Wonderlane LLC * Interior Designer * Linda Lane * Renovations

As seen in the

's Best of Seattle Extreme Makeover

Locating an Interior Designer

Professional Services: Interior Decor & Design

How do you locate an interior designer when you have a limited budget and you need help and want to have some fun?

A fun way to start is Craig's List for your city, under services, skilled trade! Here you will find interior decorators / designers and independent tradespeople who are experienced and have much to offer. Some may have retired, or are working part time independently due to new kids in the family, or like me -- do contracts as time permits or the job arises. This is more for the do-it-yourselfer who wishes to participate hands on to reduce the associated costs but needs expert advice to get started and for specific parts of executing the work.

Another great place to look is to contact an interior design college and ask for a student to help you with your project. They are eager, bright, and want to get started with fresh new design ideas (what a great match!). A list of design colleges is available by location at: http://www.art-schools-colleges.com/interrior-interior-design-colleges.html.

While colleges can be approached at any time of the year, summer's end, and mid-winter are two of the best times because classes are just starting up. While getting paid the student also earns college credit and their work is supervised by a qualified instructor.

For those with a little more money to spend, and less inclined to do-it-yourself, you may wish to locate an Interior Designer on the American Society of Interior Designer's site at http://www.asid.org/. From there you can search by state, and locate designer's home pages. These pages may give you a taste of what the designer has to offer. ASID members abide by a Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct in dealing with the public, clients, collegues.

One thing to note is that some designers work is very custom, really based on the best of their client's taste and style, so when seeking a designer to work with, one of the most important things to consider is how you feel about working with them. The person you select to work with may differ a great deal from you in age, appearance, background and so forth, but if you enjoy working with them your designer, male or female, gay or straight, black, asian, latino, indian, white or whatever, cultural differences, long experience or less experience, these are not nearly as important as working together successfully.

In general, very clean pared down design styles are more expensive than slightly more cluttered ones, because people love to collect things, and storage space to put away things costs money. Minimalism generally means more square footage for storage, not that the person just has less stuff -- of course there are exceptions.

It's often difficult for an any designer to gracefully give their best opinions unless a friendly trust can be developed, which is why you need to like or trust the designer you are working with. After all this person is helping you spend your money on an investment in style, and in some cases, helping you either in the present or future to sell your house, condo, investment property based on the decisions you make together. As the client, you also need to trust yourself to say "no, I really don't like that, or I just don't see it" and get more information, or truthfully say, "Yes, I love that, it is great, let's do it!"

Design in terms of living well, and in resale value generally more than pays for itself. However, the location, total cost of renovation and ultimate value all need to be taken into consideration.

Other things to do? As you look through all those lovely design magazines, cut or tear out the pages that have wonderful designs, and keep a little scrapbook of them - you don't even need more than just a pile of your favorites! Then when you have someone to work with they can get a clear idea of what you fancy.

Same thing goes for online design sites - if you find something you like save the page in your browser Favorites collection, or print out the page for future reference.

Take "Before" photographs, and then the "After" photographs. On an old house renovation we may be too embarrased to take or display the "Before" shots, but let's face it, don't you love seeing the real difference it makes in how you feel? See some simple examples at the bottom of this page.

Lighting is something which has hidden costs, but should never be left out of a design project - it is that crucial to design beauty and success. Another secret often overlooked by much design writing is the color of the skin, hair and eyes of the people for whom the design is created. Some people can pull off a lot more color in their environments, but some folks look positively lost in high color environments. In this way one's environment is a lot like clothing choices. That may be one reason why people trying to do design on their own tend to select the "safe colors" of white, beige, and cream.

Some times style even works the other way around - you change - that means your environment must change to keep up with your good self!

Drop me an email and let me know how things are going!

See a sample makeover - the Bright International Travel living room.