Choosing the Right Interior Designer for Custom Home Building

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Once you have made the decision to build a luxury custom home, one of your next orders of business is to find a professional  interior designer to work with. Chances are you’ve designed beautiful spaces in your current home which met your style and comfort. Now, the trained and experienced eye of a designer will help you match your furnishings and style to the distinctive and masterfully crafted elements of your new home—for example—how to draw the eye to the staircase’s fine carpentry.

Since custom home building is a serious investment in the pleasures of home, it is well worth waging a serious search for the right designer. You will spend a lot of time together over the course of the home building project and make many important financial and emotional decisions in one another’s presence. A good working relationship will lead to a beautiful custom design for your new home.

So, where do you start looking for a designer? Here is a list of tips which may help you in your search.

• Field recommendations from people whose opinions you respect. Ask close friends or acquaintances whose interior design you have admired. Camille Montondon Peeples, a custom home building interior designer with River Dog Creative in Houston, agrees. “I recommend asking friends and family for referrals. This way you can see the designer’s finished project and talk to clients first-hand about their experience. This gives you an opportunity to ask questions and determine how well the designer listened and responded to client’s vision, and whether the project was completed on time and on budget.”
•  Ask your builder or your architect.  Builders and architects are often affiliated with interior designers or have worked with local designers and can recommend those that they trust.
•  Visit design showrooms, show homes and events. Keep track of designers’ names whose work speaks to you and your sense of style. And gather photos and examples from magazines such as “Houston House and Home” and the “Houston Design Resource Magazine.”
• Contact professional associations and guilds for recommendations. As an example, you can go to the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) at www.asid.org. Many Houston-based designers are members of the Texas Gulf Coast Chapter of ASID.

Be sure to post below your own tips and check back next week for our follow-up guide on important questions to ask while interviewing potential designers.

If you’re ready to get started, contact Whitestone Builders, winner of a 2011 Star Award from  the Texas Association of Builders.