What You're Actually Paying For When You Hire a Full Service Interior Designer

This year, now that I'm back from maternity leave and finally no longer pregnant (!), I'm taking on a few select full service interior design projects again. This means not just putting beautiful designs down on paper, but seeing a project through from concept to styling, managing the trades, ordering the furniture, and running the entire procurement process. But it also raises a question: what exactly are you paying for when you hire a full service designer? The honest answer is that design is only the beginning.

Design Is Only the Beginning

The part most people picture when they think of hiring an interior designer is the concept work - the moodboards, the material boards, the colour schemes, the vision made tangible. It's incredibly important, and it's probably why you wanted to hire a designer in the first place. But it's also only a fraction of the job. The real work starts once the design is signed off, when all the integral decisions required to actually bring it to life start to emerge.

What Happens After the Design Is Signed Off

This is the stage that catches most people off guard.

The trades don't know you yet - You interview tradespeople and builders who aren't available, simply because they haven't worked with you before and your project isn't their priority yet.

Ordering isn't as simple as it sounds - The wallpaper measurements are tricky in an awkward space, and then the wallpaper company wants to know how large to print the pattern - yes, they can change the scale of a printed pattern depending on the size of your room.

Specifications shift once you're in the room - The skirting boards you designed on paper suddenly look a little too low once they're actually in the space.

Supply doesn't always cooperate - The tiles you loved so much go on back order and can't be relied on to arrive in time for the tiler, so you go for another one instead. It's a slightly different shade, but maybe it'll work.

Sourcing Is a Skill in Itself

Sourcing means vetting the vendor, understanding lead times, and assessing whether an item's quality will hold up to how it'll actually be used - as well as whether the colour truly works within the scheme. I have relationships with account managers, so if something arrives damaged, it gets handled quietly. You don't need to worry about any of it. By the time you see what I've ordered, it's installation day.

What You're Really Buying

Full service interior design is managing the chaos. It's problem solving and making the right judgement calls, over and over, so your house goes from boring to beautiful without you really having to lift a finger.

You're not just buying a moodboard or a beautiful room. You're buying confidence in your space. Access to my judgement, my taste, and my understanding of what a space needs. A relationship that lasts through the whole design and build process, and someone there to guide you through the decisions along the way. Sometimes you don't even need to know about the hundreds of tiny decisions that go into building a beautiful home - leave it up to me.

If you're renovating a period home in the Netherlands and would like to work together, send me an email at hello@catrionahandsinteriors.com, or book a discovery call - I'd love to hear from you.

What You're Actually Paying For When You Hire a Full Service Interior Designer

This year, now that I'm back from maternity leave and finally no longer pregnant (!), I'm taking on a few select full service interior design projects again. This means not just putting beautiful designs down on paper, but seeing a project through from concept to styling, managing the trades, ordering the furniture, and running the entire procurement process. But it also raises a question: what exactly are you paying for when you hire a full service designer? The honest answer is that design is only the beginning.

Design Is Only the Beginning

The part most people picture when they think of hiring an interior designer is the concept work - the moodboards, the material boards, the colour schemes, the vision made tangible. It's incredibly important, and it's probably why you wanted to hire a designer in the first place. But it's also only a fraction of the job. The real work starts once the design is signed off, when all the integral decisions required to actually bring it to life start to emerge.

What Happens After the Design Is Signed Off

This is the stage that catches most people off guard.

The trades don't know you yet - You interview tradespeople and builders who aren't available, simply because they haven't worked with you before and your project isn't their priority yet.

Ordering isn't as simple as it sounds - The wallpaper measurements are tricky in an awkward space, and then the wallpaper company wants to know how large to print the pattern - yes, they can change the scale of a printed pattern depending on the size of your room.

Specifications shift once you're in the room - The skirting boards you designed on paper suddenly look a little too low once they're actually in the space.

Supply doesn't always cooperate - The tiles you loved so much go on back order and can't be relied on to arrive in time for the tiler, so you go for another one instead. It's a slightly different shade, but maybe it'll work.

Sourcing Is a Skill in Itself

Sourcing means vetting the vendor, understanding lead times, and assessing whether an item's quality will hold up to how it'll actually be used - as well as whether the colour truly works within the scheme. I have relationships with account managers, so if something arrives damaged, it gets handled quietly. You don't need to worry about any of it. By the time you see what I've ordered, it's installation day.

What You're Really Buying

Full service interior design is managing the chaos. It's problem solving and making the right judgement calls, over and over, so your house goes from boring to beautiful without you really having to lift a finger.

You're not just buying a moodboard or a beautiful room. You're buying confidence in your space. Access to my judgement, my taste, and my understanding of what a space needs. A relationship that lasts through the whole design and build process, and someone there to guide you through the decisions along the way. Sometimes you don't even need to know about the hundreds of tiny decisions that go into building a beautiful home - leave it up to me.

If you're renovating a period home in the Netherlands and would like to work together, send me an email at hello@catrionahandsinteriors.com, or book a discovery call - I'd love to hear from you.

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