(Don’t You Want to Relax on Your Weekend?)

If you’ve been following my video journey, you’ll recall this video above called “Fabric Sourcing and You” outlining why it’s not as easy as you think to pick out the right fabric for you sofa.

Remember when I walked you through the shelves and shelves of wallpaper and fabric? Go on, have a look at the video again, I’ll wait:

That was a LOT of fabric and wallpaper, plus there was a lot more I didn’t show you on the other side of the showroom, AND the tables you see behind me have fabric and wallpaper under them. Does sorting through that fill you with dread?

Well me too! That is if I didn’t have the training, intuition, and experience that tells me what I’m looking for. AND a professional who is a a partner in my project- that knows where everything is and can point me in the right direction(s). This means what may take you an entire day of exhausting searching, takes me an hour or so to get the main choices sorted, then another small amount of time once I get the samples delivered to pick out the best one(s).

What about kitchens? Melissa, you say, I can just visit a kitchen place and pick that out myself? Hm, well, have you ever had a friend you spent a few weekends going to a few kitchen places because they didn’t quite see what they liked, and by the end probably didn’t even KNOW what they liked? Or maybe that friend was you on a previous project.

I have the knowledge and experience (and the deep understanding of you and your family) to curate the finishes in a much short amount of time, and then present you with a couple choices you’ll like.

Let’s talk tiles. I have an absolutely favourite place to source tiles. SS Tile and Stone in Etobicoke. That’s because it has SUCH a huge selection.

Ever walked into a tile store and been immediately overwhelmed? Ever gone to a couple tile stores and been more confused? You aren’t alone!

This is a huge reason to hire me to help you when you technically could handle choosing the finishes yourself- who wants to give up their nights and weekends to do that? You’ve worked hard to save the money to do the renovation you’re doing, why should you spend so much of your precious time sifting through mountains of choices when I can make it a fun, pleasureable experience.

All of these decisions for a kitchen could be presented to you in 30minutes and we would have the finishes chosen. 30. Minutes. Versus nights and weekends spent selecting them yourselves- and dealing with 5 or more different opinions on how you should do your kitchen. And almost none of those professionals have had the proper time to get to know you, what you LOVE, and how the space would best serve you.

So, why not keep your evenings and weekends for YOU? And leave the design process to me. You’ll just get a space you love, a relaxing fun process, a project on time and on budget, and your precious time back.

(Or any other Designer)

Here at Sanura Design we love educated clients- and curious clients. An integral part of our process is ensuring our clients have all the information they need- and that includes knowing the design process, permit process, construction process, and everything in between.

So… what do you need to know before you hire me or another design professional?

1: Personality isn’t everything- but fit is really important

Interior design is an incredibly personal job- especially when designing your home. As your interior designer I know things like: what’s in your bedtime table, how you arrange your undies, what you have for breakfast, and your morning bathroom habits. Most of which I bet your friends don’t know. That means when you search for an interior designer you’re searching for someone you can both work with professionally AND consider a friend. How do you know your interior designer is right for you (after checking qualifications, experience, etc)? How do you know you’ll be friends with someone?

2: Are they qualified?

Have a good look at what you’d like to accomplish for your project and what your goals are. Are you simply freshening a space by changing furniture, paint colours, lighting fixtures? That’s something you can hire an interior designer OR decorator for. Are you moving walls, changing your HVAC, electrical, etc, adding an addition, or generally altering your actual home in some way? That’s where you need a qualified professional- a registered interior designer is a regulated profession where you know exactly what we need to know to earn our title of “interior designer” and we answer to our organization when we aren’t standing up to our code of ethics. Other design professionals do have extensive experience in renovations and may have a comprehensive skill set, if you hire someone like this the next step will be a very important one.

3: Check their references

Whether you’re hiring us, another registered interior designer, or another design professional, a very important step is asking for and checking a few references. You’re looking for past clients that have undergone similar work to your project, and a bonus can sometimes be hearing from other professionals, like contractors or consultants. You want to have a personal conversation with them and get a good idea for what their experience is like, exactly what the person you may be hiring did for them and what challenges came up. You need to check multiple references as this gives you a much fuller picture of who you’ll be working with.

