When you're out shopping for an interior designer you need to put together a
list of questions that you should ask the interior designer to make sure it's
the right person for you to be working with.
The client-interior designer association is one very intimate very
stressful at times and very important to the success of your project.
So what are some of the things that you should be aware of.
One of the first things I think that is important is to get a sense of
how limited or how broad the interior designer is in their ability in different aspects of interior design.
Are they used to many different styles? Are they limited to only one style?
Are they willing to be challenged by new things that they haven't been
aware of or been involved in before?
Secondly, you want to look at their portfolio.
Back in the day when I began my career many years ago
our portfolios were expensive
high-end, high quality photographs in an album that we used to show our clients.
And now most of those, if not all of us, in the interior design field
have portfolios that are online, are digital
and are much more technically astute.
I have a project currently where we actually have created what we call a
"fly through"
an interactive
look at the project that is being completed so that we can see the end
result before its even finished.
Those are things you should be aware of
in terms of making sure your interior designer is up to date and current on what's
going on in the world.
And lastly I would ask for references.
Now of course as an interior designer I'm going to give my best to references to
my potential clients.
However you can talk to
those references in such a way that you might be able to find out from them
such things as "Would you hire that interior designer again?"
"What were some of the
really positive things you like about it?" "What were some of the challenges that
you faced in working with that interior designer?"
So be very aware. Be prepared. Make sure you have a list of questions that you ask.
And actually in my book
called Renovate, Sustain and Survive
we have a chapter devoted to selecting an interior designer and it gives you a
list of questions and thoughts that you might want to
put forth to the your potential interior designer.