People often mistake design for glorified personal shopping – but the design is so much more than picking out pretty fabrics and decorations. A lot is going on behind the scenes. When you hire a luxury interior design firm, you’re investing in a white-glove experience.
A firm like Marlaina Teich Design handles everything from the initial design to sourcing, ordering, tracking, receiving, inspecting for quality, delivering, and installing the furniture.
With an interior designer comes the added value of established vendor and trade relationships like architects and other craftsmen. It’s the designers’ job to be sure your project runs as smoothly as possible.
Generally, luxury interior designers charge a flat fee per room or project plus furnishings and construction.
There is an incredible range dependent upon the scope of your interior design project, style, and experience level of the designer within a firm.
With that said, you can expect to pay between $2-$5k per room in design fees plus the furniture and construction or bespoke additions like designing custom cabinetry. As with most products and services: You will get what you pay for.
A good rule of thumb is that about 10-20 hours go into designing a room. That is at a minimum – for an average-sized room without rounds of feedback.
But there is so much complexity that goes into a design before it’s even presented to a client, including pricing and sourcing furniture. Then comes rounds of notes from the client.
Once approved, even more work is set into motion to ensure everything is ordered, tracked, and arrives in excellent condition.
One of the wins of working with an interior designer is that they have exclusive access to furniture lines unavailable to the public. Designers source these lines by spending countless hours going to ‘market,’ trade furniture showrooms around the country, where they discover new lines and collections.
When you’re not working with trade-exclusive brands, often the client will say they can source the product on their own. This can cause delays and other complications if it’s not quality controlled. It’s always best to leave the furniture order to the designer.
Most luxury interior design firms, like Marlaina Teich Design, take on full rooms and home renovations rather than smaller decorating projects.
There is a strong correlation between time, scope, and cost when renovating a home; delays are often inevitable and unavoidable. Putting all of the information above together + accounting for delays will give you a good idea of what your home renovation might cost.
In addition to shipping delays on furniture and decor, a couple of the other factors that can contribute to delays include permitting issues, construction delays (this could be because of said permitting issues, or things like weather or unexpected discoveries like water damage), and client indecision.
Covid has caused a lot of delays in the supply chain. It’s been an ongoing challenge we’re all addressing head-on. It’s become necessary to adjust our expectations and timelines as we’ve all become accustomed to receiving things on-demand.
Often, a designer is called in to aid with decision fatigue, so when you’re working with a designer and can’t quite make up your mind, it’s best to let them know. They’re there to help! (Don’t ask your hairdresser or gardener for feedback — that’ll slow the process even more ;). Trust us!)