4: Are they insured?

That’s their problem right? Professionals who do good work don’t need liability insurance- they never get sued.
Incorrect! Liability insurance isn’t just to cover a professional from unhappy clients, it’s also to cover the project from unforeseen circumstances- like a defective product, an incorrectly installed finish, or the incorrect product being installed (among many many other things). Mistakes happen, even with the best professionals, and true professionals carry this protection for themselves, their employees, and their projects.

5: Do they have a contract?

Contracts are incredibly important to your renovation. Both your contractor AND your interior designer should have detailed contracts for you to sign. For an interior designer they should include things like: fees/payment schedule, scope of work, details for breaking the contract, and clarify each sides responsbilities- to name a few. These contracts protect YOU the most- and I can’t emphasize that enough. If something goes wrong during the project and you didn’t sign a contract- you have no options and no protection. The longer and more detailed your professional’s contract is, the more confident you should feel in hiring them. This means they’re openly laying out exactly how they work and ensuring you understand the full process before you sign up for a project with them. A good professional is also always willing to go through their contract with you in detail to help you feel more comfortable.

Whew! That was a technical one. I’m sure I missed something (we don’t want an essay on the subject!), but it will serve as a great rule of thumb to ensure you get the right professional for your project.

Do you have any questions on what the qualifications of a registered interior designer ARE or would like to find one in your area? Check out the ARIDO website.

If you want to chat with us about your project and see if we’re a good fit for you? Get in touch with us.

Sure, you need drawings for a renovation (or maybe you didn’t know that?), but what are they really?

Ok, so I’m going to risk telling you the secret in the beginning, but here it is:

Drawings are basically an opportunity to try out the design and work out the kinks before it’s built.

There I said it. Shortest blog ever! (Definitely anything written by me- I know how verbose I am, but I have important things to say)

Ok, ok, so maybe you have some follow up questions to that. Let’s address the ones that didn’t know you needed drawings to do a renovation (assuming you don’t need a permit- because we’re not going to entertain the idea that you’re passing up the opportunity to protect your biggest investment- for some of you literally- to save a bit of time or money). “But my brother did a renovation and his contractor did the renovation without hiring a designer and it worked out fine.”

Let me ask you some follow up questions for your brother: Did everything come out right the first time? Did it come out exactly as he had expected? Even better one: How many times did he get a call from the contractor to make a decision or come show them how he wanted something done?

Hm. So maybe didn’t come out as well as we’d all like? This is NOT THE CONTRACTORS FAULT. Read that over again please. They are not clairvoyant, nor are they typically trained in any way to be a decorator or designer or interior designer. This means someone needs to tell them how they want things, and if no one writes any of that down, it needs to ALL be conveyed in person, which is a LOT of time. But I don’t need to tell you that if you’ve ever done a renovation without a designer or decorator of some kind to help.

So maybe these drawing things are starting to make more sense (hopefully some of you are amused by this point and wondering when I’ll get to something useful for you- high five!). I can tell the best contractors immediately when I meet them and we discuss construction drawings and how we do them at Sanura Design (and how a Registered Interior Designer is trained to do them, period). We usually bond over having to construct something with no drawings and some gestures, or being asked to help design a space with the clients when it isn’t what they signed up for. (We also bond over some unfortunate practices amongst Architects- please stop trying to put everything on one drawing, guys! Spread out the information so the lay person can read it!)

So what’s our special sauce? It’s actually really simple, if a lot of hard work.

We document everything. I’m not exagerating in the least- a master bathroom might have 7 drawings attached to it. That sounds like a lot, but it’s amazing for the contractor (and honestly if I wanted to spend most of my day on a job site, I would have become a contractor)- he knows exactly what tiles we’re putting in where, how they’re laid out, where the plumbing fixtures are going, where to install the bathroom accessories, all the details of the custom millwork, where to hang the mirror, what lighting fixtures are going in and exactly where to install them, and the list goes on!).

