Liz Toombs, Certified Interior Decorator and principal at PDR Interiors, has years of experience helping a wide range of clients. Here she shares some of her experiences and talks about five unexpected aspects of the design process.
Time
Most people underestimate how much time is needed to go through the phases of design for a project of any size. There can be a lot of downtime waiting for vendor response, clients to make decisions, and for the labor to get done. I always tell clients “we can never start too early”. It’s better to finish ahead of schedule than to be rushing things at the end to meet a deadline.
Supply Chain
It’s hard for anyone to keep up these days as far as what supply chain issues exist. Some products that were lagging in 2020- 2022 are now back to normal production times, while other products are still far behind production schedule. The factors can range from anything from labor shortages in factories and warehouses to limited raw materials to freight issues. The PDR team does our best to educate clients on what is happening with products involved in a project and manage the expectations for lead times
Costs
In general, people tend to underestimate the cost of accomplishing an interior design project. The best advice I ever heard was estimate what you think it will cost and add 25 percent. That should give you an accurate reflection of what your budget needs to be. This rings truer than ever with inflation driving up the cost of everything this year.
Emotions
People do not realize how emotional they can feel when spending large amounts of money on their home. Those emotions tend to slow down or speed up the process depending on how ready the client is to commit funds to the work. This is a factor that contributes to the timeline and needs to be acknowledged. Understanding your feelings towards spending money ahead of time will help you navigate the design process more easily.
Compromise
There is a lot of compromise involved in a design project especially if you have a significant other or family members involved. Not everyone is going to agree on the same fabric for the pillows or love the same wall color. I often have to mediate conversations about the project between partners. Talking through each person’s opinion helps everyone to come to a consensus that produces a beautiful result at the end of the project.
This article was updated on 5/16/23
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