Inside a personal branding session with Conifer interior designer Jacqui Angelo, whose work with Dahlia Interiors brings the design perspective to major remodels and renovations through Blue Leaf Design Build.
I met Jacqui Angelo through Mountain Women in Business and then, as so often happens up here in our little foothills community, kept crossing paths with her through the Conifer Area Chamber of Commerce. And somewhere along the way, she became a friend.
I've watched Jacqui get involved in this community in a way I really admire. She doesn't just show up for her own business. She gives her time to Bootstraps and various nonprofits and causes she cares about, and she's one of those people who genuinely wants to be part of making this place we all live and work in better.
So when I had the chance to photograph her brand at the beginning of 2025, I already knew Jacqui.
But getting to watch her work was different.
I got to see her completely in her element. Talking design. Walking through spaces and getting genuinely excited about these really big projects and what they could become. And I remember thinking, Ohhhh. This is her thing. She really loves this work.
From 30 years in nursing to interior design
Before becoming an interior designer, Jacqui spent three decades in nursing. Thirty years!
I think that's such an interesting part of her story because this isn't necessarily the career path you'd expect to lead to interior design. But the more I listen to Jacqui talk about what matters to her in a home, the more I wonder if those two chapters are really as disconnected as they might seem.
She notices how people experience a space. How they move through it. How something feels when you touch it. Whether the lighting feels right. Whether a room actually works for the people who live there.
Today, Jacqui brings that perspective to Dahlia Interiors, her interior design business here in Conifer and the design arm of Blue Leaf Design Build, the larger remodeling and construction company she runs alongside her husband, Phil.
Phil has more than 30 years of experience as a residential remodeling general contractor, and together they take on some pretty substantial projects throughout the Colorado foothills.
These aren't necessarily projects where someone wants to swap out a countertop and choose a new paint color. They can be major renovations where you're rethinking how a home works and rebuilding it around the people who actually live there.
And that's where I loved getting to watch Jacqui and Phil together.
Phil brings decades of building and remodeling experience to the project, and Jacqui is looking at that same home through the interior design lens. How is this family actually going to use the kitchen? Does the flow make sense? What materials belong here? What did the homeowner tell us they wanted this place to feel like when everything was finally done?
The building and the design are part of the same conversation. And for their branding session, we got to photograph that story from two very different sides.
A finished renovation and one very much in progress
One thing I knew when we started planning Jacqui's branding session was that her actual work needed to be part of the photographs. Putting her in a pretty studio wouldn't have told me nearly enough about her.
We started inside one of Blue Leaf Design Build's finished client renovations, surrounded by the actual spaces Jacqui had helped design.
One of my favorite images from that part of the session is pretty simple. Jacqui and Phil are standing together at the kitchen counter with blueprints spread between them, heads bent toward the plans. I love that photograph.
Not just because they're standing in a beautiful kitchen, but because it feels like them.
This is a husband and wife who have built a business together and are still right there in it. Looking at plans. Talking through the work. Bringing two different kinds of experience to the same project.
We photographed Jacqui with her team there, too, because she isn't doing this alone. The people working alongside her are part of what makes Dahlia and Blue Leaf what they are, and it mattered to me that they showed up in the story.
Then we went somewhere completely different. We headed to Evergreen to photograph Jacqui and Phil at a major renovation project they had just gutted entirely. And this one wasn't pretty...yet. It was in that messy, in-between stage where you have to look past what is physically in front of you and somehow see what it is going to become.
The dogs came along, too. Of course they did. And honestly, I loved photographing this part just as much. I got to watch Jacqui walk through a space that most of us would probably look at and think, Well...there's a lot going on here. And she sees possibilities.
How Jacqui wants a home to feel
When I asked Jacqui how she wants a client to feel when they finally walk into a finished space, her answer was so specific that I immediately pictured it.
She wants someone to run their hand across a surface and think, this feels so good. She wants the lighting to feel warm and natural. She wants the person standing there to recognize the feeling they were trying to describe to her all those months before, back when the project was still conversations and ideas.
