Cheryl Clendenon
Principal Designer • Creative Director • Business Strategist
Cheryl Clendenon is an award-winning interior designer with 26 years of full-time, nonstop industry experience and the principal of In Detail Interiors, a design firm known for highly detailed work, complex problem-solving, and a disciplined approach to both creativity and execution.
She is a designer first. Always.
Cheryl is actively involved in the architectural and spatial thinking behind every project her firm takes on. Overseeing layout, flow, function, and the decisions that shape how a home is built, renovated, or transformed. Her team has earned numerous industry awards, including two recent 2025 Designer of the Year honors from the Interior Design Society.
What Clients Come to Cheryl For
Clients don’t come to Cheryl Clendenon and her team for simply pretty things.
Clients hire her when they need:
- A difficult layout solved, not decorated around
- A remodel or new build guided with confidence and order
- A team approach with multiple creative minds working together instead of one person holding everything
- A designer who can translate “I don’t know what I want” into a real plan with real decisions
Her work is built for clients who value expertise, thoughtful leadership, and a process that prevents a project from turning into a rolling series of last-minute choices.
The Work: Design That Holds Together
The design process does not begin with a colorway, a piece of furniture, or a faucet. It’s about shaping how a home lives and how it moves, functions, and feels. Cheryl’s projects start with what many people skip:
- Scale and consideration for Architectural envelope
- Circulation and easy intuitive flow from one space to the next
- Sightlines and visual details
- Functional adjacencies to unify the entire home
- The way the house will actually be used for the specific occupants, not what Instagram may dictate
Then the aesthetic choices become powerful because they are built on a foundation that makes sense.This is why Cheryl’s work resonates with clients who care about more than a pretty reveal. The finished result has integrity because the thinking behind it has integrity.
How Cheryl Leads a Project
Projects lose momentum when decisions happen out of sequence, roles are unclear, and expectations are assumed instead of defined. That’s where friction and expensive detours tend to show up.
Cheryl’s process emphasizes:
- Establishing direction early, before a hundred decisions start stacking up
- Defining who owns which decisions
- Making choices in a deliberate order, not on impulse
- Solving creatively without turning the project into an experiment
- This approach keeps projects moving with confidence and helps clients enjoy the experience instead of feeling like they’re constantly trying to “catch up” to their own home.
Credentials & Recognition
- Cheryl Clendenon’s professional experience is grounded in active practice and decades of industry involvement:
- 26 years of full-time interior design experience
- 8 years of working with Designers and Architects as a Business Strategist
- Principal of a six-person + design firm
- Monthly columnist in the nationally published Home Accents Today Magazine for 5+ years
- 2025 & 2024 IDS Winner
- 2025 NKBA Global Connect Advisor – 1 of 12 Industry Subject Matter Experts
- 2022 ARTS Awards Design Studio Winner
- 2021 KBB Person of the Year
- 2021 DH Changemaker
- Nationally recognized Podcast for designers wanting to elevate their business hosted with her work wife, Liz. Damn Good Interior Designer.
- Board member Kitchen and Bath Business for 6 years
- SKS Design Council
- Silestone Trend Spotter
- DXV design panel
- KBDN 50 top Innovators
- Industry speaker, panelist, and design competition judge
- 25 years of National Kitchen and Bath Association Involvement
- Design work published in over 100 magazines including House Beautiful, Meredith Publications, Fine Homebuilding, Architectural Digest, Forbes, Martha Stewart, The Spruce, Southern Living, and many others
Beyond the Studio: Teaching the Work
Over time, Cheryl Clendenon’s creative approach to firm profitability, managing client expectations and project leadership began drawing attention from other design professionals.
What began as informal conversations became formal teaching and advisory work for established designers who wanted stronger operations and better profitability without sacrificing creative integrity. Part creative muse, part fractional CFO, and part guerilla marketer, today, coaching is an extension of Cheryl’s design practice and a passionate outreach to the design community.
The principles she teaches are the same ones she uses inside In Detail Interiors every day: disciplined thinking, defined responsibilities, and a process that supports strong outcomes.
(If you’re a design professional looking for Cheryl’s educational work, you’ll find it through The Interior Design Paradigm.)
A Note on Style
Cheryl is direct, fast-moving, and highly invested in critical thinking. She is not “woo woo.” She does not do vague. She prefers decisions that hold up under pressure.
Clients ( and designers!) who work best with Cheryl are the ones who want expert leadership, thoughtful collaboration, and a home that reflects who they are without turning the process into a committee meeting with the internet.
Life Outside the Work
Cheryl lives on a barrier island on Florida’s Gulf Coast with her husband. She is thrilled to work every day alongside her youngest daugt
