How to Work with an Interior Designer
Most advice about hiring an interior designer comes from clients. A homeowner writes about how she found her designer, how she briefed her, and what she wishes she had known sooner. Some of that advice is very good. But I have spent the past seven years on the other side of those consultations, and the view from the designer's chair is a little different. Here is what I wish every prospective client knew before our first meeting, and what actually makes a project succeed once we start.
You do not need to name your style. That is my job.
Clients regularly apologize in a first meeting for not knowing what their style is called. Please do not. Putting a name on it is my job. What I need from you is honesty about how you live: who actually uses the family room, where homework happens, whether the dog is allowed on the sofa, and what you want the house to feel like at the end of a long day. Every design decision I make traces back to those answers.
Inspiration photos help, and I do want them before we meet. But I am rarely looking at them the way you might expect. I am looking for what repeats. If 10 of your 12 saved images have warm wood, floral prints, and statement artwork, I know something about you that you may not have put into words yet. My job in the early meetings is to keep narrowing until I can see what you are seeing. Yours is to keep telling the truth, especially when a direction feels wrong.
While you are interviewing me, I am interviewing the project.
I take on a limited number of projects each year so I can give each client and home the attention they deserve, which means the first conversation runs in both directions. I am listening for whether you want a home that looks like your family or a copy of something you saw online. I am listening for whether we can talk plainly about money and timelines. And I am listening for whether you will live in the rooms we design, because rooms are meant to be lived in. They should never be so precious that anyone is afraid to touch them.
One piece of the standard client-side advice is worth repeating because it is true: ask your contractor who they like working with. Trades see how a designer runs a project day to day, whether drawings arrive on time, and whether problems get solved or passed along. I work closely with contractors and trades on every renovation, and their referrals say more about a designer than any portfolio photo can.
Ask the budget question out loud.
Clients sometimes treat the budget conversation as impolite. From my side of the table it is the opposite. It is the kindest conversation we can have early, and I am relieved every time a client starts it.
Here is how I handle it. Once I understand your project, I quote a flat design fee upfront, so you know exactly what you are investing before anything begins. Before the consultation I also send a furniture budget guide with low, middle, and high ranges by category, because most people have no reference point for what a quality sofa or custom window treatments cost, especially today when pricing changes so frequently. I would much rather hand you real numbers on day one than watch you fall in love with a plan you cannot build.
What actually helps me before the first meeting
A few things make the difference between a good consultation and a great one.
Send your inspiration ahead of time. Images, a Pinterest board, even a note about how you want the space to feel. I will come to your home having already studied the pattern in what you love.
Walk me through the space in person. Photos are useful, but standing in a room together tells me how the light moves, how you circulate, and where the daily friction is.
Be specific about your loves and your hard nos. "We love color but nothing cold" saves us both a round of guessing.
Tell me where you are flexible. The rooms where you have no fixed ideas are usually where the most interesting design happens, because you have given me room to work.
Hire someone who will tell you the truth. Then let them.
I say some version of this in almost every design presentation: my feelings do not get hurt if you do not like something. I mean it. Honest feedback in the concept phase costs nothing. Polite silence costs a reselection fee and three weeks.
Honesty has to run the other way too. I will tell you when a layout you are attached to will not work for how your family moves through the house, and I will never sell you something I do not think is good quality. A designer who only agrees with you is not doing the job you hired her for. You are not paying for someone to agree with you. You are paying for judgment, and for someone who understands how to marry form and function so the finished rooms hold up to real life.
What working together actually looks like
Every full-service project at my firm moves through the same defined process: an in-home consultation, a detailed proposal with the flat fee stated plainly, a concept meeting with floor plans and material direction, a full design presentation with at least two options for every item, and then ordering and white-glove installation. One designer, one defined process, one timeline. Your project never gets handed off to a junior staff member, because there isn't one. The person you meet at the consultation is the person on site at installation.
The consultation itself is 90 minutes in your home. We walk the space together, talk through how you use each room, and by the end you will know my process, my fee structure, and what the scope of work looks like. Within a week you have a full proposal in your inbox.
If you are beginning a search in Westchester County or Connecticut, start with the contact form. Tell me where the house is, what you are hoping to do, and a rough sense of your timeline. I review every inquiry personally, and that first conversation is about one thing: whether this project and this designer are the right fit for each other. That is the standard you should hold every designer to, including me.