Up to this point in our home build, we’ve worked with 2 incredible designers. Our architectural designer, Hyrum Bates, helped us with the layout of our house and turned our sketches into a reality. I’ll dive more into that process with a Q+A with Hyrum later on! As for many of the interior features of our house (fixtures, lighting, hardware, cabinets, flooring, etc) we worked with an interior designer, Elizabeth Hales.

We originally shied away from hiring a designer for the same reason that most hesitate, the cost. When you’re already stretching for your dream home, it’s hard to justify that added cost, ya know? But now that we’ve worked with Elizabeth for over a year, it’s hard to imagine how much we would have spent in both time and costs if we didn’t have someone like Elizabeth walking us through the process, laying out our options, and helping us source materials.

Since everyone’s needs are different, I’d definitely recommend sitting down to weigh out your own pro + con list on your own! For the rest of this post – I’m going to walk you through what’s been the most helpful for us + the things that we tried to consider when deciding for ourselves if we should hire a home designer.

THE PRO’S

• A Good Designer Will Help you stay on budget. If there is one thing I can promise you, it’s that you’ll go over budget. It just happens. Having someone there to help remove the emotion + keep the budget on track will save you a fortune. A good home designer should be able to help you map out the best use of your budget and help you decide where you should splurge and where you should save. Elizabeth was good to stick to the numbers our builder had given us for each room. She was mindful of where to splurge + save. It was very helpful to be upfront right from the beginning so that everyone was aware of the expectation.
• A Good Home Designer Provides Visuals Before Building: This goes back to the old saying “measure twice, cut once.” When Elizabeth suggested she’d make us drawings of every room, we thought she was waisting a lot of time (time is money). After redoing SEVERAL rooms, we see how beneficial (both for the eyes + for the wallet) it is to see the room BEFORE you build it. Duh. With our bathrooms, Elizabeth printed out designs of every room prior to approving them + changes were made prior to the build, a lot of changes. If you don’t want to rebuild things, make sure your designer designs. 😉
•  A Good Home Designer Sources Alternatives: This may be my biggest pro of a good designer. They’ll source multiple options for you with both aesthetics and budget in mind. Chances are, if you build a home, you’ll spend a lot of time searching Google Images and Pinterest. It won’t take long before you’re frustrated because you don’t know where a product came from, or what material is being used, or may not know what options are available. Your designer will source what you’re looking for and even provide options you didn’t know you had!
• A Good Home Designer Provides a Second opinion/advocates for your decisions: to put it simply, I needed a hand holder. I’ve never built a home from scratch before. It all feels intimidating. I needed someone who would help me find the confidence with what feels like big decisions. I found myself in meetings with our builder needing some one to help “dummy the options down” a bit for me. Decision fatigue is real when building fully custom. Elizabeth helped me narrow down decisions + confidently decide on the ones I liked the best.

THE CON’S

⁃ Budget…? It’s hard to call this a con considering we’ve saved much more than we spent with Elizabeth. However, in the spirit of trying to be fair, there’s obviously a cost. I prefer to call it an investment since you should receive a return if you do it right. See my list below for things you should consider when hiring a designer.

Things to consider/ask when interviewing home designers:

• What is the cost/rate? Double check for understanding here as you don’t want to find unexpected fees.
• Ask them what home styles they are comfortable with.
• Do you have a portfolio to showcase your work?
• How often will we meet?
• I’d also recommend you express up front the things that mean the most to you in your home and ask how they’ve addressed that in the past. We really wanted an open floor plan that forces us all to the center of our home to be together. Which meant smaller rooms + a drop down seated area. Elizabeth made this easier, because she had us fill out detailed questionnaires for each of the boys + the bathrooms in our home. Jon always says ⁃ You don’t know what you don’t know. She has given + presented options to us that we wouldn’t have realized were out there.

In the end, what we thought would be a big extra cost for our build has paid itself off. Hiring Elizabeth Hales has saved us thousands of dollars at this point!