"Here's my trade secret: I have a designer. Of course I do! Far from inspiring me to take it on myself, editing these pages and chatting with designers every day only validates my decision to enlist help-and I'm so glad I did.
It's funny to me that people who will readily hire a personal trainer, nutritionist, or hairstylist (not to mention a therapist, tutor, or caregiver) don't automatically also sign on a design professional. If you start your day in a home that functions flawlessly and brings you joy, then there's less need for the rest.
Too many people think of designers as merely shoppers and stylists-and, yes, they are skilled at both. But a good designer can address a client's needs and get down to work with nary a purchase. Albert Hadley, once emptied a client's belongings onto the lawn only to edit, rearrange, and reorder crucial details into a most gracious home-and it's certainly not as a shopper that we recall Albert.
...My brief was that I needed guidance with renovation details (light-switch placement, doorknob finishes) but no help whatsoever with paint colors-I'm a longtime HB reader, so those I did feel confident choosing. But we ended up doing nearly everything in the apartment together. Why? Because I started to live better, thanks to Lys. She made shrewd decisions, as if she were spending her own money: getting her workroom to replicate pillows we'd seen in HB, adding special trim to store-bought curtain panels, hiring a carpenter to retrofit my old bookcase to the new dining room's proportions instead of starting from scratch.
And she improves my taste. Having spent too many hours on Pinterest, I was hell-bent on a wildly tiled master bathroom. Lys steered me away from the zany, graphic cement tiles I'd nearly purchased and pointed me toward hand-molded, hand painted ones with more nuance. It was a big splurge that turned out to be terribly cost-effective-meaning I've long since tired of seeing those crazy tiles on my Pinterest board, yet I'm still besotted with the ones she directed me to. Sometimes a designer's most valuable service is saving you from expensive mistakes."
Great quote by John Wooden. Think about it.
