And Why We Don’t Offer Interior Design Consulting

One of the most common misalignments we see in new inquiries is a homeowner who loves our work and wants our design expertise, but is looking for an interior design consultant rather than full-service design. They may want us to develop the concept while they source the furnishings, or they may want professional guidance while they handle the purchasing and execution themselves. When I receive an inquiry like this, my immediate reaction isn’t necessarily that the person isn’t a fit. Often, it simply tells me that they haven’t worked with a full-service interior designer before and may not realize what that experience looks like. Once I explain what we actually do, some people quickly realize that handing over the sourcing, procurement, problem solving, and execution is exactly what they were looking for in the first place.

I also find myself wondering why someone who has already decided to invest in a professional designer would want to retain all of the hardest and least enjoyable parts of the project for themselves. Most homeowners aren’t excited to spend their evenings tracking delayed furniture, coordinating deliveries, calling manufacturers about damages, comparing specifications, or troubleshooting with contractors. That distinction is at the heart of why Proper House is a full-service interior design firm and why consulting is not a service we offer.

Why I Stopped Working as an Interior Design Consultant

When I first started my business, I offered worked as an interior design consultant, and I learned very quickly that it wasn’t a good business model for the kind of firm I wanted to build. More importantly, I found that consulting created chaos. The scope became less defined, the client and I could be sourcing simultaneously, and decisions were being made independently of one another while I was still expected to be responsible for how everything ultimately came together.

Imagine that I’m creating a furniture plan and carefully sourcing each piece according to the scale and proportions of that plan. At the same time, the client finds a sofa they love and purchases it independently. If that sofa is too large, the problem doesn’t begin and end with the sofa. It changes the relationship between the sofa and the chairs, the size of the cocktail table, the location of the lighting, the traffic pattern, and potentially the entire floor plan. Suddenly we’re redesigning a room around a decision I didn’t make, and if the finished room doesn’t work, the client is still looking at me as the designer. After experiencing variations of this early in my career, I realized consulting wasn’t protecting the finished result, it wasn’t creating the client experience I wanted, and frankly, it wasn’t protecting my own sanity.

I don’t believe micromanaging a professional produces the best result in any profession. The reason we hire experts is because they have knowledge, training, and experience that we don’t have. We have designed and managed dozens of home renovations, so we’re bringing the experience of solving the same kinds of problems again and again that a homeowner renovating for the first or second time simply can’t have. Our best projects happen when a client chooses us because they trust our expertise, participates where their input is important, and then allows us to lead the process they hired us to manage.

What Full-Service Design Actually Gives Our Clients

When someone hires Proper House, they’re hiring us for an exceptional experience as much as they’re hiring us for an exceptional design. Designing, renovating, and furnishing a home can be overwhelming. There are hundreds of decisions, deadlines, vendors, tradespeople, orders, schedules, and inevitable problems involved in getting from the initial concept to the finished home. We’ve built our entire process around removing as much of that burden from our clients as possible.

Our projects operate within a defined framework with established phases, calendars, due dates, procedures, and expectations. Once our clients see the way their project is being managed, they generally become very comfortable handing over the reins because they know we’re organized, we’re paying attention, and we’re taking responsibility for moving everything forward.

Some of the most important work we do is work our clients never even know happened. If a piece of furniture arrives damaged, we’re arranging the replacement. If a contractor discovers that a light can’t be installed exactly where we planned, we’re developing a solution. If an item is delayed, we’re determining whether it affects the schedule and adjusting accordingly. Problems happen on every project. With full-service design, they don’t all become the homeowner’s problems.

What an Interior Design Consultant Doesn’t Handle for You

We don’t view sourcing, purchasing, and procurement as separate from the creative work. They’re part of delivering the finished design. We travel to High Point Market twice a year to attend seminars and continuing education, meet new vendors, test products, see new introductions, and continually expand our knowledge of what’s available and what’s worth specifying. We know where to source, which manufacturers produce quality products, what can be customized, and which vendors will stand behind what they sell.

Once we place an order, we don’t simply wait for it to show up. We check our orders weekly, maintain an internal tracker with shipping dates, expected arrivals, delays, and receiving information, and send our clients an update every Friday so they know where things stand. If an item arrives damaged, we generally resolve it without involving the client unless it affects the installation schedule. We coordinate with the receiver and delivery team, manage installation, and oversee the remediation of anything that doesn’t arrive or install as expected.

Why We Don’t Create a Design and Hand Over a Shopping List

There is another important reason we don’t develop a design and then send our clients off to purchase everything themselves. In my experience, the original design rarely survives. A professionally designed room isn’t simply a collection of individually attractive things. We’re considering scale, proportion, color, contrast, balance, material, function, and the relationship between every selection in the room. Most people hire a designer precisely because visualizing that complete picture before it exists isn’t their area of expertise.