Imagine how easy it is to price a project when you know exactly what’s going in- and typically this means better pricing for the homeowner. You know exactly how much your project will cost before anything is ordered and anything is demolished or constructed.

Remember when I said drawings allow Interior Designers to test out ideas and work our the kinks in advance? They also allow us to change the scope of work/design to suit your budget better without wasting time and money during the construction process. Drawings also allow us to collaborate with contractors during the design process to get budgetary feedback and their expertise.

So hopefully you’re coming around. Congratulations! Now you’re well informed enough to decide if you need to hire an interior designer or if you’re happier doing this yourself. That’s always my goal!

And if you just decided you’d rather not take on the full time job of managing and designing your own renovation, you know where to find us!

(Part 1- Contractors + Consultants)

This is where it might start to sound very Utopian, but if you stick with me, you’ll see why a team environment gives you a better project and a better process (which is the biggest asset of all). Any beautiful end product can be tarnished by a bad experience getting it accomplished.

Here at Sanura Design and around the company we keep in the design community, Team is the word. The best projects have everyone involved from the beginning.

“But, Melissa” I hear you ask “I watch a lot of HGTV and love Pinterest and everyone I know just hires a contractor for their project, who gives a price and gets the work done.” That is certainly one way to approach things. That sort of process is 1st of all unfair to the contractor- what on earth is he/she pricing anyway? You have no design in place, they have no idea what the finishes are, and if you have a more extensive renovation happening, they don’t even know what all the work will entail.

Well, when I put it that way, it’s seems a bit silly to ask them to price it out without a design. But the alternative is a bit silly as well.

Let’s say you really want an accessible spa bathroom. We come up with a bright, warm material palette that’s classic and we pull together some fancy renderings to present the design. The presentation above is beautiful and everyone is incredibly excited to move forward. But wait, no one involved the contractor in the process, so we find out that we just doubled our original budget with the complex tile layouts and the sheer amount of tiling in the bathroom. But you just fell in love with that design- that is where heartbreak happens in the process and you would be justified in losing trust in your designer.

That is why its important that our contractor or builder is involved in our process from the beginning. We run ideas by them first to see how it will impact the budget- and make sure our ideas are practical. You see that beautiful arch above the tub? Maybe that’s going to costs us thousands of dollars due to the complexity of the construction/difficulty tiling the surface and a regular arched top would save us those thousands and still be in keeping with the design- a great relationship with our contractor means we find these things out before we present the design to you.

They are also our partners in coming up with solutions. We work with professionals that first ask “how do we solve this?” and work with us to come up with solutions.

This is an invaluable attitude during the design phase- and it makes for a much better construction process. Because I’ve included the contractor throughout the process he/she already knows the design- and are able to make suggestions to make the construction process smoother. On our part, doing the design before you start doing any construction means the contractor already has a full set of instructions (including all those materials and fixtures) so that a smooth construction timeline can be planned- and the budget can be finalized before any work starts.

It’s much easier to massage the budget (as we’ve mentioned before, we love “high/low”ing projects, and we can creatively make things looks amazing while saving budget in smart areas) before anything has been started or materials/fixtures have been special ordered (and can’t be returned). Also- it makes it much easier for the contractor to stick to the budget everyone agreed on.

This also goes for other consultants. We mentioned that was an accessible spa bathroom- maybe you have complex health issues. That is when we bring in a consultant like an Occupational Therapist, who works with us to ensure the solutions and overall design enables you to move forward with a full life and incorporates any limitations and goals you have. Having a consultant on the team from the beginning and through-out the process means even after they do a customized assessment and we all get a detailed report, we can still count on them to assist in designing custom solutions. This is how we ensure things are designed specifically for you and your needs through-out your project.

So, Go Team! (In part 2 later this year, we’ll be discussing how Sanura Design’s tight-knit design team means better projects)

…And why the best designers know that your happiness is more important than our portfolio.

Opinion alert! That last part of the statement is purely my opinion (and the opinion of interior designers, decorators and stylists I know and admire), but it’s an important distinction.

