5 THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE HIRING AN INTERIOR DESIGNER
Out of earnest desire to express her love for exceptional things, Ibukunoluwa Oludare has spent 12 years of her life to be an exception to the general rule. As the CEO of a reputable interior design company, Pine and Ivory, she has been able to reflect her stand for beauty with functionality. She strongly believes design has to be unique, beautiful, and ultimately functional. Ibukunoluwa shares with us five things to know before hiring an interior designer.
DEFINE YOURSELF
Before you hire an interior designer, you have to define your style, what you describe as beautiful, what works for you/what does not work for you, what you want from the interior designer for your space. Defining yourself ultimately would create a satisfying outcome for you, whilst defining what you want from an interior designer; do I want the interior designer to offer design consultancy service and furnish? or I just want the interior designer to consult. Whatever option you decide to go with, you’ll have to be specific as regards your preferred design scheme and eventual ambience for your space, this is very important. If the interior designer does not have a clear understanding of what you actually want, there will be friction. To avoid this, please define so communication is not severed.
DEFINE YOUR BUDGET
How far are you willing to go with expense; do you want premium or moderate? You need to decide that. When you draw up a budget, it will help you decide which interior designer can work with your budget. It also helps to have a clear-cut pattern of how much you want to spend on your project and will guide the interior designer on how to effectively appropriate your budget and still create a satisfying outcome. Note that if your budget would not work for the ambience you want to create, your designer would advise appropriately.
TIMELINE
You need to know exactly how long you are willing to wait for the project to be ready. All interior designers have a different approach to project implementation, some would take a long time while some take a shorter time. Thus, seek a balance of time, quality, and cost. If you don’t have too much time, you shouldn’t hire an interior designer whose project execution procedure is long.
BE PREPARED WITH YOUR IDEAS
Ultimately the space is yours not for the interior designer thus you need to be prepared with your ideas. Get your inspiration pictures together so that when you get to the interior designer, you already know exactly what you want. Once you define yourself, it is easy for you to get inspirational pictures and get ready for your interior designer. Know exactly what you want, this helps the interior designer to define you better. An interior designer is set to help you create your dream space by putting your inspiration together and tweaking the same.
BE FLEXIBLE
One of the things an interior designer has an eye for is to understand you better than you understand yourself. An interior designer can deduce your style from some of the things you are wearing, things you have around you, the inspiration pictures you brought to the interior designer etc. The interior designer is able to decipher for example, if the modern scheme or the classic scheme with a modern twist is what will work for you.
Be flexible enough to accommodate the interior designer’s ideas and concepts. So don’t be rigid that the designer has to replicate your inspiration photos and combine it all together because it might not work, moreover don’t forget it’s just meant to be a guideline. You also need to trust your interior designer’s judgement. It is not wise to hire an interior designer you do not trust. You can question concepts you don’t understand or agree with, however, every interior designer ultimately seeks to satisfy a customer and at the same time, create a beautiful masterpiece.
Featured in Prestige Magazine Issue 2. Vol. 3 2018
