Jun 30, 2022
Furniture and décor can complete a renovation. Sometimes they are the final brushstrokes that bring a space together. Other times, they’re the main event, especially when the room already has good bones. Working with a designer through this stage is less about shopping and more about shaping a feeling. The right pieces help your home support connection, comfort, conversation, and daily living more thoughtfully.
It’s worth noting that designers are not the same as decorators. Designers look at space planning, scale, function, flow, safety, longevity, and how every element interacts with daily life. Decorators focus on surface-level visual changes. Both have value, but they are different roles. If you would like to explore this more, there is a full blog about Design vs. Décor on our website, which explains how each approach works.
Let’s walk through some common assumptions about furniture and décor shopping with a designer and what the experience is actually like.
Designers do have trusted suppliers. These relationships are built over years, sometimes decades. With these connections come things that aren’t always available to the general public:
Access to made-to-order furniture and custom upholstery
Appointment-only trade showrooms
First knowledge of incoming shipments
Reliable estimates on lead times
Service that ensures issues are resolved quickly
But shopping with a designer isn’t about being guided into one store. It’s about bringing your ideas, preferences, and the way you live to the table. If you love a certain shop, a specific chair, or something you spotted online, share it. The designer’s role is to help you assess scale, durability, quality, and how it will sit within the whole room. The goal is a cohesive space that feels like home, not a showroom.
A thoughtful designer doesn’t push. They collaborate.
Quality varies. Price varies. Every room has items that carry more weight than others. A sofa that will be sat on every day benefits from durability and comfort. A throw pillow can be playful, seasonal, or inexpensive without compromising the room. The key is balance.
Before anything is purchased, there should be a clear budget. That includes everything: the pieces, the accessories, and the design time required to source them.
Some things are worth investing in. Some things can be more modest. Through thoughtful discovery conversations with you, the designer will guide where to spend and where to save so that the room has depth, warmth, longevity and matches the way you live.
You don’t pay more for the furniture because you worked with a designer. In many cases, the cost is the same or even less.
The investment is the design time itself, which covers concept development, research, sourcing options, layout planning, showroom appointments, customization choices, delivery coordination, and installation oversight.
This is skilled work that prevents expensive mismatches later. A sofa that overwhelms the room. A fabric that pills. A rug size that feels wrong. Lighting that casts shadows where you want a soft glow.
Design saves money by avoiding those mistakes.
Also, please don’t buy the sectional first and call the designer later. We're joking. Call us! We're here to help. Still, the order matters. Foundation pieces set the tone and scale for everything that follows.
Good design takes careful thought and planning. But the time-heavy parts are not yours to carry.
Your role:
Share your space
Share how you want it to feel
Share references or inspiration images
Share what’s most important to you. For example, you want a desk, but it doesn’t have to be fancy. But your couch MUST be cozy and pet-friendly.
Share your ideal budget
From there, the designer shapes the layout, curates options, and guides the decision-making. Small tweaks may happen along the way, but the burden of researching and evaluating hundreds of options is handled for you.
Customization is another advantage. Designers can help you:
Select fabrics with the right durability rating
Adjust dimensions to suit your room
Choose wood stains, metal finishes, and cushion fills that support your lifestyle
Coordinate all of it so delivery and placement are seamless
Most of the process is invisible to you, and that is intentional.
This part surprises many people. Even when the work is not custom-built, furniture planning still requires drawings. The drawings don’t need to be as precise as millwork shop drawings, but they need to be accurate enough to make sure the room functions comfortably.
A room can feel very different with a few inches of difference in scale.
A 65-inch sofa and a 70-inch sofa may look similar in a catalogue, but the extra five inches can affect pathways, balance, and how people sit and gather. We don’t know anyone who hasn’t made a mistake in scale because they thought it looked right in the store.
Clearances matter.
Traffic flow matters.
Sightlines matter.
Comfort matters.
Drawings allow us to test those things before anything is ordered. The layout informs which pieces work, which need adjusting, and whether something needs to be custom or simply sized differently. Without drawings, the room is guesswork. With drawings, it’s intentional.
Not every home requires the same approach. There are different levels of support, and each one comes with a different investment. One thing is for sure: even small projects have a lot of moving parts.
Some clients want a fully guided furniture plan with custom upholstery and white-glove delivery. Others want a curated list of recommended pieces with links so they can order them on their own time.
Both are valid.
It’s important to understand that searching for lower-cost alternatives often takes more design time, because the designer must evaluate more vendors, confirm measurements, test for durability, and ensure the alternatives still support the desired look and function.
Saving in one place sometimes means adding time in another. The designer is not a personal shopper. They are a trained professional helping you shape the atmosphere of your home.
In addition to the cost of the furniture and décor, the following may be part of your investment.
Design time. Meeting time, ideation, research, chatting with vendors, drawings, and design presentations take time. These can be billed as design hours or a flat rate fee.
Coordinating orders and deliveries. This takes a considerable amount of time and can either be billed as design hours or cost-plus. Some designers receive trade pricing at retail locations and will pass those savings on to you. How this is billed depends on the designer and the size of the project or order.
Moving costs. If you are moving furniture from one home to another in addition to purchasing furniture, you will need to hire a moving company. A designer can help you purge and coordinate your movers if desired. This time will be billed as design hours or a flat rate fee.
Storage and delivery. You are responsible for the delivery fees associated with your orders. You can determine if you wish to have white glove (unboxed and placed in the room) or standard delivery to your home.
Staging and placement. If you wish the designer to unbox and place the furniture and décor, this is typically considered design time and will be for the designer and at least one assistant (possibly more).
You share your room, how you use it, your style direction, and your budget.
The designer measures your home (or has a measuring service measure your home), creates layout drawings as needed, and selects furniture and décor options that meet the function, timeline, and visual goals.
You review together and refine as much as needed. Design is iterative, and this is the joyful part. You get to respond to what resonates.
Depending on the level of service and your needs, sit tests in furniture showrooms, and online ordering may be required.
Depending on the level of service, the design studio may coordinate orders, delivery, and placement so the final result is cohesive and comfortable. Or you may opt to stop at the shopping list, design presentation and drawings and do the ordering yourself.
The result is a room that feels intentional. Lived in. Warm. Connected. One that supports your daily life and the people who share it with you.
If you’d like help with your furniture and décor, let’s talk.
