Clutches for Less

Posts Tagged ‘Commercial Interior Designer’

The bedroom walls are splotched with the residue of last year’s lilac paint colours (which seemed like a good idea at the time!), the 15-year-old nylon carpet laid directly over the floorboards by the previous owner is shedding tufts of grey fuzz, and the living room chimney breast that your partner excavated last winter is still awaiting its reclaimed Victorian fireplace. It’s not that you haven’t got ideas, but somehow last winter turns into this, the summer holidays fly by, the well-intentioned DIY Bank Holiday weekends end up at the in-laws, and you still haven’t managed to decorate. What would make your life easier at this time is help from someone who can understand and organize your ideas, and give you an estimate of how much putting those ideas to work will cost you! Maybe it’s time you considered hiring a commercial interior designer.

Yikes! Isn’t that going to be expensive? What if they totally transform my Edwardian house into something like a rodeo ranch design? What exactly am I getting into with that first phone call?

Never fear. Interior designers are professionals. They are always ready to serve you, the client. Many offer first consultations free of charge. Simply put, this will enable you to dabble into interior design without any exposure whatsoever.

What usually happens at the first meeting? Your designer should, by talking to you and looking at your existing environment, diagnose your taste and pinpoint your favourite style. Show them the room or rooms you want decorated, and if you have any photos of styles you like or dislike, show them to the designer. They should ask you about your hobbies, your family, your colour preferences, your pets, whether you entertain at home, whether you frequently have overnight guests. By learning about you and analysing your requirements, the designer is putting together the first building blocks of the eventual design.

At the second meeting, often charged at an hourly rate, the designer should have a package of ideas to show you. This may be submitted to you in different ways, a sample of fabric swatches with furniture photographs is one way, sketches and fabric boards is another. Whichever style of presentation the designers choose, find out in advance what you will be paying for it and what happens if you don’t like what you see. Until they find you satisfied, most designers will happily redo every design they’ve made everytime, either at no additional charge or for a minimal fee.

A client once mentioned that a design was “just what I wanted but didn’t know I wanted”. Commercial interior designers have the expertise and means to experiment on different design themes. They can often help you see a room in a whole new light, just by the addition of some built-in furniture, a new colour scheme, a different curtain design, or by re-arranging the furniture. A designer is adept at combining elements in total harmony with each other while staying within the guidelines of your initial brief (no matter how simple or how bizarre that brief may be).

For example, illustrated on the projects page is an exhibition room set that I designed this year. The brief was to create a design for a dining room around the theme “Fire”. I suspect that very few people who saw the room would commission it for their own home. Which is not exactly the purpose of the brief. The purpose of the room set was to show that the combination of furniture, wall finish, lighting and accessories, when carefully considered and sourced, will please the eye and satisfy an aesthetic need.

A good commercial interior designer will help you explore pathways you might not be too sure about or are hesitant to traverse. And yet, a good designer knows not to inflict his own preferences on your domain. Designers are there to work for you and to help you to achieve your design goal. If you’re not happy with something, always remember you can say no.