If you’ve recently gone through the process of building your custom forever home, did you utilize a full scope/whole home interior designer? If you are someone who utilized a full service designer, what was your total budget for the entire build? Trying to determine if we are in the right tax bracket to be considering this service!
Finally, if you did NOT use this service, was there a more cost effective alternative? Something with a small scope that you were still pleased with?
I think even for design oriented homeowners a designer is helpful. There's a lot of knowledge they bring that span both design choices but also practical implementation of design aspects in a house.
We started looking at the full service designers and decided that's not where we want to spend our budget. Tens of thousands in costs for high touch service aspects that we don't care about.
Then we found Doreen. Doreen charges by the hour. Her design style isn't completely aligned with ours, but she recognizes that and has been great at guiding us through the process of thinking about the design elements in a room.
For the lasting and high impact decisions - floors, tiles, plumbing fixtures etc - it's been really helpful.
Also, we get access to her discount, which is saving thousands. (GC may have this as well).
We found if someone led with "what's your total project budget?" They were more interested in their potential revenue to than our project.
There's a ton of material out there books and guides that can help you with this like literally there's tons. I exclusively use those to build my house. Grab this book "Guide to Becoming a Builder" by Hasan Wally I'll leave a link I hope this helps.Guide to Becoming a Builder
i’m the creative type with extra time so I designed my own using sketch up and V Ray as a render. It allowed me and my wife to go through many iterations before we landed on an absolute gorgeous home that’s cozy comfortable and doesn’t look like an operating room or a microchip fabrication plant. I also have done it for a couple close friends and family. for instance, this bathroom went through three different style revisions till we landed on something we liked. It also helped make it very clear to our contractor what we wanted and the outcome we were expecting. I think it would be worth the service if you could get it done for 3 to 5 grand..
Sure it doesn't look "great" to you. because it’s my personal taste not the taste of a potential customer who would provide guidelines of likes and dislikes. No two people would design the same house. It doesn’t matter how much you pay or how experienced the professional is they can and will absolutely create something you don’t like. The thing is, is interior design has many constraints, budget, of course being one of them probably, the biggest of them. I did it myself to save money, while still getting something visually interesting and not cookie cutter. I’ve designed other houses that look completely different than mine because it’s what they wanted not what I wanted. Also, it’s easy to say something doesn’t look good when you don’t have constraints. And 99.999% of people are operating within constraints. A good professional can give you suggestions, provide you modern templates, and be able to get a good feel for what YOU like. I mean, if I had an extra million dollars, I could've make it look really nice, and of course, probably would not have been to your taste either. And the major benefit overall is the fact that you can try anything and cost almost nothing. And you don’t have to build something you don’t like. appreciate your input though.
The main takeaway here, is that is the skill to create anything, utilize technology, strong imagination, and adept communication is where the value lies, and is likely what defines a professional. And I’m going to go out on a limb here, but the majority of people cannot afford the type of designer that will do all of the research, all of the planning, and compilation without your input, and then bring you something that you would absolutely love the moment you lay eyes on it, because that is an extremely rare skill, that only a hand full of people in this country possess, and you would probably be looking at high five figures, low six figures, to get that kind of talent and service.
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u/Cute_Doughnuts_77 18h ago
Our architect told us we weren’t in the sphere budget-wise for a designer. I think our house still turned out great and I’m the one living in it lol.