Is Hiring an Interior Designer Worth It?

Deciding whether an interior designer is worth it for your home renovation or commercial design project comes down to several factors, and is a personal decision for every home or business owner, but one that is worth considering. No two projects are the same, and having experienced interior designers on your side, who are dedicated to collaboration, can create a great environment for your construction project that still allows you to be a part of the creative aspects of the design process without getting bogged down in the hundreds of decisions and issues to resolve.

Interior designers are one part of a team of professionals that can ensure success for you and your vision. Including a good general contractor and architect can ensure all the pieces of the puzzle are covered and ensure that your investment in your home or business is well spent, and projects can be completed in an efficient manner to minimize inconvenience and impact on your life. In our experience working with clients in San Diego, time, aptitude, and communication have shown to be the factors that most contribute to our work as interior designers creating the most value for our clients.

Time

Time really falls into two buckets. For a lot of our interior design clients in San Diego, time is at a premium. Many of them are families with two working professionals, and many of them have kids. Time is one of the few finite resources in this world, and given their lifestyle, most of them prefer to spend the free time they have with their families or on the hobbies and things they enjoy. Even for those that enjoy the creative aspect, working with a designer allows them to be a part of the enjoyable aspects of the creativity in design without having to learn a whole new profession on top of their existing careers.

Time also equates to experience. The average San Diego homeowner will live in their home for 12 years . Given that length of time, you can expect a homeowner to do 3-4 major renovations in their lifetime. Many interior designer studios, including ourselves, will do 12+ projects in a year. That means the average person would need to live three to four lifetimes to get the experience that professionals get in one year. That amount of experience doesn't even include the formal education, CEU’s, certifications, research product knowledge, and everything else that a professional designer learns along the way. The amount of mistakes, wasted money, and time that you can potentially avoid by capitalizing on the lessons learned by others is often worth more than the cost of the designer themselves. Ultimately, you can't buy time…but you can buy the time other people have already spent.

The owners of this residence were both medical professionals with demanding schedules, and teenage children. For them, their time was better spent with their kids then searching online for hours.

Aptitude

Not everyone is creative, there's no denying that. No matter how hard I wish I could, I can't sing to save my life. If I were to find myself in a situation where I needed a great singer, I'm probably going to find someone who knows how to sing instead of trying to do it myself. It's no different with design. Many of our clients come to us looking for something unique and creative that they can't quite conceptualize themselves. Some of them can get to a certain point and get stuck. Others know the function they want and the general idea, but bringing the idea to life in the physical world requires another level of expertise.

There's also a familiarity with how this industry and the construction process work. For many people, they don't know what they don't know. On top of the stress and inconvenience a construction project in their home puts on their life, also needing to learn how to navigate the nuances of an entire industry can be extremely overwhelming. Part of our job is to help guide our clients through the process and be their advocate from beginning to end to make the experience as seamless as possible. It's unrealistic to expect someone with little to no experience to instantly jump into a situation and be successful.

Creating a unique experience like this tattoo shop made to feel like a hospitality project in University Heights requires creativity to think outside the box

Communication

For many people, the investment in their renovation is the largest investment they'll make in their life, second only to the investment in the property itself. Now imagine walking into a car dealership and buying a new car that can cost $70,000+, and only verbally describing what you want the car to look like, the features you want, how it drives, and expecting the car to show up in 6 months exactly how you envisioned it. Sounds pretty crazy, right? This is often the case with construction projects that don't involve a designer. Clients verbally describe to a builder what they're hoping for and expect that builder to be able to design it in their heads and build it as expected. At the end of the day, builders are great at building, not designing. Even the best builders are still human, and lacking a detailed design can leave a lot of room for “lost in translation.”

Elevations like this give builders the information necessary for them to be successful.

Many clients don't realize it, but our expertise extends to a technical side of interior design that often gets overlooked. Beyond just the visual and aesthetic side of interior design, we also create detailed drawings called “CD Sets” or “Construction Drawings,” similar to blueprints, keep track of relevant code such as ADA requirements, and clarify hundreds of details and specifications for contractors so communication is clear on exactly how the client wants the space to function as well as look. It gives you a team of experienced people to advocate for the client's design and collaborate with the builders to solve the inevitable issues that arise through a construction project.

So is it worth it?

For the clients that don't have the time to learn or manage a project, the creative aptitude, or experience in the industry, and want to ensure that the design is carried out correctly and efficiently, the answer is often yes. Designers play a crucial role in the project ecosystem, ensuring that the client's wishes and vision are carried out by the contractors that we collaborate with. Missing any part of that puzzle makes clients vulnerable to extended timelines, going over budget, and an end product that is less than what they desired or not worth their investment.

If your project is getting stuck due to your busy schedule, or you just want to make sure your opinion is heard. We’d love to work with you to create a beautiful home.