Ten Bad Reasons To Hire An Interior Designer

Recent economic upheavals in the home furnishings industry have changed many of the old rules and customs. Many of the old reasons to hire an interior designer no longer hold true. The following are ten basic reasons why many customers hire interior designers which are now outdated.

1. Saving money

For many years interior designers have told their clients that the wholesale discounts they have access to will more than offset their fees, resulting in a net savings to the client. Until about ten years ago, this was true. Not anymore.

Thanks to discounters, consumers now have access to many home furnishings at or near wholesale prices. In addition, the recent economic decline has forced many wholesale workrooms, upholsterers, installers, and other craftspeople to look beyond interior designers for business. Many now work directly with retail customers at or near wholesale prices.

If you decide to become your own interior decorator, as discussed in Chapter 19, you can have access to straight wholesale prices on the vast majority of the home furnishings products available to interior designers. The $110.00 you would spend on your business credentials in most areas of the country is far cheaper than any interior designer's fee.

So, while it was once true that interior designers could make their services pay for themselves through trade discounts that were once available only to them, this is no longer the case because many trade discounts are now available directly to the public.

2. Having access to workrooms, installers, etc.

When the interior design industry was booming during the early to mid-1980's, most workrooms, installers, upholsterers, and other craftspeople did not work directly with the public for fear of offending the interior designers who provided the majority of their business.

Now that the interior design industry is in a severe decline, local workrooms and craftspeople must look to the retail public to make up the business they are missing. The use of interior designers and interior decorators by consumers is down by about 40% since the late 1980's. This means that wholesale businesses that work primarily for interior decorators and interior designers are also suffering a large drop in income. They have to make it up somewhere. Many quietly work directly with retail clients, often charging them the very same prices that they charge interior designers.

Some wholesale workrooms and craftspeople are listed in the Yellow Pages. The vast majority are listed in the National Directory of Wholesale Home Furnishings Sources and Showrooms. Some, particularly home seamstresses, list their names with local fabric stores. All you have to do is ask. These wholesale sources aren't difficult to find.

You must seek these craftspeople out, however, because they cannot jeopardize their wholesale business by seeking you out. The best ways to find and work with the same wholesale workrooms and installers who work for interior designers in your area are discussed in greater detail in "The Insider's Guide To Buying Home Furnishings".

3. Avoiding hassles with workrooms, installers, etc.

It may seem that local workrooms and craftspeople might provide better service to interior designers from whom they could expect repeat business than to consumers decorating their own homes who tend to be "one-shot" deals. It makes sense on the surface, but it isn't true.

As stated above, many local workrooms and craftspeople are coming to depend more and more on direct sales to consumers to survive. An excellent source of new customers is favorable referrals from other satisfied consumers. These workrooms and craftspeople know that if you are happy with their work, you may recommend them to your friends, relatives, and co-workers. After all, a newly redecorated home is bound to be shown off to someone.

They also know that if you are unhappy with their work, you may complain to others or, even worse, to the consumer, fabric store, building contractor, publisher, or other source that recommended them to you. These sources are a major source of referrals for local workrooms and craftspeople, who generally do not advertise to the public out of fear of offending their wholesale customers.

If a source receives a complaint from a consumer, it will probably stop referring future consumers to that craftsperson. That could eliminate most or all of the workroom's or craftsperson's referrals to consumers in some towns. Therefore, there really is no particular advantage to hiring an interior designer to avoid potential problems in this area.

4. Having access to "better" merchandise

It used to be true that high-quality home furnishings were usually not available directly to the general public. Not anymore.

The fabric stores, wallpaper stores, furniture warehouses, and telephone ordering services that are open to the general public carry many of the same home furnishings that are available in wholesale interior design centers. These are not knock-offs or copies but the very same fabrics, wallpapers, and other home furnishings which are sold at the design centers. There is no longer a major distinction between the quality and style of home furnishings that are available to the general public and those that are available exclusively to interior designers.

Also, you may wish to become your own decorator, which would give you access to all but a very few ultra-exclusive home furnishings at full trade discounts (normally 40% to 50% off retail).

There are still a very few fabrics, wallpapers, and other home furnishings which can only be purchased by certain licensed interior designers. However, these goods are separated primarily by exclusivity, not by quality. It is no longer the case that only interior designers have access to high-quality furnishings. They do still have sole access to the very few ultra-exclusive furnishings that hold "snob appeal" for their customers.

You don't need to hire an interior designer to get the best quality home furnishings. However, if you want something ultra-exclusive, like the $40,000.00 designer sterling silver ice bucket made famous in the 1980's, you will still have to pay an interior designer to buy it for you.

5. Ensuring quality work

Surprisingly, interior designers are usually not properly instructed about the quality manufacturing of home furnishings as a part of the interior design degree program. It is also very rare for an interior designer to have any work experience or business background in the manufacturing of home furnishings. The manufacturing and interior design segments of the home furnishings industry are worlds apart.

You must oversee the quality of your home furnishings personally. Interior designers are usually not good judges of quality because they have no insight into how home furnishings are made.

6. Avoiding mistakes in measuring

This also relates to interior designers' lack of manufacturing expertise. Over the years, I have seen many errors made by interior designers in taking measurements. Occasionally, measurements are just sloppy or wrong, but more often important measurements are left out because the interior designer does not realize that they are important.

Don't hire an interior designer to ensure the accuracy and completeness of measurements. They usually have no more training than you do on this subject.

7. Avoiding mistakes in product choices

Again, this goes right back to lack of manufacturing expertise. Interior designers are trained in the design and aesthetic aspects of home furnishings, not the practical aspects.