Let’s start with that title up there. What do you mean I want my designer to tell me NO? I thought I wanted a designer I get along with.

Yes, but that’s a subject for a future blog post! This is right along those lines though. Isn’t your REAL best friend the one that tells you that you have something in your teeth, or your shirt has ridden up on the back, or quietly tucks your tag into your shirt? A really great relationship with your designer also means they care enough to tell you when your choices are the best for your design or your home.

Why? Here at Sanura Design, our reason stems from a deep reason- I want you to love your space so much it makes you happy every time you see it. I’m not doing my job if you just get the picture you pointed out in the magazine.

Prime example can be seen above in our material palettes. These are all for our beloved #projectchristiani in South Mississauga. Our client had visions of neutrals through-out, and immediately said she didn’t like wallpaper (and had visions of that awful 70s wallpaper that made us all hate wallpaper). We pushed her boundaries and put unexpected things in front of her- she ended up falling in love with TWO wallpapers, one for the powder room, and another a BLUE textured beauty that was installed in her office. We also found out a deep regret (after getting to know her), was a simple orange leather chair she passed up at a store years ago. She STILL thought about it.

You guessed it, we paired that orange leather chair with that blue wallpaper (well the image above is spoilers!), and she loves that space (paired with great wood textures). We never would have gotten to that design had I just taken her word for it and not pushed her a bit to show her a few things.

Here’s a little peek at the office (professional photos are delayed until later in the year until things settle down a bit):

So, we care about our clients, but what does that have to do with saying no? Well, this subject came up unexpectedly after we made a visit to our favourite showroom to choose cushions for our client’s sofa. We had gone through the cushions to see what the client liked, and when she paired a few together that really didn’t go with the design vision, I told her so. I didn’t just say “no”, I told her why it didn’t go and suggested something that would go better. We ended up with a couple great cushions for the sofa.

Our next visit, we discussed that exchange and my response was- isn’t that what she’s paying me for? It’s my JOB to tell her if what she’s picking out doesn’t go with the overall design. We’re never rude, but wouldn’t you rather I tell you the cushions don’t look that great, then me be too shy to say anything and your friends and family tell you they don’t look that great?

All that said, here’s where the tagline above comes in. In the end, if we explain why it’s not right for the space (providing there isn’t any safety concerns- those are different!), and you still just LOVE it. Ok, let’s use it. Even if this makes for “bad porfolio photos”, your happiness as my client is WAY more important than my photos. We’ll then look at integrating that into the design, and as long as you love the space- it doesn’t matter what I think.

Depending on many factors, 2 hours can seem like forever or go by in what feels like a few minutes. As a professional, I can do any number of things at a consultation. I’m always listening, and my junior designer is taking notes, but I can be picking out paint colours for your spaces, we can work out some options for furniture placement, or I can even be going through the zoning and building code implications for your renovation ideas.

Zoning and Building Code?! You can do that in a consultation??

Absolutely. We can’t give you a definitive answer on some topics (like the exact zoning laws for your property- I can’t memorize every municipalities zoning map and by-laws!), but I can give you an idea of what renovation ideas will have zoning or building code implications- or what does and doesn’t require a permit.

Typically, I go through all of the above in a 2 hour consultation, giving clients the benefit of my well-rounded expertise. This typically doesn’t leave time for floor plan sketches, but I’m a big believer in leaving my clients with all the information they need to make a decision and I love taking complex issues and breaking them down to make them more understandable. So depending on whether we’re talking about your master bathroom or renovating your entire home, I try to get you the important information first, and then work through some design ideas. That is why our consultations sometimes vary.