When a client begins sourcing independently, it’s natural for them to evaluate pieces individually. They like this sofa. They found a table that looks similar. They prefer this fabric. Each individual change may seem insignificant, but we’re not designing those pieces independently. We’re designing the relationship between them. As substitutions accumulate, scale begins to change, contrast disappears, materials become repetitive, and the balance of the original design starts to fall apart.

I call this beating a design into a box. Something that began with contrast, balance, harmony, and personality slowly becomes safer until everything is essentially the same color, the same material, or the same level of visual importance. Allowing us to manage the selections and execution protects the whole picture.

The same principle applies during construction. The exact location of a light fixture matters. The way the edge of a tile installation is finished matters. Hardware placement matters. The transition between two materials matters.

There is also a somewhat selfish reason we protect the execution of our designs. We want our portfolio to look good. When Proper House puts its name on a project, I want the completed home to represent the caliber of work we’re capable of producing. I can’t guarantee that if we’re responsible for the concept but someone else is responsible for bringing it to life.

Does Purchasing Through a Designer Cost More?

Sometimes the decision to hire an interior design consultant comes from the assumption that a homeowner can pay for professional guidance, purchase everything themselves, and save a substantial amount of money. In reality, the savings are often negligible, if there are savings at all. Much of what we specify comes through our trade vendors rather than traditional retail stores, and many of our furnishings are customized specifically for the project. Our pricing can often be comparable to what a homeowner would spend purchasing quality furnishings through a retailer.

I also think it’s important to be transparent about the fact that our firm earns a margin on the products we sell. Retailers do too. You don’t walk into Pottery Barn and ask what percentage they added to the wholesale cost of a sofa before deciding whether its retail price is acceptable. That margin is part of how the retailer operates its business. Our margin is part of our business model too, except the service attached to a purchase through Proper House is very different from walking into a store and purchasing a sofa.

When you purchase that sofa through us, we’re selecting it specifically for your floor plan, specifying the appropriate dimensions and materials, customizing it when appropriate, placing the order, tracking it, coordinating freight and receiving, addressing damage, overseeing delivery and installation, and remaining your point of contact if something goes wrong later.

Full-Service Doesn’t Mean the Client Isn’t Part of the Design

I think one of the biggest misconceptions about full-service interior design is that handing over control of the process means giving up your voice in your own home. That’s not how we work at all. I want our clients to bring us their inspiration and tell us what they love, what they hate, how they live, and what they want their home to feel like. The design should feel unmistakably connected to the people who live there, and our clients are very much part of creating that direction.

The difference is that they don’t also have to become the designer. They don’t need to independently source alternatives, compare specifications, manage orders, coordinate deliveries, supervise vendors, or determine the technical details of executing the design. Their role is to help us understand them, respond to what we present, and make informed decisions at the appropriate points in our process. Our role is to take everything we’ve learned about them and use our expertise to turn it into something they may never have known how to create themselves.

Ultimately, I want them to walk into the completed space, recognize themselves in it, and be incredibly glad they trusted us enough to take the design somewhere they wouldn’t have taken it on their own.

Maybe What You’re Looking for Isn’t Consulting After All

There are some homeowners who genuinely want to hire an interior design consultant because love spending their free time sourcing furniture, comparing products, ordering samples, tracking shipments, coordinating trades, and managing deliveries. There is nothing wrong with that, and there are design services built specifically for clients who want professional guidance while remaining heavily involved in execution. Proper House simply isn’t one of them.

Our process was built for a different client. Our clients are busy. They have demanding careers, families, travel, second homes, and full lives that don’t stop because they’re renovating or furnishing a house. They want to be involved in creating a home that feels like them, but they don’t want to spend their summer tracking furniture deliveries from the beach or leave a meeting at work because a contractor needs an immediate answer about tile.

If you’ve been considering hiring an interior design consultant because you assumed staying in control of the purchasing and execution would save money, give you a better result, or allow you to remain more involved, I would encourage you to consider whether that’s actually the experience you want. You can still have a voice in every important part of your home without carrying the responsibility for making every part of it happen. You can participate in the creative decisions while an experienced team handles the logistics, technical decisions, problems, and execution.

That’s why we don’t offer consulting. It doesn’t produce the experience we want for our clients, and it doesn’t consistently produce the caliber of finished work we’re capable of delivering.

If you came here looking for an interior design consultant but full-service design sounds more like the experience you actually want, we invite you to tell us about your project and learn more about working with Proper House.