I routinely see poor product choices in books and magazine articles written by interior designers. For instance, a recent issue of a major home furnishings magazine featured a story about silk draperies. Silk fades dramatically under natural or artificial light. The very expensive draperies featured in the article would begin to fade within a few months and would probably be ready for the trash before the year was out. The article made no mention of this.

Home furnishings magazines and design magazines are great sources of design ideas, but they are often poor sources for practical advice. The spectacular rooms featured in magazine spreads only need to look good on the day the photographs are taken. How the same furnishings will look after six months of normal use in an average home appears to be of no major concern to many of these magazines or the interior designers who decorate these fantasy rooms.

This is a perfect illustration of the lack of consideration for practical matters that most interior designers seem to have. Unfortunately, you cannot rely on advice from interior designers to make sure that you are getting products that are appropriate for your home and will last a long time.

You must do your own product research to make certain that you are choosing fabrics that won't fade for your window treatments, wallpaper that can stand exposure to steam for your bathroom, and upholstery that won't shout to the world that you own a dog.

As with measuring, interior designers are usually no more expert than you are on this subject.

8. Getting design ideas

Free, or almost free, design ideas are everywhere. Design magazines, books, and model homes are the best sources for design advice. The basic principles of interior design have been thoroughly discussed by many top interior designers through books and magazine articles. Unless you have a truly unusual or elaborate home, the advice from these sources should be all you need to decorate your home beautifully.

Virtually every library in the United States has at least one of the basic books used by college interior design students in its collection. Unless your home is truly a unique, one-of-a-kind, architectural creation, the basic rules of design explained in these books should be all you need.

Do you really need to pay an interior designer a high fee or commission to tell you such basic things as mounting draperies high on the wall to make your windows look bigger or how to properly arrange pictures on a wall? You can find these things out for yourself very easily and at no charge by simply reading the very same books that are used to teach interior designers in the first place.

When you pay an interior designer to parrot age-old advice from books that are widely available to anyone who has a library card, what you are really doing is paying another middleman markup. Many model homes are decorated by the top designers in your community. You can view their work all you like, free, any day of the week. You can easily locate all of the new subdivisions in your area that have homes, and model homes, comparable to your own by looking them up in the free real estate magazines available at most local banks.

Also, many interior designers participate in "show houses" to benefit local charities. Top designers compete with each other to show their work here. The publicity is extremely valuable to them. You can get all the ideas you wish from the best designers in your community for only a few dollars. Check your newspaper for announcements of these events.

Most libraries carry the major interior design magazines, such as Metropolitan Home and Architectural Digest. Most libraries keep these magazines on display for at least two years, so you should have more design ideas available to you than you could read in a month's time. Most libraries also have a wide selection of books written by top designers, such as Terence Conran, Mary Gilliatt, and Mark Hampton. You should have no difficulty whatsoever finding a wide variety of ideas for your home, no matter what style you prefer.

Besides, many interior designers get their ideas from these sources, too. Most of the custom window treatment orders my family's wholesale workroom received from interior designers over the years were stapled to photocopies of designs from books and magazines. These designers' clients weren't even getting the original designs they are paying for. You don't need to pay anyone $50.00 per hour to "design" your furnishings by sticking a quarter in a copying machine.

If you are going to pay high fees for original design ideas, then you should get original ideas. If you are going to get copies of designs from books and magazines, which are perfectly fine for most homes, then you should keep the money you would have paid to a designer in your own pocket and run the copying machine yourself.

If you are decorating Buckingham Palace West, hire a reputable interior designer who will create original designs for your home. Otherwise, you will be better served by taking advantage of the free design advice that is widely available at your local library and at model homes and showhouses in your community.

9. Making sure that your home is decorated "correctly"

Interior designers like to create the impression that interior design is very difficult and complicated. It helps them justify their high fees. After all, if customers believed that interior design was easy, why would they be willing to pay $50.00 per hour for help?

Professionals in many fields do this all the time. This scam is as old as the world. Interior designers pretend that decorating homes is incredibly complex. Accountants pretend that if you fill out your 1040-EZ without help, the IRS will come and get you. Lawyers pretend that if you write a simple will or fill out a lease on your own, you are asking for trouble.

The harder you can convince people your job is, the more money you can get them to pay you to do it. There is a great deal of money to be made by convincing people that life is much harder than it really is.

I'll let you in on a little secret. The only actual "rules" of design are very simple and have been around for a very long time. Everything else is just someone's opinion. Interior design really isn't that difficult. You needn't worry that your home won't look "right" if you follow your own tastes. Go to your library and check out any basic book on interior design. All of the basic rules will be right there.

10. "Interior designers have a certain creative flair that I don't have"

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. What successful interior designers DO have that sets them apart is confidence in their creativity. There is a big, big difference.

Most people are creative to some degree. What many people do not have are confidence and sales skills. It isn't that professional interior designers are so much more creative than you are, they just have the self-assurance to go out in public and not only convince people that their design ideas are wonderful, but ask payment for them.

You may or may not be able to come up with enough new ideas (good or otherwise) on a daily basis and in a wide variety of homes to sustain an interior design business, but you almost certainly have enough good ideas to decorate your own home.

Before you spend your hard-earned money on an interior designer, at least try your own hand at decorating. Go to the library and study what professional interior designers are doing. Use your own common sense to pick out the furnishings that you like, and ignore the "design innovations" that are obviously only pictured to get attention for the designer or sell magazines. Then, if you are still stuck on one particular portion of your home, hire help only for the portion you cannot do alone.