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Three packages · the whole deliverable is on this page · no supplier commission
You can read the actual deliverable before you buy it.
The trouble with buying design is that you are buying taste, sight unseen, and what turns up is a PDF. So the real thing is on this page — one past client's room, names and address removed, every page of it. Read that and the three packages below take about four minutes to choose between.
The work
This band is pale for one reason: photographs of rooms carry their own colour and a page that competes with them loses. Put your own in and let it stay quiet.
Victorian front room, north-facing
The hard one. North light kills warm greys, so the scheme went the other way. 63 items scheduled, £11,400 spent including the joinery.
Read the roomKitchen–diner, knocked through
Designed alongside the builder's programme rather than after it, which is the whole reason the sockets are where the lamps are. £24,900.
Read the roomTwo bedrooms and a landing, rented flat
Nothing screwed to a wall, nothing that couldn't come with her. Landlord-proof design is a real brief and it's under-served. £3,200.
Read the roomSpend figures are what the client actually paid, furniture included, and they're published because a room with no number attached tells you nothing about whether it was for you.
42Pages in the sample pack
3Packages, and nothing bespoke
0%Commission taken from suppliers
14 daysSurvey to pack, typically
Four numbers, and the third is the one that matters. Put your own here — if your model does take commission, put the real percentage in rather than dropping the row.
Three packages
Concept
$450 fixed
- Two-hour survey at your place
- Two directions, not fifteen
- A palette with real samples
- An honest read on the budget
One room, complete
$1,850 fixed
- The full pack — plan, elevations, lighting
- A schedule with every item and price
- A box of samples, posted
- One round of changes included
Whole house, in stages
$1,200 a room
- A running order for the whole house
- One room designed at a time
- Pause between any two rooms
- The order is set by money, not taste
The middle one is marked because it's the honest default — Most people want one room done properly. If your situation is genuinely the first or the third, that will be obvious to both of us at the survey
Fixed means fixed — Quoted after the survey and it doesn't move because the project turned out to be interesting. If the brief changes, we re-quote in the open rather than adding it up quietly
The concept fee comes off — If you go on to a full room within three months, it's deducted. It exists so you can stop cheaply, not so you can be walked into the next thing
What none of them include — The furniture, the trades, delivery, and the two everyone forgets — window treatments and a decorator. Budget those from day one and nothing later is a shock
Fixed means fixed — Quoted after the survey and it doesn't move because the project turned out to be interesting. If the brief changes, we re-quote in the open rather than adding it up quietly
The concept fee comes off — If you go on to a full room within three months, it's deducted. It exists so you can stop cheaply, not so you can be walked into the next thing
What none of them include — The furniture, the trades, delivery, and the two everyone forgets — window treatments and a decorator. Budget those from day one and nothing later is a shock
What actually arrives
Written as things you can count, because "a considered scheme" is not a deliverable and nobody has ever been able to check one.
A plan drawn to scale, at 1:50 — Not furniture dragged around a photograph. Real footprints, so you find out on paper that the sofa doesn't fit rather than on a Tuesday afternoon with two delivery men in the hall
A schedule with a line for every item — Product, supplier, size, price, lead time and the link. Forty to ninety lines for a room, and the prices are the ones you pay
Elevations for anything built in — Joinery, alcoves, a fireplace wall. Your joiner prices from these — a joiner pricing from a mood board is guessing, and the guess is never low
A lighting plan and a switching plan — Two drawings, because where the light goes and where the switch goes are separate arguments and both are settled at first fix, months before you see a lamp
A box of samples, posted — Paint, fabric, tile, timber. On a screen everything is the wrong colour and every one of us knows it
One page saying what order to do it in — The least glamorous thing in the pack and the one people come back and thank me for. Doing it in the wrong order is what makes a room cost twice
A schedule with a line for every item — Product, supplier, size, price, lead time and the link. Forty to ninety lines for a room, and the prices are the ones you pay
Elevations for anything built in — Joinery, alcoves, a fireplace wall. Your joiner prices from these — a joiner pricing from a mood board is guessing, and the guess is never low
A lighting plan and a switching plan — Two drawings, because where the light goes and where the switch goes are separate arguments and both are settled at first fix, months before you see a lamp
A box of samples, posted — Paint, fabric, tile, timber. On a screen everything is the wrong colour and every one of us knows it
One page saying what order to do it in — The least glamorous thing in the pack and the one people come back and thank me for. Doing it in the wrong order is what makes a room cost twice
Read a real one first
Anyone can call themselves an interior designer. There's no register to look me up on, no protected title and no exam I had to pass — which is exactly why the whole deliverable is downloadable rather than described. Nothing on this page asks you to take my word for the thing you're buying.
Upload your own in the editor. Redact the client, the address and anything on a shelf that identifies them — and ask their permission anyway, even when the redaction is thorough. A pack published without asking is the first thing a future client will wonder about.
Where the money goes, including the part nobody publishes
Every designer knows this answer and almost none of them put it on a website. Whichever model you use, say which — the models are all legitimate and the silence is the only part that isn't.
