Maybe it seems somewhat frivolous to bring an interior designer/decorator/stylist into your home project for their direction, wisdom, clarity, acumen, and consummate experience. Or maybe it seems like you can confidently and successfully select, purchase, and put together all the furniture, art, accessories, lighting, and case goods for all the rooms in your new house ALL ON YOUR OWN. Or maybe it seems like managing a contractor, plumber, or electrician is totally feasible and you’ve got the time and chutzpah to ensure the work is not just completed, but done well, too. Here’s the truth: it isn’t frivolous; for the average human, managing contractors can be a sweat-inducing, swear-inspiring, extremely costly endeavor; and if you want your new home to feel gorgeous and cohesive in fewer than five years, you best get an interior designer into your house ASAP, people.
We’ve pulled together six super solid reasons as to why you ought to hire an interior designer. Not us, per se (though we’d love that) and we’ve included quotes from some of our favorite clients to convey what it was like working with us Lily Spindle ladies. Lots of love and gratitude to you, Felicia, Carol, Ja-Shin + Jeff, and Joyce + Joe – we adore you, too!
1. Interior designers typically have access to cool or lesser known furniture and lighting designers, artists, dealers, and makers, thusly able to create a space that is uniquely yours and not page 73 out of the Room and Board catalog (not that we don’t seriously love ourselves some Room and Board, but the IKEA catalog bathroom scene in “Fight Club” accurately conveys how your home will look (and feel!) without any real personality, genuine warmth, thoughtful consideration. Basically, a house replicating a page in a catalog lacks everything that makes a house a home, everything that makes your house, well, YOUR house.
2. A trained eye will see and experience your space in its entirety, understanding its possibilities, and anticipating how all of these pieces will work together, vetting what ought to stay, and what ought to go (even if it’s prying a favorite chest of drawers loose from a vise-like grip!). Designers are able to opine on and provide clients with paint colors and wallpaper, textiles and upholstery selections, window treatments, furniture design and style, lighting, finishes, hardware, space planning, and more. Your space is brimming over with potential off-the-charts awesomeness, you dig? And while you may not have the answers and solutions, you don’t need to, ‘cos that’s what an interior designer is for!
Lily Spindle was amazing to work with! We were totally overwhelmed with the task of furnishing an entire home from scratch, and not only did they handle it like a boss, they made it entirely fun and pain-free. Rebecca and Deb helped create spaces more stylish than we could have ever imagined ourselves, all while meeting our functional and practical needs as an extremely busy family of five. They are a true dream team!- Joyce and Joseph Ybarra
3. Heaven knows you don’t have the time to tackle that kitchen remodel or style your entire new house, mast to stern, so to speak, on your own. We can anticipate your project’s (likely) start-to-finish period, plan ahead with pragmatism, scheduling, purchasing, meeting contractors, deliveries, overseeing installations and managing all of the things, while utilizing the talents of our trusted tradespeople (plumbers, electricians, upholsterers, et cetera). A significant portion of what interior designers do is project management and by having a solid but malleable game plan in place and keeping all the players moving, we ultimately save our clients time in the short and long run, which leads us to our fourth reason you should hire an interior designer.
4. You will save money (and your precious, irreplaceable sanity) by avoiding costly mistakes and drastically prolonging a project. An interior designer will recognize problems before they’re potentially executed by a contractor or electrician and in getting ahead of them, can prevent the repairing and subsequent redoing of tasks. (A very small example of this would be ensuring the electrician places the outlets in a space precisely where they should be for that particular purpose in that particular room, or making sure installed hardware or lighting is centered and/or specifically where it should be). Designers also save you dinero by preventing you from purchasing elements piecemeal, which often results in a home filled with furniture, lighting, accessories, and art all screaming different languages and all at the same time – this kind of visual and experiential din is not terribly uncommon (also known as “why does my house feel like nothing WORKS together?” syndrome) and not only is it potentially wasteful if these items cannot be rehomed or repurposed, it’s a financial loss, as well.
Rebecca and Deb worked design refresh magic with our limited budget. Their clever rearrangements of our art, books and decorative objects and additions of pillows and gorgeous, shockingly affordable rugs grounded our rooms and gave them aesthetic coherence for the first time. They were easy and fun to work with – and only the women of Lily Spindle would insist on finding orthopedically appropriate dog beds that also matched the rug.
- Carol Mithers and Bill Gibson
5. Designers provide “The Whole Tamale,” so to speak. Plenty of DIYers get to that place where they’ve done the big stuff but they have no idea how to fill in the details that make it spectacular. All those finishing touches such as the scale, placement, and style of accessories, mirrors, ceramics, the right plant in what corner, the perfect floor lamp for reading, the best vintage ottoman for your living room – all of these bits and bobs, when brought together with a mindful, creative intention, produce the WOW factor. (Nothing is higher praise, perhaps, than having a client walk into her new space and joyfully exclaim “OH MY F*CKING GOD!”) I mean, who doesn’t love a good WOW factor?
6. Working with an interior designer will unquestionably increase the worth of your home for resale purposes, no matter the proximity of that possibility. Homebuyers recognize when a house on the market requires immediate and significant remodeling or renovations - everything from repainting all common areas and bedrooms to new floors throughout to upgrades in the kitchen and bathrooms. Without a doubt, when homebuyers look at a house requiring immediate work to get it “up to snuff,” they’ll low-ball their offers well below asking price, sometimes up to 25% less. Conversely, when your home is beautifully and thoughtfully maintained, it shows well and often garners offers exceeding your asking price. Added bonus: you get to live in and enjoy the benefits of a bitchin’ home until you sell it and move onto the next great digs!
Without Lily Spindle, we would have been lost and frustrated trying to navigate all that was required in renovating our new home. From managing our general contractor (and his crew) to drawing up diagrams that helped us envision the possibilities in each space to sending us beautiful fabric/furniture/rug options to choose from, they really did it all. And they were so great at communicating all of the details that we never felt like we had to chase them for information. Even though they had other clients, we still felt like we were a priority. It took a huge weight off of our shoulders and gave us time to focus on other things related to our move. The best part about it all was that they made the entire process fun. Believe us when we say that we had some very stressful moments during the renovation, but Rebecca and Deb always managed to ease our minds and make us laugh. We really can’t thank them enough for helping us make our house a home!
- Ja-Shin and Jeff Mercado
I found Lily Spindle initially through instagram and our shared love of mid-century modern, fun colors and dogs! I reached out when my very sad bedroom needed a much needed facelift and the results were beyond my expectations...what was at first a drab and sullen place just to hang my head is now what feels like an Ojai Boutique Hotel . . . From there we started plotting the BIG job...my kitchen! The design process in their expert hands laid out a plan that utilized my space in such an ingenious way, we didn't need to add square footage but turned what we had into the most glorious and playful and chef-worthy home. Deb and Rebecca's teamwork and accessibility made it very easy for me to feel I was in the best hands...and it came off without a hitch! . . . I have referred Lily Spindle to all my friends and colleagues and will forever...I can't wait for the next project with them...I think we have some bathrooms in our future, also I miss hanging out with them every day!
- Felicia Fasano
