What to expect from your design team
Emma Scully Gallery, New York Design Week 2022. Photos by Sean Davidson
Experience
You’ll come into this process prepared. You’ve done your thinking. You know what you like and how you want to achieve it. You just need a bit of help making it happen. That’s where your design team comes in.
There are some nuances to creating a physical space that aren’t always obvious to the naked eye, unless you’ve been doing it for a long time. Things like how close your sink should be to your stove, or how much space to leave around a doorway. A great design team has a certain sensibility for these things, honed through years of seeing how people move around the spaces they created.
This awareness should come through from your first conversations with a design team, so allow a little bit of space for that idea exchange. Your plans are the perfect starting point for the collaborative process to start taking its course.
Consistency
One benefit of hiring a design studio to handle your project is that there is no passing of the buck. And by this we mean the design team alone takes full accountability, so there’s a great deal of incentive for the project to run on time and on budget.
That creates a level of consistency that you’ll appreciate as the pace starts to pick up. You have one point of contact who knows the status of every moving part, and they’re dedicated to keeping everything on track for you.
Clarity
Every project is different but one consistent theme is everyone’s hesitancy to talk about…..well, money. There. We said it. Redesigning your home costs money. And it’s not cheap.
But the thing is, it doesn’t cost less if you avoid talking about it. So one thing you should look for in your designer is complete clarity around finances. That starts with you being very clear and honest about what you want to spend. From then on, your designer should be sensitive to what that money means to you, and find a way to deliver the best version of your plan within your budget.