Details Matter
I recently received a call from a client because her glass coffee table had broken and she wanted my assistance in acquiring a new one. She prefaced the request by telling me that her neighbor offered to help her look “to save her money” by not hiring her designer of many years. After all, it was only a coffee table. Wrong.
Fortunately, after looking at a few of the options she and her neighbor found she concluded she did need my help. Why? Because she realized that after having entire home meticulously designed over the years then skimp on one final piece that is sitting in the middle of the room was not a good idea.
So much of what interior designers do is small stuff. A lot of small stuff. Individually they don’t look like much but putting all those small moving parts together is the challenge we face every day. And we love it. Think jigsaw puzzle. If one piece gets lost it leaves a hole in the picture and that is exactly what the wrong coffee table would do since it the centerpiece of the living room.
There are three design tricks you should never overlook:
Sweat some small stuff because the personality of your space is in the small stuff.
Don’t be afraid to go custom, which is exactly what we ended up doing for the coffee table. Her options were narrowed down to ordering a less expensive ottoman online, not knowing the quality or if the color shown on the website would be exactly the same in person, OR spend three hundred dollars more and get a good quality ottoman in the perfect size with a fabric of her choosing.
Knowing who is making your products can make a difference in how you perceive that item. There is something about spending your hard-earned money on an item that was crafted by a company or individual who cared about their work and is proud to know you wanted in your home. This certainly doesn’t apply to everything we own, but it can make a good design great when items have a story.