put in an offer, but theirs wasn’t the winning bid. One week later, they got a call from their realtor. Turns out the woman who spoke Italian was the best friend of the owner and convinced her to take the couple’s offer instead, based on their brief but memorable conversation. “I told her that I believe when you renovate a historic home, it’s something you do in partnership with the house,” shares the wife. “So I’ve tried to treat the house throughout this process like we are stewards and partners, and not owners dropping in for a few years and then leaving.”

Wanting to partner with a like-minded designer, she called Shannon Claire Smith of Shannon Claire Interiors, with whom she worked on a previous home. “When it comes to older houses, I always try to approach them with a lot of sensitivity,” says Smith. “I tend to focus first on what can be preserved instead of what can be changed.”

While the footprint of the 3,379-square-foot, four-bedroom house stayed intact, room designations shifted on the main level. Avid cooks, the couple wanted the kitchen moved from its rear location to the center of the house. Placing the dining room in the front parlor satisfied their desire for a more formal entertaining space, and bumping the living room to the back of the house created an intimate, British-style “snug” for relaxing. On the second floor, the primary bedroom annexed a smaller, adjacent bedroom to become an ensuite bath.

For inspiration, both designer and client bonded over their love of touring historic residences all over the world. As such, a timeless European sensibility is felt the moment you step inside, thanks to a grayscale Sandberg mural of an Old World cityscape. Just ahead, a hand-painted checkerboard floor delineates the central stair hall. “The floors are wood throughout, so I wanted to break up the space visually and draw attention to all the beautiful interior architecture,” explains Smith.

Millwork was either lovingly restored or painstakingly recreated: The dining room’s mantelpiece was preserved and a new built-in cabinet was added to mirror an existing one. While the kitchen is all new, both designer and client made sure it felt of-a-piece with the rest of the house. Inset cabinetry with decorative curved feet lends the appearance of fine furniture and feels era-appropriate for its architectural envelope.

When it was time to decide on a palette, the homeowner landed on an unusual source of inspiration. After taking a course in Paris on how to dress for her complexion and hair color, she discovered that deep jewel tones suited her and an idea began to take shape: “I thought about how cool it would be to someday redo a house with my colors in mind, so I wanted to incorporate some of those super-saturated tones,” she shares.

Those bolder hues come into focus as you progress toward the back of the house. Past the kitchen, an emerald green butler’s pantry is tucked away next to a floral-festooned powder room that’s the definition of a jewel box, thanks to its House of Hackney wallpaper. Beyond that, the snug’s wine-colored walls—cloaked in Farrow and Ball’s Brinjal—form a cozy scene paired with a herringbone brick floor and outdoor-style lantern. “I really wanted to lean into that European-meets-DC carriage house vibe,” says Smith.

Upstairs in the primary suite, the designer installed paneling to add interest to the walls before drenching the bedroom in Farrow & Ball’s Parma Gray and the bath in the brand’s French Gray. There, the marble floor tile possesses a sentimental significance. The ivory, camel and dove gray stripes evoke the Carolina Herrera gown the owner wore on her wedding day.

Stripes also happen to be a favorite motif of both Smith and the client, and they appear on repeat throughout: floating up the dining room walls, crossing the powder room and primary bath floors on the diagonal, wrapping a slipper chair in the bedroom and swathing a stool in the center hall. “We didn’t set out to have a striped house, but it became a running theme,” admits the wife. “It’s proof that if you fill your home with things you love, it will all somehow work.”

And work it does. “Everything just feels right,” sums up the wife, who with her husband just welcomed their first child. “You walk in to this house and there’s a happy, comfortable energy. I don’t really know how to describe it, except when you respect something, it pays you back.”