I love that. Because yes, Jacqui creates beautiful spaces.
Her own design style leans mountain modern, which feels pretty dang appropriate for an interior designer living and working in Conifer, Colorado. She loves clean lines and natural wood. Organic stone and earthy tones show up in the spaces she's naturally drawn toward.
But what I found more interesting is how excited she gets about designing something that isn't necessarily her own personal style.
She has a mid-century modern project coming up that she lit up talking about, and now I kind of need to see every photo when it's done.
She isn't trying to leave every client with a house that looks like Jacqui designed it. She's trying to understand what they see in their heads and help them get there.
Interior design is a whole lot more than picking pretty things
This was probably one of my favorite parts of talking with Jacqui because I think it's easy to look at interior design from the outside and assume a lot of the work is choosing beautiful things. Tile. Fixtures. Paint colors. Sure, those decisions happen.
But Jacqui's job starts much deeper than that. She told me about recently meeting with a prospective client whose existing kitchen simply didn't work. The homeowner loves to cook, but the layout and flow of the kitchen made actually using it frustrating. That's the kind of thing a trained designer notices.
Not just, What would look prettier here? But, How is this person actually going to live here?
Jacqui is thinking about where someone moves while they're cooking. Whether there's enough clearance. Whether the layout makes sense. How the materials are actually going to hold up once real people are living with them every day.
And lately, there's another layer to this conversation. AI-generated interior renderings are everywhere. You can ask AI to give you an absolutely gorgeous image of a dream kitchen in about thirty seconds. But can you actually build it? That's a very different question.
A rendering doesn't necessarily account for whether you have enough room to move around an island or whether a particular layout works with the structure that's already there. It doesn't know the family who will wake up and use that kitchen every morning. And it definitely didn't sit across the table from them and listen while they tried to explain what they wanted their home to feel like.
That still matters.
This is the part of brand photography I love
Looking back at Jacqui's session now, more than a year later, I think this is why these photographs still feel so much like her to me.
Yes, we were surrounded by beautiful design. But I wasn't there just to photograph the rooms. I was there to photograph Jacqui inside the work.
I wanted the finished renovation because it showed what she and the Blue Leaf team are capable of creating. But I also wanted the blueprints on the counter. I wanted Jacqui talking with Phil and interacting with her team. I wanted the unfinished Evergreen project and the part where you have to use your imagination a little.
Because when someone is thinking about hiring Jacqui, they're not just choosing the kitchen they saw in a portfolio. They're choosing her.
They're trusting her to walk into their home, listen to what isn't working and understand what they're trying to create, even when they aren't quite sure how to put it into words themselves.
And that is the story I want someone's branding photographs to tell.
Coming back to this story
It's been more than a year since we made these images. Her work keeps moving. Projects that were once plans are becoming real spaces, and there are completely new ones taking shape. I'm secretly manifesting she wants to do another session in one of her redesigns (did I say that out loud?!)
Truthfully, I have wanted to come back to this session because Jacqui is someone I feel really fortunate to know beyond the camera. I've watched her show up in our Conifer community. I've watched her give her time and energy to organizations she believes in. And I've gotten to see what happens when you put her inside a space and let her start talking about design. She lights up.
I admire that about her. I admire the career she's built, but I think even more than that, I admire the way she shows up for the people and community around her.
So Jacqui, thank you for trusting me to step into this part of your world and tell a little piece of the story. And now I really need to see what you and Phil do with that Evergreen house.
Looking for an interior designer in Conifer or the Colorado foothills? Jacqui Angelo is the interior designer behind Dahlia Interiors, the design arm of Blue Leaf Design Build in Conifer, Colorado. Together, Jacqui and Phil Angelo work with homeowners on major remodels and renovations throughout the Colorado foothills, bringing interior design and experienced residential construction together under one roof.
Click the following link to learn more about Jacqui's work with Dahlia Interiors and Blue Leaf Design Build.
Photography by Kristin McGlone of McGlone Photography, a personal branding photographer serving Conifer, Evergreen, Denver and the Colorado foothills.
