5 Surprising Ways An Interior Designer Can Save You Money
Interior Designers have short-term costs that can outweigh the long-term frustrations and time spent–ultimately leading to cost savings where you wouldn’t expect. For homeowners that want to get their project done with lot’s of excitement and less stress, an interior designer offers this value proposition.
1. If Time is Money, Interior Designers Will Save You a Ton
Interior designers design spaces for a living, so a good designer should be nailing the design a lot faster than you’ll achieve on your own. After getting to know your space, personality, and household needs, a holistic plan for the design can come to shape in a fraction of the time.
Material selection can be the most daunting of tasks. For example, you may know you want a bright and colorful kitchen, but that can require decisions on flooring, countertops, cabinets, tile, and lighting choices that don’t always mean going with a light color. You’ll need to consider all the fundamental design decisions such as contrast, accents, and themes. If you want light tile on the backsplash, does that mean going with white–well which white shall we go with? What about patterns and grout color? For a seasoned pro, these decisions can be made rather quickly, as they’ve already done the research and have the knowledge from hundreds of combinations.
Designing Interior Spaces Become More Efficient As The Process Moves Along Throughout The House
After all the ramp-up time collecting all the intake and learnings from the design process from the first room, design choices often become easier when heading into other rooms. You may have narrowed choices for the master bath on fixtures and debated tile palettes, so it may make it easier to pin several of these thoughts for the guest or kids bath.
2. The Real Cost Is The General Contractor–Don’t Get Ripped Off
Being in the industry, interior designers make a lot of connections and only with vendors and contractors that they can trust to not ruin their reputation. The process of identifying and vetting contractors is a challenging one, and the last thing you’ll want to do is get ripped off by a sub-par contractor. Time savings in resourcing vendors, skilled craftsmen/women leveraging a network can save weeks in your own time spent finding and vetting.
Getting a referral for a general contractor is key to your project success, and a solid designer will look out for your best interests. Even if you introduce a new home service provider, an interior designer can help evaluate quotes, and simply tell you if it’s in line with the market. You’ll potentially benefit from much savings landing a team that will deliver on-time and budget. It’s very common for renovation projects to cycle through multiple contractors, as the poor ones get exposed pretty quickly.
3. Trade Discounts–Bonus!
While designers don’t typically make any margin on products purchased, they have relationships with almost all the vendors they use, and become enrolled in trade programs, get sent samples of all the latest products, and can easily purchase at discount and make returns if needed.
4. Smart & Quick Material Selection Offers Hidden Cost Savings
Being smart about material selection, balancing the budget with high-end materials where it counts, and lower-end materials where it matters less, is where experience and expertise comes into play. This can be knowing the overall budget, and knowing when to double-down on the special features that matter the most to the client. You may want a master bath redux and dream about a spa-like bathing experience, so investing in a high-end tub and tile surround can become the focal point of the design, while keeping the budget in line by going with lower-cost tile and fixtures for the shower and flooring, yet staying with the luxurious vision for the room as a whole. It’s just too easy to walk into a high-end kitchen and bath showroom, choose the most expensive tub, and expect that you’ll need to go high-end for everything else.
Another great cost-savings example is going to a high-end tile outlet, often called the ‘seconds bin’, the section of products that were either overruns or not quite perfect for the quality control folks, but to most clients, look exactly the same. Often, the challenge is that you’re walking into a warehouse of boxes of products, and have no accompanying showroom or concept of their applications. The magic happens when you go with your designer to design spaces on-the-fly, from say the ‘seconds’ bins on tile and visualize a design with what’s available, and perform the math to know if the materials available offer the coverage you’ll need. Or, you may visit a showroom with floor models for appliances, tubs, and vanities on clearance and need to quickly decide whether it’ll fit and look right. You don’t have time to take a snapshot, compare it to things on Pinterest, then figure out how to adjust the rest of the room with the new item, then go back to purchase it.
5. Avoid The Cost Marriage Counseling
One of the biggest pain points for designing spaces comes into play when you’re faced with tough [first-world] decisions. Should we go with silver or black, white or grey, double or single? The tie-breaker can come from your interior designer, backed by knowledge and experience to understand design choices that will meet your needs the best. This may bring us back to ‘What DOES design mean to you?’ Our dear friend, a world-class designer, simply explains: "Make things look good to most people most of the time.” Yes, in your own world it should only matter to you, but if we’re working with an interior designer looking for a tiebreaker, a choice should be made that appeals to most people (in most cases your friends and family). This is where it’s also important that your designer’s work has proven acceptance and accolades–were they published, win any awards judged by other qualified designers?
It’s great to keep yourself sane, as well as any spouses involved. The peace of mind of getting a third-party to blame can take a lot off your back, and help keep you out of expensive marriage counseling 🤣 🤞🏼
