Working with Interior Designers | Part II

In Part I, we discussed why you should hire an Interior Designer and the difference between the designer, architect, contractor, etc. We also talked about why each trade is UBER important to a design project and reminded everyone that there’s no “I” in team! In Part II, we’re going to put that discussion towards YOUR project!

TIME FOR MY PROJECT…NOW WHAT?

You’re getting ready to completely gut and renovate your kitchen. Should you reach out to an Interior Designer? An Architect? Or maybe just a Kitchen Designer? The answer - ALL THREE. Yes – it’s true! To get a magazine-worthy outcome and avoid costly mistakes, you’re going to want to engage all three trades.

Case in point: remember how we talked about having an Architect AND Interior Designer discuss the best use case for your home? This is a mistake we’ve seen happen more often than we’d like. A homeowner, knowing that an Architect is needed for structural changes, decides to wait on hiring the Interior Designer to save some money. The homeowner and the Architect work together to create a floor plan that, on paper, looks wonderful! They see the room marked “living room” and can almost envision the perfect sectional that they want to lounge on someday. The project is put out to bid, the contractor builds it, and soon the homeowner is all moved in.

A few years pass and the homeowner decides the budget allows to add the finishing touches (i.e. getting that new sectional or window treatments). The homeowner now calls the Interior Designer. The designer comes in for the initial survey and finds that the space is not laid out properly for that “perfect sectional”. Sadly, either the floorplan needs to be rethought (costly fix!) or the homeowner can no longer have the furniture they were once envisioning.

Hiring the specialist (in this case Interior Designer) up front would have saved the client time and money.

In one of our favorite projects, we had a wonderful, collaborative experience with the homeowners and contractor. On the very first site visit, the contractor was eager to “learn” from the Bees and hear our ideas. On the flip side, the Bees are always asking contractors for their feedback…sure, we may say a crown molding is going to look awesome, but our contractor is the one who’s going to say, HOLD - did you consider the angle and the transition? Let’s discuss! And that’s what we love about a collaborative process. In the end, the homeowners are the winners EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Now you should read on to Part III because we’re talking about specifically HOW to work with a designer and give everyone a little reminder to have trust in your designer!