Why Work With an Interior Designer?
You just purchased the land for your dream home — a 10- or even 15-thousand square foot masterpiece that you’re planning on building from scratch. The possibilities are limitless, and you feel alive. You have visions of evening cocktails in a chef’s kitchen with close friends and family; a master suite with the designer closet and steam shower you’ve always dreamed of; summer afternoons spent devouring a new book on a perfectly styled, wrap-around porch.
After the bliss settles, the enormity of the project sets in. You question how you’ll make your concept come to life. And when you take a step back, you realize you cannot do it all. It’s time to call in the professionals.
Hiring an interior designer early on in the process is hugely important. Of course, I’m a little biased, but I truly believe our best work is done when we’re involved from the start.
Sure, you’ve heard that an interior designer will ultimately save you money and time and that we offer you access to our Rolodex of professional contacts, resources, and ideas. And while money, time, and resources are hugely important, our work is so much more than that.
Here are just some of the ways we’ll help bring your project across the finish line.
We encourage you to dream
Yes, interior designers manage all of your functional needs, like ordering samples, creating a timeline, and managing installs. But, more importantly, we help our clients realize their greatest dreams and make them a reality. Too often I hear “I would love to make it happen, but I know it’s too expensive,” or “I stayed in a hotel in Milan last year with the most incredible sauna, but know it’s too complicated to replicate.” No! Dream! I encourage my clients to share their wildest ideas — my job is to help balance them. At the very least, I can find a way to create at least part of your vision.
Tailored results for the way your family lives today
Part of my team’s process is a lengthy, albeit extremely important, exercise that examines how our clients live day-to-day, and we design specifically around the responses we receive. Recently, we completed a project on the Upper East Side for a family that celebrates big holidays – like Thanksgiving – as a group of 24. To accommodate their many regular guests, we created a custom solution that includes a traditional dining table to seat 12, with the option that a second table be set up and partial seating be accommodated via a built-in banquette-style sofa that normally completes the room as part of a “living room” function. Savvy solutions arise from knowing all the details of our clients’ lives and time at the beginning pays off in spades when the home is finally turned over to the owners to enjoy.
A streamlined process
An interior designer is accustomed to working with a homeowner’s network of professionals throughout the entire process, from the architect and contractor to art consultants and landscape designers. My team helps ensure all parties stay on schedule and helps adjust the group as needed. I have learned to never leave a meeting without asking all of the professional players in the room if there is anything else we need to hammer out. I am not scared to ask for a deeper explanation, I know the right questions to ask and when to call in a third-party expert.
A thoughtful concept that carries room to room
When you hire a designer, you are investing in their experience and unique ideas. With my team, you benefit not just from my 30-plus years of expertise, but my associates’ as well. Combined, we create concepts that are thoughtful and highly nuanced based on each of our clients. We pride ourselves on the small details that, at the end of the day, make the biggest difference.
Unique solutions to potential “problems”
Almost every home has quirks, and while we love them because they are what make a house a home, they often require unique workarounds that only a professional can help solve. Take a current project we’re designing, a home with a dramatic roofline: While stunning from the outside, it makes for a logistical roadblock on the inside. So, to solve very real functional issues, we sketch, re-sketch, and sketch again until we land on not just my solution, but the right solution for this particular client. And we wouldn’t do it any other way.
There is an inherent beauty that distinguishes a home that has been carefully considered with a professional’s eye and experience, for a particular client, with a particular team in place, from a house that is simply nicely put together. The latter could be for anyone- it’s a great house to walk through, perhaps even to buy, but it’s not yours. The former is a home that no one else can have, and it is, in its best sense, a kind of art. The biggest reason to hire a designer is that when you hire the right one for you, they make it yours, and only yours. And that is something you feel, touch, see, and know for as long as you own, and love, your home.