EMPLOY A FRESH PERSPECTIVE
Too many ideas or not enough? Interior designers can help you avoid expensive mistakes
Hiring a designer for a day can save time and money on dramatic home renovations
‘WOULD you put down a stone or a timber floor in that kitchen?” the husband asks the interior designer, with a decidedly pointed look at his wife. His wife glares back at him. Then they both turn to the interior designer who senses, quite rightly, that she’s being put to the test.
“A stone floor would be more hardwearing if you can afford it,” the interior designer suggests mildly. With that the wife rounds furiously on her husband. “I told you that timber floor was a bad idea!”
The couple in question are renovating their home and tempers are running high. The flashpoint is a timber floor that’s already been ordered (and paid for). Under the pretext of getting design advice, the couple has invested in a one-off session with an interior designer. But what they really want is someone to act as a referee between them.
While most interior designers agree that emotional support comes with the territory, if the decisions have already been made there’s not a great deal that they can do. If you have tricky design choices ahead of you, it’s best to book your consultation before you commit. Many interior designers offer a service where, for a fixed fee, they will come to the house for a couple of hours and sort out as many of the design issues as possible in the time frame (usually between two and three hours). It’s a very cost-effective way of getting professional help, but you’ll get much more out of your designer if you’re well prepared.
“You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t prepare anything!” says interior designer Sarah Jane Murphy. “Before I go out to the house, I ask the clients to email me a wish list of what they’d like to cover. I also ask them to photograph the house — that gives me an idea of their level of design knowledge and it helps me to focus. The more information they can get to me the better.”
When she arrives at the house, she asks to be shown around. This gives her an idea of the layout and the lighting. Then, the real work commences. “The most productive part is the middle hour. They drain me for information! It’s like going to the doctor — 100 questions in five minutes.”
While it’s a good idea to create a scrapbook, physical or online, she warns against over-reliance on sites like Pinterest and Houzz.
“They can give people unrealistic expectations,” she says. “Some of those houses cost millions!” In Murphy’s experience, the people that are hardest to deal with are those who can’t make decisions because they’ve befuddled themselves by looking at too many magazines, or become overwhelmed by the amount of material available online. “Sometimes I might be the second or third interior designer that they’ve had around,” she explains. To avoid this, she recommends that you leave the consultation until the painter has already been booked. “It’s better to follow through sooner rather than later. If you leave it too long, your mind gets lost again.” And do take notes! Most interior designers will follow up with a summary, but that may not be enough.
Interior designers all have different styles and the best way of choosing someone that’s right for you is to look at their work online. If you like the projects illustrated on Murphy’s website, you’ll probably like her suggestions for your house.
In general, a one-off fixed rate interior design consultancy session is more affordable than hiring a designer to undertake a whole project, but individual designers have slightly different ways of working. Most of the time, their fees are much of a muchness. A one-off consultation with Murphy, for example, costs €300 and takes about two and a half hours. A similar service from Sarah Drumm and Lisa Marconi of Dust costs €250 plus vat (that works out at €307.50). They don’t ask their clients to email in advance but prefer to arrive at the house without preconceptions.
For Drumm and Marconi, the people who get most out of the sessions are the ones who are best prepared. “Once the clients have an idea of what they want then we can blitz through it. It’s amazing what we can cover!” In their experience, a consultation that deals specifically with paint colour is one of the most effective ways of using the session. “In the time we can nail down colours for the whole house. All the client needs to do is print it out the report and hand it to their decorator.”
Another good use of the time is to focus on just one room. “We meet people who are decorating piecemeal because they’ve blown the budget. The one-off session should be enough to deal with all the design aspects of a room, including furniture and accessories. That makes it a satisfying project for everyone.” Dust is an online shop as well as an interior design business, but Drumm and Marconi don’t just specify the homeware they sell. “We love everything in our shop — so the people who chose to work with tend to love it too — but for an interior design consultation we specify from all over.”
Often, they work with people who aren’t undertaking a massive project, but need a fresh perspective. “We might look around and say — ‘do you realise that the whole room is blue and grey? We need to add some more colour!’ The client has got so used to the room that they don’t see it anymore.”
See theinteriorsassociation.ie. sarahjanemurphydesign.ie and dust.ie.