{"id":18689,"date":"2020-10-05T23:00:11","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T06:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/?p=18689"},"modified":"2020-10-06T22:58:54","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T05:58:54","slug":"should-i-hire-a-home-designer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/should-i-hire-a-home-designer\/","title":{"rendered":"Should I hire a Home Designer?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-18711\" src=\"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_3005-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_3005-1-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_3005-1-750x562.jpg 750w, https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_3005-1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_3005-1-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_3005-1-560x420.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Up to this point in our home build, we&#8217;ve worked with 2 incredible designers. Our architectural designer, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/hyrumbatesdesign\/?hl=en\">Hyrum Bates<\/a>, helped us with the layout of our house and turned our sketches into a reality. I&#8217;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, <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-18690\" src=\"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_5571.heic\" alt=\"\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.elizabethhalesdesign.com\/\">Elizabeth Hales<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We originally shied away from hiring a designer for the same reason that most hesitate, the cost. When you&#8217;re already stretching for your dream home, it&#8217;s hard to justify that added cost, ya know? But now that we&#8217;ve worked with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/elizabethhalesdesign\/\">Elizabeth<\/a> for over a year, it&#8217;s hard to imagine how much we would have spent in both time and costs if we didn&#8217;t have someone like Elizabeth walking us through the process, laying out our options, and helping us source materials.<\/p>\n<p>Since everyone&#8217;s needs are different, I&#8217;d definitely recommend sitting down to weigh out your own pro + con list on your own! For the rest of this post &#8211; I&#8217;m going to walk you through what&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-18752\" src=\"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/559843DD-F1E3-405C-B664-C24DDC12EBD4-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1440\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/559843DD-F1E3-405C-B664-C24DDC12EBD4-1-scaled.jpg 1440w, https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/559843DD-F1E3-405C-B664-C24DDC12EBD4-1-750x1333.jpg 750w, https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/559843DD-F1E3-405C-B664-C24DDC12EBD4-1-864x1536.jpg 864w, https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/559843DD-F1E3-405C-B664-C24DDC12EBD4-1-1152x2048.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/559843DD-F1E3-405C-B664-C24DDC12EBD4-1-560x996.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1440px) 100vw, 1440px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>THE PRO&#8217;S<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A Good Designer Will Help you stay on budget. <\/strong>If there is one thing I can promise you, it&#8217;s that you&#8217;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. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/elizabethhalesdesign\/\">Elizabeth<\/a> 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.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A Good Home Designer Provides Visuals Before Building:<\/strong> This goes back to the old saying &#8220;measure twice, cut once.&#8221; When Elizabeth suggested she&#8217;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&#8217;t want to rebuild things, make sure your designer designs. \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u00a0A Good Home Designer Sources Alternatives:<\/strong> This may be my biggest pro of a good designer. They&#8217;ll source multiple options for you with both aesthetics and budget in mind. Chances are, if you build a home, you&#8217;ll spend a lot of time searching Google Images and Pinterest. It won&#8217;t take long before you&#8217;re frustrated because you don&#8217;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&#8217;re looking for and even provide options you didn&#8217;t know you had!<\/li>\n<li><strong>A Good Home Designer Provides a Second opinion\/advocates for your decisions<\/strong>: to put it simply, I needed a hand holder. I&#8217;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 so<a href=\"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_5571.heic\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-18690\" src=\"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_5571.heic\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>me one to help &#8220;dummy the options down&#8221; 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>THE CON&#8217;S<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>\u2043 Budget&#8230;?<\/strong> It&#8217;s hard to call this a con considering we&#8217;ve saved much more than we spent with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/elizabethhalesdesign\/\">Elizabeth<\/a>. However, in the spirit of trying to be fair, there&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\nThings to consider\/ask when interviewing home designers<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What is the cost\/rate? Double check for understanding here as you don&#8217;t want to find unexpected fees.<\/li>\n<li>Ask them what home styles they are comfortable with.<\/li>\n<li>Do you have a portfolio to showcase your work?<\/li>\n<li>How often will we meet?<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;d also recommend\u00a0you express up front the things that mean the most to you in your home and ask how they&#8217;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 \u2043 You don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know. She has given + presented options to us that we wouldn\u2019t have realized were out there.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Our experience in working with Elizabeth Hales Design + a list of questions to consider when hiring a home designer! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[597,607,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-home-family","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_3005.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5mhS8-4Rr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18689"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18750,"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689\/revisions\/18750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theparrishplace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}