Questions to Ask an Interior Designer Before Hiring

Considering hiring an interior designer but unsure of where to start?

Redecorating a room or designing a home can feel like an uphill battle when you have little to no design experience.

It's easy to end up wasting money on furniture that doesn’t fit or decor that doesn’t suit the style of the room. And the time spent doing that, can leave you never wanting to decorate a room again!

Which is where an interior designer comes in!

In this blog post, I explore what you need to know before working with an interior designer and questions to ask an interior designer before choosing to work with them. Let’s get straight into it!

What You Need To Know Before Hiring an Interior Designer

Here is what you need to know before hiring an interior designer.

1. What is Your Budget?

The first question that you need to answer is “what is your budget?”

Hiring an interior designer on a budget is possible but you have to think about how much you’re willing to spend in the process. 

Is important to be realistic here. Setting up a proper budget is the perfect way to find an interior designer that works for you. By doing this, you also won’t waste time meeting with interior designers that you can’t afford. 

It’s important to do a little bit of research to compare prices between interior designers to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your money.

Photo: Design For Me (also has a great article about setting budgets)

2. What is Your Desired Timeline For This Project?

Depending on the size of the interior design project, you’ll need to determine how much you can invest timewise into this. 

Hiring an interior designer should take a lot of the work out of designing your home but you will need to be involved in some of the planning process.

Room upgrades can range anywhere from a day project to more than a week so prepare so make sure that you can invest some time into this.

Do you want e-design or a full design and procurement project? These are questions to discuss with your designer and how it will effect the timeline. 

 

Photos: Sainitar Winkel 

3. What Does Working With an Interior Designer Look Like?

It’s important to know what working with an interior designer will look like.

As I mentioned previously, doing your research about competitive prices is paramount when hiring an interior designer. 

You should also consider what type of relationship you would like with the interior designer. Do you want to be as involved as possible? Or would you prefer to follow the interior designers' lead?

Do you have ideas or existing furniture that you want to incorporate or are you starting from scratch and want to use their ideas completely?

 

Photos: Pexels

4. What is Your Interior Design Style?

Your interior design style is the way that you want your home to look like. 

You will want to make sure that your home feels cohesive and determining your interior design style is the best way to do that.

Check out my blog post on this topic to find out how to do that!

Photo: A beautiful bedroom from Topology

5. What Inspiration Can You Gather?

To get the most out of your interior designer, you want to be able to give them as much information as possible about the design that you would like in your home. 

Head over to Pinterest and save all of your favourite design styles, furniture and home decor into a board and share that with the interior designer.

Photo: A gorgeous blue kitchen design from Topology

6. Questions to Ask an Interior Designer

Now that you know the questions that you should ask yourself if you are hiring an interior designer, here are questions to ask an interior designer before you hire them.

• What are your credentials?
• What types of interior design services do you offer?
• What are your pricing plans like? 
• How long do you expect this interior design project to last? 
• Will I need to contact other people? Eg. plumbers, electricians etc.
• What types of projects have you done before?
• Have you done projects similar to this?
• What is your personal interior design style?
• Can you show me your recent interior design projects? 
• What are your initial thoughts for this room/home?

Asking these questions will help you to better understand the way that the interior designer works and their style.

It’s important that you connect with your interior designer and that you can envision the working relationship being a positive one - so go with your gut!

Photo: Pexels

Key Takeaways on Questions to Ask an Interior Designer Before Hiring

That officially concludes this blog post on questions to ask an interior designer before hiring and how you can prepare to hire an interior designer!

From getting clear on your own interior design style to knowing your budget, preparing as much as possible will help to make the hiring process far more streamlined.

It’s also important that you ask questions to identify that the interior designer is the right person to take on this project!!