Whitney "Anna" Walker changes the colors of her walls frequently. This pink-red color is called "Lychee Fruit."

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By Christopher Wynn

DALLAS — Whitney "Anna" Walker repaints rooms as casually as some women swap out handbags.

"Miyoga Ginger" is the blue-purple shade du jour coating the walls of her Dallas living room on this particular afternoon.

Just days earlier, her mood was a bit more "Hyssop," with the space steeped in a deep, earthy green and the nearby dining room washed in bright "Pistachio." By the time you're reading this, the rooms inside Walker's storybook Tudor will no doubt be on their way toward their next hue, perhaps a chocolatey "Vosges Truffle."

If the paint colors sound good enough to eat, they nearly are.

Walker uses the food-grade Healthy Wall Finish developed by her Dallas-based company, Anna Sova Luxury Organics. The paints have no plastic volatile organic compounds and are made primarily from milk products.

Walker says a fresh coat smells vaguely like a vanilla milkshake.

Clearly, owning your own organic paint and furnishings company has its perks.

"My home is my workshop," explains Walker, clad in a coat made from antique saris and sitting in one of her beloved carved wolf-head armchairs. "I would never sell a product that I have not used myself. I feel very strongly about that."

Walker founded ecology-focused Anna Sova (Sova was her revered Austrian grandmother's last name) two years ago as a spinoff of her Antique Drapery Rod Co. business. After a devastating warehouse fire in June, the Dallas store will reopen this fall, offering the label's full complement of wall finishes, bedding, draperies, towels, candles and accessories. The company continues to sell its wares online (www. antiquedraperyrod.com) and through local merchants.

"The fire was heartbreaking, it was crushing, and, strangely, it became inspirational," says Walker. "We had 170 hardworking and positive people on site the next morning helping to pick up the pieces."

Walker was right there among them in the rubble. The statuesque blonde (her mother and grandmother were both models) has an eye for detail and a daily to-do list that could bring Martha Stewart to tears.

She has long been an advocate for green living (she gave up her hair dryer, calling it environmentally irresponsible), but she stresses that Earth-friendly needn't preclude luxury or beauty.

To that end, Walker's gothic-minimalist cottage is a living showcase for her company's ecocentric creations. She deftly mixes green basics with antique finds from her travels abroad.

In the front guest room, a turn-of-the-20th-century Anglo-Indian bed from Calcutta gets luxury-hotel treatment with 600-thread-count Italian-made linens. The bedding is crafted from organically certified cotton that has been grown without pesticides and never dyed with heavy metal dyes.

The rear guest room features a low-slung Indian platform bed and two Tibetan trunks. Suspended above the trunks are two 1880s Chinese palace traveling lanterns from Shanghai. The raspberry silk duvet and pillow shams were finished with a 2,000-year-old process using natural Indian soap nut instead of the current industry standard of formaldehyde and silicone.

"As Americans, we consume more than 60 percent of the world's resources," says Walker, a yoga enthusiast who was raised on a Texas horse farm. "If we choose eco-responsible products, we can change the world."

Even an environmental entrepreneur needs a place to live. It took Walker six years to find the right house.

"I wanted a home that was all original with its period details intact," she says.

Walker found it in a 1931 Tudor rich with angles and arches, nestled into Dallas' Greenway Parks neighborhood that was designed in the 1920s. The home still wears its original slate tile roof imported from England.

Like her attitude toward nature, Walker tries to live gently here. For example, the oak hardwood floors are hand-oiled, which gives them a warm, natural glow that's different from the high-gloss chemical varnish most of us are used to.