Questions to Ask an Interior Designer
Before You Begin a Project
Starting a design project is an exciting time. Investing some time in early planning to develop a clear understanding of your own style and vision will help you find your perfect interior designer, making the process both more enjoyable and successful.
You may be looking at a full renovation, a new home construction or a replacement kitchen. Finding the right interior designer to work beside you will allow you to step back from the day-to-day decisions while enabling your project to remain on track financially and time-wise.
Think through the questions you’d like to ask your interior designer beforehand and discuss the level of design service you would like throughout the project. Effective communication early on will help your designer to understand what you are looking for and ensure an effective working relationship.
Why It Matters to Ask the Right Questions
Aligning on Design Style and Vision
Providing a visual brief for discussion from the start will help your designer align their ideas with your personal style, whether that be classic English kitchens, modern utility, or traditional joinery. Collecting images from Pinterest, magazines, and Instagram while considering what it is about each one that appeals to you is a good starting point and can help avoid costly mistakes.
Setting Expectations Around Budget and Timeline
It is important to be honest in discussing a realistic time schedule and budget, with shared expectations throughout. While your interior designer needs to agree on your project costs, budget, and timelines, it is critical also to have a full understanding of their process and to be fully aware of the time they require from initial conception through to the completed space.
Key Questions to Ask During the Initial Consultation
What Is Your Design Process Like?
Each designer will work with their client’s style, needs, and vision, but each individual will have their own aesthetic preferences; you will likely be drawn to designers who share a similar eye to you. When you’re ready for an initial meeting, be prepared with your brief and a list of the right questions to ask:
- How will the design process be approached and what can you expect between the first stage to completion?
- What is the sign-off process to confirm project costs?
- Will you be involved in the design meetings to finalize the details of the bespoke cabinetry?
Be prepared beforehand with how you would like to work through the project and your preferred methods for communication.
How Do You Balance Aesthetics with Function?
At Plain English, we prefer to work with natural materials, favouring traditional joinery methods and classical joinery proportions. All elements that bring a timeless design, resulting in a room that can easily be dressed with personal artworks and belongings. Longevity is core to our value of ‘buy once and buy well.’ Natural stone countertops are often durable; they also age well, developing a natural patina in time and with use. Balancing durability with beauty is essential in good design.
Who Will Be Involved on the Design Team?
Be clear about what your interior designer should manage throughout the process, from beginning to end, and who will be your main point of contact. If you are working with a larger team, there may be various people involved, but you will need a single point of contact for questions and updates. Be clear with what you would like them to be responsible for, and areas you would like to be consulted on prior to final decisions.
Can You Show Me Examples of Similar Work?
We have a vast library of Plain English project images, providing examples of kitchen, dressing room, scullery, and mud-room projects. While each project is unique, we will share many images with you during the design stage, showing examples of the details and items we recommend for your space. We work on a range of properties from historical and listed buildings, city apartments, contemporary buildings, new build eco-houses, country mansions, and more.
Questions to Ask About Materials, Maintenance, and Longevity
What Materials Do You Recommend and Why?
We design our cupboards to last for at least a lifetime. Selecting the highest quality of natural materials and making everything by hand ourselves has proven to be the best way to achieve cupboards for your home that will provide long-term service. Our high-quality design service echoes our commitment to providing thoughtful craftsmanship with handcrafted details throughout. How Do You Plan for Daily Use and Longevity? Our designers work closely with you, asking many questions about how you live, eat, cook and use spaces within your home. It is essential that we understand how you live so that we can provide the best design solutions, enhancing your daily family life, and provide a solution that works perfectly on both practical and aesthetic levels.
We select the highest grade of timber for all areas of our cupboards and drawers. A solid timber carcass with a front frame enables us to use traditional brass butt hinges to hang our timber doors. Our drawers can either run like a ‘piece of furniture’, each one tailored to run in its own housing, or they can be mounted on soft-close runners. Each drawer is dovetailed back and front, often made from oak. We also offer maple, cherry wood, and other woods for drawers and cupboard interiors, choices discussed during the initial design stages. Manufacturing well-designed internal storage systems, such as oak pull-out trays, handcrafted knife blocks, and felt-lined drawers for silverware, are all made using solid wood.
Three coats of paint, each one applied by hand, enable our cupboards to be ‘touched up’ or receive a change of colour in years to come, and should any serious damage occur, or you fancy a change.
Practical and Project-Specific Questions to Consider
What’s Included in the Scope of the Design Services?
Producing scale plan drawings with detailed elevations enables clear communication of design ideas and proportion to the space, a method we favour at Plain English. Ensuring the measurements are accurate at this stage will save time and money in the future and make for a much more enjoyable experience. Sensible space planning, allowing for freedom of movement between allocated areas, incorporating existing furniture and heirlooms to be welcomed into a living space, where relevant, is a part of our design service. We provide scale drawings, issuing detailed estimates accompanied by online or in-person meetings throughout. Final drawings are signed off on, along with dimensions, before we begin manufacture.
What’s the Typical Timeline for a Project Like Mine?
It is essential to allocate sufficient time in your schedule for bespoke joinery. Handmade cupboards require time and are made to order. Once scheduled, cut and made by hand on ‘the bench’, they are sprayed with primer or lacquer and dried before being hand-painted twice, both with a roller and brush. This process takes from fourteen weeks from sign-off to delivery.
What Happens If the Project Scope Changes?
Should changes occur to the room dimensions during a build or renovation, this will be picked up during the final survey, thereby reducing the risk of changes during manufacture. If you decide during the design process that you would like to add an additional room, we will do our utmost to accommodate this at the same time as the original order, and if this is not possible, we will ensure it follows as close behind as possible.
Final Thoughts: Building a Collaborative Relationship
When working with us, we will introduce you to a Plain English designer who is committed to achieving your design brief, bringing many additional elements for clever use of space as well as creative ideas to further enhance your style. They will arrange an initial consultation and be excited to answer your list of questions, ready to begin your design project. Building a relationship with you will encourage more questions, key to us creating a kitchen (or other room) which perfectly reflects your needs and style. Our designer will oversee each stage of the project, ensuring that the kitchen you are left with perfectly reflects the Plain English philosophy of elegance, classic form, and quiet utility, the result of our experience in collaborative design.
Schedule a consultation with our team to start planning a space that’s made to last and tailored just for you.
