About Ioana

Ioana Tzatcheva was born and raised in Bulgaria and has lived in the U.S. since 1999, and has frequently travelled between her two homes, as well as to points in between and beyond. She loves to experience new lands and cultures especially through their nature, architecture, and visual arts. Visits to art museums, local designer show houses and historic homes cemented her interest in interior design. This wanderlust and desire to explore influence her practice of design.

She was born in a family of creators and DIYers. Engineer parents—a father who built the family’s summer home from the ground up, and a mother who sewed everything from female fashions to sofa slipcovers, along with an artist sister specializing in textiles, contributed to her education on how things are made, how they work together. It’s what gives Ioana the ability to walk into a room and immediately see what works and what doesn’t—and how to improve or correct it.

Since childhood, Ioana has loved to organize interiors and exteriors, and to do flower and seasonal arrangements. The houses she has lived in and decorated have garnered the compliments of friends and family who consult with her on décor decisions.

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An expansion of her house with a master bedroom suite, where she sourced all the décor elements and actively collaborated to develop and execute the design (with architect Luther Weber, construction manager Alair Homes – Arlington, and the various trades that were involved), was a winner of the Contractor of the Year (COTY) award from the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) Metro DC Chapter, published in the May/June 2020 issue of the Home & Design magazine (for DC, MD and VA). *Featured in The 2023 DC Metro Modern Home Tour 

While completing the New York Institute of Art and Design curriculum in interior design, her design projects (for a living room, dining room, and bedroom) earned high marks and delighted comments from her reviewer.

She qualified for her Decorating Den Interiors franchise after progressing through an extensive qualifying process and completing the company’s Professional Decorating and Sales School, along with other pre-business-opening training and ongoing professional development.

Ioana’s academic background includes a bachelor’s and master’s in literary studies from Sofia University in Bulgaria and a master’s degree in public communication from American University in D.C., followed by a long stint as a creative and results-oriented communications professional in a variety of corporate settings.

She brings these dynamic experiences in storytelling, project management and relationship building to her design work, as well as into her company’s values and business practices. It all starts with the clients and helping them realize a vision they have for their home. Ioana’s years of interviewing colleagues have taught her to ask the right questions and coax out information that would make a good story. Similarly, she uncovers how her clients live and applies the principles of design to express the story of their home—to set a stage for them to act out their lives in a coherent and harmonious environment.

And like good writing, good design is about selection and editing—boiling it down to the presence of objects and materials that are truly meaningful to their owner. And like good writing, good design is about beautifully executed compositions of sweeping curves and sharp angles, great sense of scale and proportion, taking clients’ preferences into consideration, but also willingness to take risks to create pleasantly cohesive spaces that are seemingly effortless, but in reality, are mindfully orchestrated.

Ioana stays current with best design practices, styles, trends and product lines, and has amassed a library of trade books to pour over in her spare time. A lifelong learner, she draws inspiration and energy from the world around her and applies that energy to satisfying clients’ needs artfully and thoughtfully.

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