Interior Design for Virginia Data Center Housing

Google's $9 billion Virginia investment, announced in August 2025, reaches both ends of this corridor. Loudoun County was one of the sites expanding as part of that plan, and in Chesterfield County, outside Richmond, Google announced a new data center under the same investment.

Northern Virginia already holds a very large data center base: inventory topped 4,900 megawatts at the end of the first quarter of 2025, according to JLL, and Loudoun County reported approximately 233 existing data center buildings as of March 1, 2026. The people who build, run and maintain it need places to live: construction trades who come for a project, technicians and operations staff who stay, and the wider Washington commuter workforce competing for the same apartments. Around Richmond, growth is concentrated in the suburban counties; in May 2026, QTS was reported to be planning 17 new data center buildings across two campus expansions in Varina. Construction crews arrive first and operations and technician staff follow, which turns a burst of build-phase demand into steady rental demand.

For a developer or operator, timing is the practical point. The crew phase and the operations phase want different housing, and interior decisions made for one do not always carry over to the other.

The people moving into this housing include commuters, federal-contractor households, technicians and trades. They tend to want interiors that feel polished and lean traditional, and that keep looking that way under hard use.

The region supplies the vocabulary. Northern Virginia brings red brick, Georgian and Colonial Revival detailing, Piedmont stone and a horse-country palette of muted greens, warm brick reds and slate, taken from the rolling land and Blue Ridge views. Richmond adds Federal brick, Victorian rowhouse detail, iron, river stone and heart-pine tones, with a warehouse-conversion edge along the James River.

Climate sets the performance bar underneath all of it. Both metros get humid summers and icy winter days, so entries need walk-off flooring that handles salt and slush, and upholstery and window treatments have to tolerate humidity.

The decision most owners wrestle with is how far to lean traditional. Push too far and a new building reads dated quickly; stay too neutral and it looks like every other new building on the corridor. Our usual answer is a quiet, classic base in the permanent finishes, with regional character carried by lighting, art and textiles.

Design for both ends of the corridor runs from our Irvine office, and Virginia is already a state where we have completed work. Furniture, art and accessories ship to our own receiving warehouse in Southern California, where each piece is checked in and inspected, then held until the building is ready and sent out as one coordinated delivery instead of a string of vendor drop-offs at an active construction site.

At the property, we install with teams we work with across the United States, and one of our designers is there for the install to make placement calls in person. For an owner with buildings opening at both ends of the corridor, holding both orders in one place lets us time each delivery to that building's turnover date.

Virginia weather shapes the install plan as well. We schedule deliveries for when a building is closed in and conditioned, so upholstery, rugs and wood pieces never sit in summer humidity or a cold, damp shell.