Have an interior designer

“I took a design quiz on Havenly’s site, and got matched with one of their interior designers based on my tastes. I was able to view designers’ past work to get a sense of their style, and ultimately got to choose who I wanted to work with. I sent Shelby inspiration photos of rooms, styles, and furniture I liked, as well as photos of my office. I was able to set whatever budget I needed to furnish and decorate my room ($2,000), and to keep certain items I already had in my room (basically a bunch of props and some plants). Shelby then sent back 2 concepts of my space. They both had a mostly-white feel, as well as the organic and worldly pops of color. I wanted everything to be functional, and both of the concepts nailed that. But I still wasn’t settled on a few items, so Shelby and I talked back and forth about what might be a better fit.”

“We hired an interior designer who had a lot of industry connections and passed any savings she received on furniture and other items on to us as a value-add benefit of her services. She charged by the hour, and we found her pricing to be reasonable and fair to the point where we didn’t need to negotiate on a flat fee basis. We were aware that some of the contractors that she brought in paid her a finders fee of sorts, and I expect that showed up on our invoices. However, she was also very good at finding items that would work for what we were going for on sale while out shopping for all her clients. On balance, I don’t think we ended up paying a lot extra for her other than her hourly rate - for some rooms it felt like we were saving more overall given the discounts we received on the furniture and other items.”