How about a peek into our process? Here’s a look at what our typical consultation process looks like:

1. First is the “discovery call”. This just means we chat to discuss what you’re looking for, and compare how Sanura Design can help to give us both an idea if we’d like to move forward.
2. We schedule a consultation and send you homework. We’ve developed a great questionnaire that we send clients to collect a lot of basic information we’ve learned we always need at a consultation and saves us valuable time the day of by getting it from you ahead of time, and also helps us assess what your priorities are so we can tailor the 2 hours to you and your needs.
3. We receive the questionnaire ahead of the consultation and review the information, bringing the questionnaire with us to the consultation (either in print or digital form). We use this to assess what tools to bring to the consultation (do we need paint chips to help with colours? are we helping you with a better furniture layout and should we bring our measuring tools?)
4. We arrive at the consultation (our consultation always includes both myself- the principal interior designer- and my junior designer), and discuss what is on the agenda, clarifying answers from your questionnaire if required.
5. We walk around your space and hear your concerns, frustrations, and parts of the space you like. We’ll probably discuss your needs for the space in more detail and the budget you were thinking of for the space (if applicable). We may sit down and give our input in a more concrete way as well, making sketches of ideas (like the sketch above of a custom tv unit for a condo) and picking out colours with you with the help of our paint chips.

But what about everything happening in the spring of 2020- the pandemic and the need to isolate? Doesn’t that mean we can’t do a consultation because we’d have to meet in person?

Not necessarily. Here at Sanura Design we’ve always offered the option to do a consultation digitally (before it was “cool”?). You get the same level of service (we’re very passionate about service and relationships here), just in a different format. You’d need a camera of some sort (most cell phones and laptops have one built in) and a microphone (also typically built in with the camera). We’ll do the same steps 1-3, but for 4 and 5 we meet digitally and you walk us through your spaces as we chat. We can even do digital sketches on a shared screen- which we will email you to after the meeting.

Most of our services can be done digitally (we’re currently working on a complete condo redesign project, and it’s still full steam ahead working on sourcing and budgeting with our industry partners and our client), so don’t feel like your project needs to wait, we can always get started now.

We’re always honoured to be invited into your home to help you with your design needs, what part of your home is bothering you the most right now? Let us know below or call us and we can set up a consultation to get the design process started!

…and a bit of talk about budgets

So you saw a design show on TV or the Internet and they made it look so easy- just pick out a few finishes you like, talk to the contractor and bam you have this amazing space. Who needs an Interior Designer anyway? Oh and budgets always stay miraculously low despite upgraded finishes and superb workmanship.

I hate to be the one to burst that bubble, but there is SO much more involved in what a registered interior designer does than that.

Let’s break down myth #1- we just pick out a few finishes and sketch up a couple things. Even the process of curating finishes to present to clients is lengthy and informed by our detailed research with the client, years of experience, and a keen eye on the budget.

Before that even happens we’re going over the floor plans with you. These certainly didn’t appear out of thin air, we’ve poured through our options, weighed which would work best and reviewed the requirements for the space before ever showing you any “successful” layouts. We’ve chatted with the rest of the team to get their input on important features (how easy is that custom detail to construct- is it even in our budget? I don’t guess at it, I talk to my builder or general contractor, who has a vast amount of experience pricing and constructing projects #teamworkmakesthedesignswork).

And those finishes that we’ve worked hard curating for you? Well, they need to be ordered and coordinated. We pour through how much product is needed (do we need more material for waste due to this intricate tile pattern?), check pricing and availability and coordinate timelines with the contractor to ensure the product is on site and available when needed. And that’s just the materials. Custom furniture and cabinetry are a whole other complex ballgame. (And ask me about being there on site to coordinate details with the Builder or General Contractor sometime. I’m sure you’d be happy to leave work to coordinate a tile layout with your contractor on short notice.)

“What about the budget? Interior designers cost quite a bit and they always seem to stick to super low budgets on my favourite show.” Did you know that an aspect of running a design show is getting product donated to make that project look good and stay in budget? I’ll leave you to guess if you can get product for free if you’re not running a fancy show or are a charity.

