Some of the greatest women in interior design gathered to speak last week at the Women In Design Symposium, sponsored by Architectural Digest (AD) and The Women's Museum in Dallas. They shared their personal journeys, design philosophies, inspirations, and slides of the pioneering works that earned each of them a coveted place on AD's list of America's 100 greatest interior designers and decorators.

The reason the women were honored was that out of the "100," only 24 of the nation's top designers as chosen by AD are women.

Explained editor-in-chief Paige Rense, "Women don't want to retain the services of another woman to pick the twigs and leaves for their nest."

That means that for women to get ahead in the design business, they have to know how to run a business and that means pleasing clients. All of the designers who spoke agreed that without a great relationship with the client(s), the work will not turn out nearly as well.

If you're an AD junkie, you might recognize the names of the designers who gave presentations: Marjorie Shushan, Emily Summers, Mimi London, Jennifer Post, and Laura Hunt. As introduced by Architectural Digest editor-in-chief Paige Rense, the women honored at the symposium have the four essentials to produce great interiors: integrity; vision; commitment; and, passion.

Illustrating an astonishing range of talent derived from equally diverse backgrounds in art, fashion, and farming backgrounds, the women have several superlatives in common -- they've made their mark on the world of interior design. They choose elements from the earth to glorify -- woods, stones and plasters. They are in love with their clients and generously feel that there's plenty of design work to go around, that design works best when the client and designer are in sync. Each woman and her work has been showcased often in the pages of Architectural Digest, and will again, vows Ms. Rense.

Marjorie Shushan noted that there's no right or wrong -- but there's always good design, that comes from editing, textures, layers and soothing colors. With Stanley Marcus as a mentor, Emily Summers was introduced to taste on an international level, and designs homes with clean, serene modernity.

Mimi London may have single-handedly launched the Santa Fe look, by commissioning sculpted tree trunk furniture with giant logs she salvaged herself from logging camps. Laura Hunt never does the same look twice, and prides her work on visitors to her clients' homes who say, "This room is really you!" Jennifer Post is a classic minimalist who can make the "white box" liveable.

Journalist and contributor to Architectural Digest Nancy Collins closed the symposium with recollections of her interviews with well-known celebrities such as Joan Rivers, Cher, and Diane Keaton. She took the audience on inside tours of their homes, including John Travolta's "airplane" house in Florida where every room has a view of his private runway and planes, and a family room is designed like a luxurious terminal from the golden age of air travel -- the 1950s.

Good design is about creating an environment for living where people can be comfortable being themselves, summed Ms. Paige.

Although the homes featured in Architectural Digest by these designing women and others are representative of ultra wealthy lifestyles, there are plenty of takeaways for any homeowner.

• Design for the site. While you don't have to do Lily Pulitzer pink and green to have a sunny beachhouse, you should use colors and materials that compliment a water setting. Nothing that resembles an oil spill, please.

• Just because it's at IKEA, doesn't mean you should buy it. Unique pieces make an interior pop with interest. You have permission to keep treasures from your past.

• If you're rich enough and you're designing your vacation home or a pied-a-terre that you seldom use, you can do the interior in lots of white.

• Don't design your home for a magazine spread. Design it to live in. Just make sure it's photogenic.

• Clutter doesn't photograph well, in magazines or the mind's eye.

• You know a room is finished when you take something away, and it's missed.

• Wealthy people have hobbies and interests that they design their homes around. You may not be able to park a 707 outside your house, but you can at least celebrate family and friends with comfortable gathering places.

• Crown and shoe moldings shorten walls. If you want your walls to look taller, put them in high heels.

• Homes are retreats, hence the never-ending popularity of neutral, soothing palettes of color. Yawn.

• Interior design helps you work out your childhood. It should be fun, whether you're recreating memories or repressing them.

• Sophisticated is another word for unattainable.

• Minimalist design is like being locked in a sensory deprivation chamber. Just my opinion.