My Client Told Me I Should Be Shouting This From the Rooftops

I am currently designing a full home remodel for an approximately 4,000-square-foot home in three weeks. Yes, I am aware that is an extremely aggressive timeline.

To be completely transparent, it is not even how I prefer to design. Not because I cannot work quickly, but because there are a lot of decisions involved in remodeling an entire home and I never want my clients to feel like the process is something they simply have to survive.

I want them to understand the decisions they are making, feel confident in them, and hopefully even enjoy parts of the process along the way.

That being said, there are moments when an aggressive timeline can work. You need a

contractor you trust, clients who are ready to make decisions, and a designer who understands remodels well enough to know what needs to happen now, what can happen later, and where you absolutely cannot afford to lose time. Fortunately, we have all three on this project, so here we are!

My clients are relocating to Camas, Washington, which has made the design process a little

different from a typical local remodel. We have done a combination of Zoom meetings, emails, homework, and long-distance decision-making because they simply have not been here to walk into the house whenever we need to answer a question. This past weekend they were finally in town, and we took full advantage of it. We worked together for about five hours on Saturday and then came back and did roughly another five hours on Sunday.

It was A LOT.

If these clients are reading this, I hope they know how genuinely impressed I was with them.

Ten hours of discussing cabinetry, countertops, flooring, tile, lighting, plumbing, paint,

appliances, layouts, budgets, and all the little details that come along with a full home remodel is no small thing. At some point every sample starts looking a little bit the same and your brain simply does not want to discuss another faucet. They hung in there, continued making thoughtful decisions, and by the end of the weekend we had moved an enormous amount of the project forward.

But there was something my client said at the end of both days that really stuck with me.

He told me how glad he was that they had decided to hire me. More specifically, he admitted that before we started this process, he really had no idea what value I was going to bring to the project. Now that we were in it and he could actually see what I was doing, he told me I should be shouting this stuff from the rooftops.

And I laughed, but I also kept thinking about it after I left.

I think homeowners hear the words interior designer and naturally think about how the house is going to look. They picture someone helping choose tile, paint colors, cabinetry, countertops and lighting. And yes, obviously, that is part of my job. I care deeply about what the finished home looks like, how the materials relate to one another, how the rooms flow together, and whether the end result actually feels like the people who live there.

But this weekend was such a good reminder that the pretty part is only one piece of what I

actually do.

Sometimes a Designer Saves You Money By Telling You Not to Remodel

Something

One of the most valuable things I can do for a homeowner is help them figure out where their money is actually going to matter.

When you receive a construction bid for a large remodel, there is so much information coming at you at once. You are looking at one very large number made up of dozens of smaller numbers, and unless you work in construction or design every day, it can be incredibly difficult to understand where you should spend more, where you can spend less, and where you might be paying to solve a problem that is not really a problem at all.

One of the bathrooms in this home is a great example.

It is dated, and the original plan was to give it a pretty substantial overhaul. If you walk into a

bathroom that does not match the new direction of your home, the natural reaction is often to look at everything in the room and think it all needs to go.

New vanity.

New countertop.

New flooring.

New everything.

We are remodeling, so let’s remodel.

But when I looked at the room, I did not see a vanity that needed to be replaced. I saw a really good vanity sitting in a dated room.

The cabinetry itself is in great condition, and the color actually works beautifully with the direction we are taking throughout the rest of the house. Once we change the countertop, backsplash, flooring, vanity light, hardware and paint, that bathroom is going to feel completely different. There is no reason to spend thousands of dollars replacing perfectly good cabinetry simply because everything currently surrounding it is making it feel old.

Custom cabinetry adds up quickly. Even refinishing or professionally painting existing cabinetry can become a significant line item. By leaving this vanity alone, we are saving thousands of dollars without sacrificing the finished design.

More importantly, that money did not just disappear from the project. It became available

somewhere else.

These clients care much more about the materials in their primary bathroom, and there is a

countertop option there that is a little more expensive but also something they genuinely love. Saving money in the secondary bathroom gives us room to spend more in the primary

bathroom without simply adding more and more money to the overall project.

That, to me, is what designing to a budget actually means.

It is not about automatically choosing the least expensive option. It is also not about filling

every room with the highest-end material available just because the budget technically allows it. It is about understanding the homeowners well enough to know where an upgrade is going to make a difference to them and where it simply will not.

I want you to spend money on the things that will make you walk into your home and think, I

am so glad we did that. I do not want you spending $5,000 on something you would have been equally happy keeping.

There is a huge difference.

There Is Also A Lot of Time Hidden Inside Every Design Decision

The second thing my client commented on was time, and I think this is one of the hardest parts of design services to quantify until you are actually in the middle of a remodel.

Because my clients are relocating, there were a few categories where I needed them to

physically go into a showroom before coming to Camas. Plumbing was one of them. Appliances were another. There are certain things you need to touch, open, stand next to, or experience in person, especially when we are talking about a full home remodel.

But I did not just tell them to go look at plumbing fixtures and report back.

Before they went, I gave them a defined list of exactly what we needed. We had already talked through finishes. I gave them guidance on brands and options that made sense for their project. They knew what they needed to accomplish during that trip and what they did not need to waste time thinking about yet.

Did it still take time? Of course. There is no version of remodeling an entire house where you never have to make decisions.

But imagine the alternative.

You walk into a plumbing showroom and there are hundreds of faucets, dozens of shower

systems, multiple finish options, sinks you did not know existed, fixtures at wildly different price points, and a salesperson asking you questions about things you have never heard of. You came in to choose a faucet and 45 minutes later you are discussing valve systems and suddenly wondering whether you have strong opinions about the spray pattern of a hand shower.

