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"View Slideshow\n\nIt&amp;#39;s not uncommon for people to retain the services of a trusted doctor or lawyer\u2014or an accountant, or even an auto mechanic\u2014over a period of decades. Such relationships can come to seem almost familial, built as they are on the same foundation of intimate knowledge, cooperation, honesty and faith that characterizes our actual blood ties.\n\nBut an interior designer? On call for nearly 30 years? By clients who haven&amp;#39;t moved in all that time?\n\nStrange as it may sound, Susan Zises Green is just such a designer. She first met a pair of Connecticut clients 27 years ago and was happy enough to do some work on their 1939 Georgian-style farmhouse in New Canaan. Something clicked. Green became more than the couple&amp;#39;s decorator; she became a fixture, someone who stood alongside them at every stage of their life inside the house. When she first met them, the clients&amp;#39; two children were just learning how to ride bicycles; today they&amp;#39;re launching careers and getting married. &amp;quot;We&amp;#39;ve all grown up together,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;We were young when we started. Now\u2009...well, we&amp;#39;re young at heart.&amp;quot;\n\nDuring that time she has been in charge of a single ongoing project: the evolution of a family home. As styles changed, she was brought in to refresh rooms and bring them up to date; when the children graduated from their preteen to their adolescent sensibilities, she helped with that delicate transition; when a beloved dog began to chew on the upholstery, she, like her clients, took it in stride. A family room, which was added to the house along with a kitchen in the mid-1980s by the architectural firm Shope Reno Wharton, is now in its second iteration. At nearly 9,000 square feet, the house is large enough that the husband has likened its perpetual renovation to repairs made on the gargantuan Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York. &amp;quot;He jokes that as soon as one side of the house is finished, it&amp;#39;s time to redo the other side,&amp;quot; says the designer.\n\nIn its most recent incarnation, the house projects the hard-won comfort that emerges when kids have grown up and taken flight\u2014and when relaxing and entertaining become the primary activities. The living and family rooms, however they may have been used when the children were at center stage, are now decidedly adult spaces, where antiques such as a George III parcel-gilt side table or a William IV upholstered bench needn&amp;#39;t fear the dangers posed by Matchbox cars or jelly-stained fingers.\n\nA sunroom off the living room had never really lived up to its potential. &amp;quot;My clients told me that they never used it,&amp;quot; says Green, who transformed it into a bright, inviting haven with a mix of informal elements (sisal rugs, paint the color of bursting sunflowers) and antiques, including some Regency benches and a pair of Georgian side chairs. The room now feels like a natural extension of the adjacent living room, and, says Green, &amp;quot;they use it every day.&amp;quot;\n\nThe master suite is designed as a refuge, a place into which the clients can disappear and feel as if they&amp;#39;ve escaped from the onslaught of everyday headaches. True to her belief that every aspect of the clients should be taken into consideration, Green even factored in their personal coloring when determining the palette. &amp;quot;She&amp;#39;s redheaded; he has sandy-colored hair; they&amp;#39;re both very fair,&amp;quot; says Green, who found clever ways to reference these attributes throughout.\n\nBut a pair of guest rooms are all about bold whimsy. In both, it&amp;#39;s as if colors\u2014pink and blue, respectively\u2014are bleeding through the floors, walls, ceiling and furnishings. The rooms are playful and daring at the same time, happy to elicit from first-time guests a sharp gasp of breath and then ... a smile. Singling out the pink room for discussion, Green explains her choice. &amp;quot;My clients were very anxious about putting wallpaper on the ceiling. I convinced them that there were so many angles, so many different levels of ceiling, in that room, that it would really be very cocoonlike to have paper all over. They trusted me and went along with it. Now it&amp;#39;s one of their favorite rooms in the house.&amp;quot;\n\nFor their part, the clients are grateful to have a designer traveling with them through the different phases of their adult lives. And they&amp;#39;re grateful to have it be someone like Susan Zises Green, whose instincts are unerring and who embraces new ideas readily. &amp;quot;What she&amp;#39;s so good at,&amp;quot; says the wife, &amp;quot;is anticipating how we&amp;#39;ve evolved. We&amp;#39;ve altered our lifestyles. We entertain very differently now. Susan understands how we may have enjoyed certain things in the past, but when our tastes do change, she helps us change things in a wonderful, magical way. Because she really knows us.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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