How to Prepare for your Interior Design Consultation:
Well look at you, you’ve made the decision to hire an interior designer to help with your upcoming home improvement project – you’re so smart! But wait, now you’re panicking because you have a consultation coming up and have no idea what happens at the type of meeting and what if they are judging you and your house while they are there. Well first thing’s first, take a breath and congratulate yourself because you just took a HUGE amount of stress out of your project by taking this step! So don’t start stressing about this meeting, and do not worry about the state of your home, we’ve seen it all. We also know it’s not a magazine spread and that real people live there along with messy kids, slobbering dogs and all!
In all seriousness though we know that handing the reigns over to an interior designer no matter how big or small the project is going to feel a bit daunting, but it’s really going to pay off and save you on potentially costly mistakes along the line, not to mention, hours and hours of time savings by delegating the shopping, travelling and coordinating materials, timelines and trades people so you really can feel great about the decision you’re making.
If you are reading this you might know all of the aforementioned advantages, but not really know how the process works and what to expect during your consultation meeting. Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. “Why do designers charge for a consultation?” A lot of people are genuinely surprised that most designers charge for this meeting, however this is a working meeting, you are inviting a professional to take time out of their schedule to travel to your home, meet with you, measure your space and take an extensive inventory of your wants and needs – this is a work and should be treated as such.
To better understand how to prep for a consultation it might be good to understand the types of consultations and the purpose for them. There are two types of consultations really. Number one is when you are only hiring the designer for some on the spot info and advice about a particular area and you can expect to end up with a brief description of the ideas discussed and maybe some colour suggestions all in hand after the meeting. However, and in most cases, this meeting is a precursor to a full renovation project or furnishing and styling job. In both scenarios, the designer will meet with you and see the area(s) of interest and take inventory of the wants, needs or problem areas. In the first however, the designer will leave you with notes, or follow up by email to recap ideas discussed and any suggestions that are being made and leave it at that. With the second type of consultation the designer will still discuss ideas, but they will not leave their notes behind or offer too many upfront options to mull over. In this case they will take all of the info gathered during the meeting back to their office and begin puzzling out all of the new layouts, cabinet styles and finishes, the flooring and the list goes on and on until they have a fully developed design concept to present to you for your project.
In both cases the best thing you can do to prepare is to start to really think about what is important to you, what are styles, colours and features you really like (or really dislike). Collect images and make notes about what drew you to them. Think about how you and whomever you share the space with use the space now and how it could be better used. Another equally important thing to think about, and perhaps do some research on, is the true cost or projects such as yours. Do you value the longevity and quality of the products used or is style the main objective. This is something a lot of people may not think about in a time of Instagram and Pinterest – there are so many beautiful images, but we may not realize some of the things we see can easily blow a budget. A great example of this that we run into often is kitchen cabinets and cabinet organizers. Adding interior organizers quickly add to the bottom line as do custom painted cabinetry colours. Sometimes all of the “wants” can be checked off on a shoestring budget, but know that the longevity of the product might not be the same as a higher end product.
If I can give one last piece of advice it would be this – if you are in a relationship please make sure you are both on the same page and if possible that you are both at the consultation. This may seem funny, but I am sure every designer has a story or two where they met with one spouse at the consultation and when it came to the presentation the other spouse didn’t agree with the proposed ideas at all because they were completely in the dark about what had been discussed or completely blindsided by the cost because extra wants had been added that they didn’t know about. At STILE we like to send out a questionnaire to our potential design clients to help facilitate these conversations and get our clients thinking about important points such as budget, specific needs and problems to be solved.
The Cole’s Notes version of how to prepare is to consider:
- What your goals are for the project
- What your budget is.
- How you use the space and how you would like to use it after.
- What your needs are and what your wants are.
- Are there items that are important to keep in your new design.
- How you want the new space to feel.
- What do you like; what do you dislike.
- Your vision and the vision of your partner are the same.
- Research from similar projects in your area.
This meeting may be the most important step of the design process for you – no pressure (wink, wink ). It really does set the tone for the whole project and we truly believe the more prepared you are the better your design will turn out and the fewer revisions (i.e. billable hours) you will need to put towards perfecting the design plan.