That is how an innocent Saturday disappears.

My job is not to eliminate decision-making. My job is to eliminate as much unnecessary

decision-making as I possibly can.

This weekend I took that even further and essentially brought the showroom to them.

And I mean that literally. I brought collapsible tables into the house, set them up in the living

room, and filled them with samples I had already sourced. Flooring, tile, cabinetry finishes,

countertops, paint, all the pieces we needed to start seeing the home come together.

They were not standing in a store looking at 300 tiles trying to figure out which one might work.

They were standing in their future home looking at a small group of options that I already knew worked with their style, their budget, the other materials we had selected, and the overall direction of the house.

That difference is huge.

I say this all the time, but homeowners do not hire me because they are incapable of picking

tile. Most of my clients have great taste. They know what they like when they see it. The

problem is that a remodel asks you to make hundreds of connected decisions, and most

homeowners do not have the time or desire to research hundreds of options for every one of

them.

You should not have to look at 437 tiles to find the three that work.

That is what I am doing before I ever put a sample in front of you.

By the time we sit down together, I have already eliminated the materials that are wrong for

the budget, wrong for the application, wrong for the architecture, wrong for your lifestyle,

wrong with the other materials, or simply wrong for you. You still get choices, and ultimately

they are your choices, but I am giving you a much smaller and more intentional decision to

make.

That is where so much of the time savings lives.

The Piece I Wish More Homeowners Understood: I Can Be Your

Advocate

The last part is probably the one I wish I could explain to every homeowner before they begin a remodel, because it has very little to do with choosing pretty finishes.

Unless you work in this industry, there is SO MUCH you have no reason to know.

I say that with absolutely no judgment. I would not walk into your profession and understand

all of the terminology, normal processes, potential problems, timelines, or things I should be

watching for. Yet homeowners walk into a remodel and are suddenly expected to navigate an entire industry they may have never interacted with before.

Construction has its own language.

There are sequences of work that matter.

There are decisions that have to be made much earlier than you would ever assume. There are situations that look terrifying but are completely normal, and other little details that may not seem important to a homeowner but immediately make me ask a question.

Then there are the contractor conversations.

A good contractor is an incredible partner in a remodel, but your contractor and your designer are looking at the project through different lenses. Your contractor is figuring out how to build the thing. I am thinking about how you are going to live with the thing once it is built.

Those two perspectives need each other.

My job is often to live in the space between the homeowner and the construction team. I can

look at a plan and think about how the doors are going to swing, where you are going to set

something down when you walk into the room, whether you have enough storage for the

things you actually own, how the lighting placement relates to the cabinetry, whether a finish

transition is going to feel intentional, or whether a construction decision we are making today is going to create a design problem three steps from now.

I can also help my clients understand what they are being asked.

There is an enormous amount of comfort in being able to turn to someone and say, “Is this

normal?” or “What does this mean?” or “Do I need to care about this?” or “What would you

do?” Sometimes my answer is, “Yes, this matters and we need to talk about it.”

Other times it is, “Nope. This is normal. Keep moving.”

Both answers have value.

I do not think homeowners realize how mentally exhausting it is to constantly wonder whether they are making the right call until they are already living through it. You are spending a substantial amount of money, people are literally taking parts of your house apart, and there are decisions coming at you from multiple directions. Even if you have a fantastic contractor, you still want someone on your side who understands the vision for the home and understands you.

That is one of my favorite parts of what I do.

I get to know what matters to my clients. I know where they want to splurge and where they do not care. I know which features made their face light up during the first design meeting and which things they could take or leave. I know how they want the house to feel when everyone piles into the kitchen, what frustrates them about their current bathroom, whether they are the type of people who want everything tucked away or need things visible so they remember they exist.

All of that becomes information I can carry into the construction process.

And yes, at the end of all of this, I am also going to make the house look really good.

That part matters too.

But the reason the house will feel cohesive at the end is not because we found one magical tile.

It is because hundreds of decisions were made with the same people, priorities, budget,

architecture and overall vision in mind.

I think that is what my client was beginning to see this weekend.

Before we started working together, hiring a designer was another expense attached to an

already expensive project. I completely understand why a homeowner might look at it that way when they have never experienced the process before.

But after two very long days together, he could see what was actually happening behind the

selections.

I was helping them decide where to spend their money and where not to. I was narrowing the choices so they could make decisions faster. I was connecting decisions in one room to

decisions happening somewhere else. I was translating parts of the remodel process. I was

helping them think ahead. I was giving them context for things they had no reason to already

know.

And I was carrying a lot of the mental load that comes with trying to make a 4,000-square-foot remodel happen in three weeks.

That is the part he told me I needed to shout from the rooftops.

So, here I am.

Maybe not shouting exactly. I am more of a sit-down-with-a-cup-of-coffee-and-write-1,500-

words-about-it kind of person.

But I am saying it.

If you are getting ready to remodel your home, you absolutely can make these decisions

yourself. Homeowners do it every day. But if you are looking at your project and wondering

what a designer actually does beyond helping you choose finishes, I hope this gives you a little peek behind the curtain.

Sometimes I am choosing tile.

Sometimes I am saving you $5,000 by telling you not to touch a perfectly good vanity.

Sometimes I am setting up folding tables in your empty living room and turning it into a

makeshift design studio.

Sometimes I am asking your contractor a question you did not know needed to be asked.

And sometimes I am simply giving you the reassurance that yes, this is normal, we have a plan, and you are making a good decision. That is the work.

And after this weekend, apparently I need to get a little louder about it.

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