INITIAL CONSULTATION

The initial consultation is the first step in any major interior design project. Our initial consult has two phases, a one-hour meeting and a survey. Here are some of our goals:

 

• Understanding your style preferences, your likes and dislikes. Perhaps you like a mid-century modern design but your husband prefers Martha Stewart Park Avenue. Knowing your preferences hones our thinking and lets us narrow the search so you have fewer choices to make. We can learn how to assist you. For many of our projects the process of design begins with helping our clients better understand what they like. That is why we can come armed with magazines, photos, and samples and encourage our clients to explore as we work together to determine their stylistic preferences.

 

• Understanding how you want to use your space. Perhaps Sunday afternoon is your time to bake and you’ve dreamed of a befitting Baker’s Kitchen adorned with Hafele Hardware to lift your heavy mixer. Just downstairs, your partner and ten friends raise the roof every third play and steel into your Zen-like kitchen to grab beers from the refrigerator. A good interior design should offer solutions to this like a retractable kitchen door to dampen sound and a wet bar with ample room for beer and ice. Understanding how you want to live is key to adapting your space to accommodate it.

 

• Understanding how you make your decisions. If choice is paralyzing, you may prefer fewer choices and strong recommendation from us. On the other hand, you may love making choices and only want our help in a supportive role. Either way, the key to successfully working together is to know how you like to work so we can tune into it. It’s also important to understand the dynamics of decision making – do you like to make decisions quickly? Are you and your partner joint decision makers? Understanding your process helps us tailor our process to you.

 

• Understanding your budget and the relationship between cost and getting the perfect choice. A dining room chandelier may cost $300 or $13,000. Our goal is to create a design that you can implement which means the design has to fit your budget. There may not be funds to accomplish everything you had hoped for but proper planning gives us the best chance to optimize the use of your funds.

 

• Understanding your priorities and schedule. If you leave town every spring for two weeks of skiing that might be the perfect time to remodel the kitchen which means the time to start preparing is in the fall. Knowing your specific needs helps us plan to meet them with the smallest impact on your lifestyle.

 

• Do we match? Your home is a statement of who you are. The better we can understand one another, the better we can interpret your vision. Interior design requires a great deal of trust and the first meeting is your chance to determine whether the relationship feels right to you.