Seattle Homes and Lifestyles 2007 Source Book - Working With Pros: Interior Designers

Home | Working With Pros |

Architect Builder Interior Designer Landscape Designer

Landscapes Exteriors Interiors Kitchen Bath

2007 Directory

Architects/Contractors Art/Frames/Galleries Bath/Kitchen Builders/Remodelers Floors/Walls/Paint Glass/Metal/Wood Home Furnishings Interior Design Landscape/Garden Lighting Photography Real Estate Windows/Doors

Print Page

IT TAKES TWO
One secret to successful interior-design projects is a good client-designer collaboration

Traditional or modern? Hands-on or laissez-faire? Determining your design style—and your working style—is an important part of the matchmaking that happens when you hire an interior designer. To make a perfect match, home in on some advice from local pros.

A Thousand Words
The best starting point for conversations begins with a client’s clip file of images from design magazines and books, says Holly Van Biene, ASID interior designer and principal of Van Biene Interiors. She invokes the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words: Terms such as “contemporary” and “traditional” can evoke different assumptions, but pictures can trace a common thread that helps pinpoint what inspires the client.

Interior designer Jennifer Randall agrees that a “dream book” can help clients understand their style. “Some people don’t have a clue what they like,” she says. While it’s true that such a book might contain disparate images, “Sometimes you don’t have a sense of what the continuity is between the things you like,” Randall says. Not to worry: The designer is not looking for a tear sheet that perfectly expresses everything you want. It’s his or her job to fulfill the combined requirements of function and aesthetics.

“You might show the designer 10 things you like, but the designer will melt that all together so it will work with both the function the space requires and the client’s taste,” Van Biene says.

You’re the Inspiration
For Randall, tailoring her vision to the client’s taste is a rewarding part of her work. “I’m an interior designer who likes to work with a client’s style,” she says. “It’s fun working with their style, with them.” Randall remembers a person who visited her house, loved the interiors, and asked her to replicate the work. “It turned out beautiful, but for me it was boring because I had already done that,” she says. “It’s very exciting to design something special and unique.”

Similarly, Van Biene believes it’s appropriate for a prospective client to ask the designer, “Does this look like a project you are interested in?” She says, “You want the designer to be excited about your project.”

Savor the Flavor
The pros recommend that homeowners find a designer who really listens, but it’s a two-way street. “Be open to different ideas and different ways of using space than what you may have conventionally seen,” Randall says. “There are lots of solutions to design issues in the home that the client may never have seen portrayed because the designer is designing it especially for them.”

Randall recommends that homeowners find someone with whom they feel comfortable, because the designer is asking them to take a leap of faith. Part of the designer’s job, she says, is “taking people a little bit out of their comfort zone so they can reach a different level of sophistication, beyond what they could have done for themselves.”

Among her clients, Van Biene finds a varying degree of participation. Some are content to meet every few weeks to sign off on new decisions. Other times, clients want to go to the Seattle Design Center, walk around with her and select items. She tailors the process to what the client prefers.

“What’s really gratifying and fun for me is when I come back with ideas, and it’s beyond their expectations,” she says. “I don’t get paid for plain vanilla. When I come back with things they haven’t seen before, and they say, ‘Gee, I never thought of that!’ I know I’ve done my job.”

Photo courtesy Barbara Barry realized by Henredon