Image and Written by Aurélie Tshiama
We all want an interior designer. The luxury of dumping your ideas and visions for your space onto a medium who perfectly interprets your mind and transforms that said space is something everybody ought to have. I wish it for you! Your journey with an interior designer ought to be a luxurious one. Sort of like the same feeling you get when you’re finally invited to purchase your first Birkin (after years of bookmarking, screenshotting, and saving for it.) Every step of the journey, from saving inspo pics on Pinterest, all the way to physically holding the bag in the comfort of your home. It’s the same with having an interior designer, all of that should be a unique and memorable experience. So, what should you look out for when hiring an interior designer?
(Oh, and this is listed in a particular order, haha.)
1. The first thing is TALENT. They must know how to design. You want to go for a designer that oozes creativity that tells you “he/she was born to do this.” Their work and their presence should unlock new ideas in your mind. You can look all over Instagram and find the standard interior design trends and see many designers offering the same style of work. But the gag is that if the design of your home is meant to be unique to you and reflective of your personality, then how will you achieve that with a designer that only keeps to mainstream and unoriginal designs? Look out for designers who design out of the norm or who are able to take what everybody sees as a standard and completely transform it to something unique.
2. That naturally brings me to my second point, PASSION. There isn’t much of that in the interior design world anymore, yet the best designers are those that are passionate. What must they be passionate about though?.. YOU. You want a designer that you almost feel you can be friends with for life. As an interior designer myself, there are clients who simply want you for your services and there are clients with who you’ll form a bond with, a ticket to a lifetime of friendship. Although the outcome of the projects of both clients will come out beautifully, you’ll get to see the passion behind the relationship formed between the designer and client through the tiny details. For example, a good relationship with your designer, via your passing conversations, your designer will be able to pick up that you’re let’s say particular about keeping your shoes smelling fresh and where you didn’t expect her to take notice of that detail, she includes freshener packets in your shoe closet in your favourite scent. It’s all in the little details.
3. As you search for your interior designer, one thing that you must consider is WHY you are hiring an interior designer and HOW much of your life you are willing to be open about, to get your identity felt in your home’s interior. I’ll give you a heads up: the more you let your interior designer into your life and its history, the better your design will come out. So, as you scroll through websites, social media, and initial consultations looking for your interior designer when you come across a prospect, ask yourself, “Does this person look like somebody I can trust? Is this somebody I’ll be willing to develop a relationship with?” Now, I’m not asking you to sell your soul and uncover your deepest and darkest secrets to your designer. But I believe interior design, especially if it’s being done to your personal home, is an intimate process and requires a level of trust over your life as well as your home. In order to see your aura and your story interpreted in the little details of your home, you must be willing to be open about the little details of your life. This emotional transaction between the client and the designer is what for me defines raw luxury interior design.
4… and with such a luxurious process comes a luxurious PRICE TAG. The role of an all-round interior designer is to somewhat pose as a project manager and your go-to for every piece of work that will happen to your home. Such responsibility will directly affect your designer in these ways:
– Time-wise: your project will take up most of the hours of their day. As they embark to please you as their client with well thought-out designs, they will make you a priority. If passion is genuinely involved in your project, they’ll be willing to work overtime/outside of hours so that you’re happy. I.e., sourcing a 1 of 5 vintage floor lamp from the 1980s. (It’s more than just a google image search, hun.)
– Mentally/Emotionally: The dedication to using their creativity to better your home will take a toll on their mental. I believe that the best designers are those whose art is an expression of what they absorb from their relationship with their clients. Depending on how far deep in dedication your designer may want to go with you, you’ll get to experience the emotions behind the interior (I know, I know. You weren’t expecting it to get this deep.)
– Physically: Believe it or not, designers put themselves at risk when on the job and quite rightly so, they’d have to cover themselves for it. Not only that, but by being constantly on their feet, managing the logistics behind conception and installation, you can imagine what they do for your project and where you the client put your feet up knowing that your house will look good.
(Now, consider these three points and triple it, or maybe quadruple it, because maybe the interior designer you want to hire has a team and office to financially cover too.)
I could go on as I would love that you find the perfect interior designer for your home. However, the above points were what stuck out to me the most when having to choose the best bits of advice. I have a quote that leads the life I live as an interior designer, “the interior of a home is an embodiment of the individual living in it”, so as you sift through the sea of today’s interior designers, always remember to choose an individual who you’d trust your most intimate environment with.
