Interior design therapist: Interior design is, among many other things, a listening career. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard our DesignerLogic users (interior designers) talk about having to deal with the emotional states of their own clients. It comes with the territory: interior designer as therapist. Though it can be a challenge when you’re trying to get approvals and decisions made, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing so don’t fight it, embrace the role. Become a ‘spatial therapist’ to be a better designer.
It’s actually a good sign when a client begins to share their mood states and deeply felt issues—because it means they trust and feel comfortable with their designer. Trust from clients should never be undervalued. It’s a quality they’ll never have with a big design industry brand, regardless of whether they ‘trust the brand.’ Trusting a brand is not the same as trusting a person. So, when a client emotionally leans on you, perhaps oversharing something personal, it may be annoying but also points to the fact that you’re building the necessary foundation for a successful client-designer relationship.
Another very human quality that feeds into what interior designers do is fill a client’s need to be recognized. Clients want their spaces to reflect their deepest selves, their aspirations, their story, and their need to belong to an environment that suits them. To be successful requires the designer to see and understand their client, and then interpret that knowledge in a physical way. You’d be surprised how deeply a client might respond to a particular texture of upholstery for the living room sofa or a delicate shade of lighting in the master bedroom, and the only way you might know this is from what they tell you about themselves in a seemingly unrelated way, a way that just gives you a sense of who they are.
So as a designer, you’re entrusted with creating the most personal, intimate spaces for your client’s lives to take place and somehow being able to read between the lines to get it right. That’s a lot of responsibility!
Let’s take a look at a few tips on how to enable this process.
First, spend time with the client. This seems obvious but often a designer would rather just ‘get down to designing’ instead of having long conversations with a client or going over sample books and catalogues together. If you don’t want this time to seem too formal, like an interview, tour the project site together or take the client to a few showrooms to gauge their reactions. Driving in the same car or looking at live versions of spaces (vs images online) will often get the conversational ball rolling in unexpected, but helpful, ways.
One thing to keep in mind about spending time with a client, even if it’s just showing items to get input and approval, is to make sure you bill for your hours. The client may enjoy the stroll through interior design-land but you are working. And you’d be surprised at how much extra money you’ll bring in on a project if you bill by the hour. (**Pro-tip: even if you don’t bill by the hour, log your time as non-billable and you’ll be amazed when you view reports and see exactly how much time you’re spending and on what).
Spending—and billing for—time with a client brings us to another key tool: communication. It’s incredibly important to map out, from the get-go, exactly what you bill for, how you charge, and any other key project terms so there is no confusion and client expectations can be met and exceeded. A client who knows in advance that time at showrooms is billed hourly will not object when they get that invoice. Make sure you create a contract for each project with very clear, simple terms, and have the client read and sign it before doing any work.
Collaboration, in a generic sense, is great but….