I buy at trade and you pay trade — The discount is yours rather than mine. On a full room it usually saves more than the fee, and where it won't, I'll tell you that at the survey instead of afterwards
I take no commission from suppliers — Some designers do, openly, and charge a lower fee because of it. That model is fine. It isn't mine, and you are entitled to ask any designer which one they're on before you hire them
What that would be worth, so you can price the silence — Ten to twenty per cent on everything specified. The number is here because a discount you cannot see is not a discount you can compare
Nothing is marked up on its way to you — Invoices come from the supplier in your name wherever the trade account allows it. Where it doesn't, you get the supplier's invoice attached to mine
I don't take a percentage of the build — It rewards the wrong thing. A designer paid on spend has a quiet reason to prefer the expensive tile, and you shouldn't have to wonder about that
If the budget can't do it, I'll say so and charge nothing — A room designed to a budget that isn't there is a plan for disappointing you slowly. That conversation happens at the survey, before an invoice exists
I take no commission from suppliers — Some designers do, openly, and charge a lower fee because of it. That model is fine. It isn't mine, and you are entitled to ask any designer which one they're on before you hire them
What that would be worth, so you can price the silence — Ten to twenty per cent on everything specified. The number is here because a discount you cannot see is not a discount you can compare
Nothing is marked up on its way to you — Invoices come from the supplier in your name wherever the trade account allows it. Where it doesn't, you get the supplier's invoice attached to mine
I don't take a percentage of the build — It rewards the wrong thing. A designer paid on spend has a quiet reason to prefer the expensive tile, and you shouldn't have to wonder about that
If the budget can't do it, I'll say so and charge nothing — A room designed to a budget that isn't there is a plan for disappointing you slowly. That conversation happens at the survey, before an invoice exists
If it's one room
The commonest brief and a real project in its own right, not a trial version of a bigger one.
Start with the room you actually sit in — Not the one guests see. People redo the front room and go on spending every evening in the other one
It still has to meet the rest of the house — One room done to a different standard makes the hall look worse. We plan the join even when we're only doing the one side of it
Say what's staying — The sofa you like, the rug from your mother, the telly that's too big. Designing around fixed things is the job — pretending they aren't there is how a scheme dies
Budget shapes the plan, not the taste — The same room at three budgets is three different specifications and one identical drawing
It still has to meet the rest of the house — One room done to a different standard makes the hall look worse. We plan the join even when we're only doing the one side of it
Say what's staying — The sofa you like, the rug from your mother, the telly that's too big. Designing around fixed things is the job — pretending they aren't there is how a scheme dies
Budget shapes the plan, not the taste — The same room at three budgets is three different specifications and one identical drawing
If it's the whole house
Done in an order, over a year or two, with the freedom to stop between any two rooms.
The order is money, not taste — Anything behind a wall or under a floor comes first — wiring, plumbing, heating. Decorating over work you'll undo is the most expensive mistake in this business
One room at a time, priced one at a time — You are never committed further than the room we're on, and pausing costs nothing except the wait to start again
The running order is its own deliverable — You get it after the survey, before you commit to anything, and it is useful even if you never hire me
Sequencing beats specifying — Most of what a designer saves you on a whole house is doing things in the right order, not finding a cleverer lamp
One room at a time, priced one at a time — You are never committed further than the room we're on, and pausing costs nothing except the wait to start again
The running order is its own deliverable — You get it after the survey, before you commit to anything, and it is useful even if you never hire me
Sequencing beats specifying — Most of what a designer saves you on a whole house is doing things in the right order, not finding a cleverer lamp
What a designer can't do
I can't move a wall — That's a structural engineer, and often an architect too. I'll say when a layout needs one rather than drawing something that can't be built and letting your builder break the news
I can't make a small room big — I can make it work, which is a different and more useful thing. Anyone showing you a before and after where the room grew has changed the lens, not the room
I can't hold your builder's programme — Their dates are theirs. What I can do is get the drawings to them early enough that a delay is never my fault, and tell you honestly when it is
I can't promise a look from a photograph — The light in that photograph is not the light in your house, and light is most of it. What I can do is show you the same scheme in your own room at three in the afternoon in February
I can't fix a house you don't enjoy living in — Some of what people want from a redecoration isn't a decoration problem. Better said out loud at the survey than discovered at the end, when it's been paid for
I won't specify something I haven't seen — Or sat on, in the case of a sofa. It slows the schedule by about a week and it is the reason things almost never go back
I can't make a small room big — I can make it work, which is a different and more useful thing. Anyone showing you a before and after where the room grew has changed the lens, not the room
I can't hold your builder's programme — Their dates are theirs. What I can do is get the drawings to them early enough that a delay is never my fault, and tell you honestly when it is
I can't promise a look from a photograph — The light in that photograph is not the light in your house, and light is most of it. What I can do is show you the same scheme in your own room at three in the afternoon in February
I can't fix a house you don't enjoy living in — Some of what people want from a redecoration isn't a decoration problem. Better said out loud at the survey than discovered at the end, when it's been paid for
I won't specify something I haven't seen — Or sat on, in the case of a sofa. It slows the schedule by about a week and it is the reason things almost never go back
★★★★★
“She talked me out of the extension and into moving one doorway. It cost a fortieth of what I'd budgeted and it's the reason the house works now.”
A client, second project
Ask about your room
It comes straight to me. You'll get a reply within two working days, and it will include whether I think you need a designer at all.
Ask about your room
The budget question is the useful one and "no idea" is a perfectly good answer — it's the reason the survey exists. What isn't useful is a number you don't mean.
Live preview — every color, word and block is editable after you pick it.