I’m going to humble brag for a moment. Above is an image of our client’s master bathroom. It’s not a very big bathroom, and neither was her budget. She’d had plenty of people recommend she gut her three bathrooms, when all that was needed to get her ROI (return on investment) when she planned to sell the house in a few years was a facelift. Everything you see above was sourced at big box stores. All of it. What did paying for an interior designer do for her? It made the most out of lower end finishes for (and here’s the humble brag) pretty spectacular results. (You can read her testimonial for yourself here and view her full project here)

A good interior designer can “high-low” shop for you. (Above is the before of that same bathroom.) I can recommend the places you need to spend (like countertops in the bathroom- having a beautiful stone or man-made countertop versus just a laminate top would be much more appealing to buyers), and where you can save (replacing the doors of her vanities versus buying new, and fitting out the rest of the bathroom from big box stores). We can balance the budget by saving money in one place to spend that money in another (lower end finishes done creatively in a guest bathroom in order to upgrade finishes in the master suite)

I could go on for days (and hopefully I haven’t lost you yet!), but I hope this gives you a bit of insight on “What I really do” when it comes to project coordination.

Next up: “You Want a Designer That Tells You No”

So, interior design is a bit of magic, but mostly practical knowledge and skills. I’m personally fascinated with psychology and have been since I was small and didn’t know it was called that. I even did a psychology course in high school (and highly enjoyed it, but not being able to separate your work and home life is a VERY bad trait in a therapist or psychologist, being self aware is one of my super powers), and I always love the parts of interior design where psychology mingles with the design principals to create intuitive, thoughtful space.

The discovery phase of the design process is one of those spaces where getting to know you as a client is a bit of magic (only speaking for myself here, I bet there are designers who are less intuition and more pure facts and do just as amazing of a job) and lots of knowledge, research, and experience. As we do our initial consultation to assess if we’ll work together, I’m absorbing things- how you speak about your space, how you react to what you like and don’t like, how you live your life now- how you’d like to live your life.
Before we move into the research phase I give my clients homework that helps me work my magic. Pinterest is a tool I use extensively for my projects (great for sourcing- both collecting the sourcing visually AND having the links to the product handy) and it’s a great tool for getting to know your style and preferences without worrying about you needing to do all the work (after all you ARE hiring me for this aren’t you?). I have each decision maker (yes both the design savvy partner AND the “I don’t care” partner) pull together a pinterest board of things they like. My emphasis is always “don’t worry about pinning what you want your room to look like, just pin things you like”. I love pushing clients past their comfort zone so we can get to the spectacular “oh my god i love it” type of design- and that means getting to the heart of what makes you tick and what sets your heart on fire (so to speak! no one likes heartburn). I also remind them “don’t worry about knowing why you like it, I’ll talk you through it”. This way I come upon little clues and ideas that clients wouldn’t normally have said they loved.

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You can find me on Pinterest above (not a sponsor), and see some of the ready-made boards I have for clients to use grouped into basic room types. They’re always welcome to search Pinterest at large (although boy is that a rabbit hole!), and also pin items from a google search easily- which makes it a very flexible tool for me.

So it is a bit of magic and intuition and a bit of good old fact finding. I’m a very visual creature, so using visual tools helps me narrow in on what exactly you love, and is a great compliment to the detailed design interview I do to get every single little detail about the space we’re going to create. At that point, in my professional experience, the spaces create themselves!

What a great question, and one that no one typically wants to ask out loud.

In my first series of blog posts, I’ll share a few stories with you to illustrate what I do for my clients (hint: it definitely isn’t just fluffing pillows). Because anyone can tell you they’re an expert and go through some of their services, but showing you is much easier. I want you to know why that silly “registered interior designer” title (that NCIDQ thing ties into that) means more than you think (and why there’s no shame in ” interior decorator” or ” interior stylist” or “home stager”- we all have different areas of expertise and I always respect my fellow professionals) and why I went a bit further to gain that other to gain the other acronym BCIN (and what that means for you).

So let’s take some time to get to know each other through storytelling, and maybe learn a few things you didn’t know about what a (cue dramatic announcer voice) Registered Interior Designer really does and what our “full service” mantra really means here at Sanura Design.

First up- How do I “read your mind” to give you a design you didn’t know you’d love? Glad you asked!