“Make a commitment to yourself to do only what you can afford to do well. Doing less, but doing it really well, is always better than trying everything and doing none of it well enough.”
Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Details – a blog dedicated to defining what it is that makes a space high end.
The name is no coincidence. After all, design is all about the details – from the way any material or surface meets an adjacent one to proportions and the size of the welt on a pillow. Good design is fussy, and it should be that way. Like a tax audit, every single element matters, and missing one piece can cause a domino effect that has disastrous results on both your budget and time.
My mother, a seasoned renovator and would-be designer always used to say that “it takes just as much money to do it wrong as it does to do it correctly,” and while I don’t credit her as being the original author of this quote, she has a point. When the details are a mess, the end result will be, too. Sacrificing quality, safety, and your desires may allow you to “design on a dime,” but you’ll soon come to regret it and wish you’d taken the other route to begin with. After all, for a minimal upcharge, if any, why wouldn’t you opt for something that lasts?
With that being said, there is no denying that building out a space is a big investment and it will often cost more than you think. Consider this, though: your space is also typically the largest asset in your portfolio and the decisions you make will last decades – far longer than a luxury car. Smart planning means you get an enormous return on the money you spend and designing with high quality in mind has innumerable benefits both now and later. You are able to enjoy it while it’s yours, but once you do make the decision to sell, you also get to reap the rewards of its resale value. Beyond that, of course, designing for longevity means a reduced need to scrap everything and start again, eliminating unnecessary deposits in our landfills and making a positive impact on the world around us.
Which, consequently, brings me back to the name The Details. What may seem like a silly amount of attention on such small elements of a design is actually a must have in the beginning in order to achieve your goals for your space without paying double or triple to fix it down the road. One misstep can throw the entire project off track, and it can be nearly impossible to right those wrongs once they are in play. Whether that means hiring the wrong contractor, starting with too-vague design plans, or not understanding the unique aspects of handmade and upscale materials, without knowing and caring about all of the details involved, chaos will ensue. High end design, truthfully, is an entirely different animal, and it requires an extreme amount of precision.
For instance, think about that fabulous handmade floor tile you fell head over heels for. Unlike regular floor tile, handmade tile is usually thicker, which means that before installation, the slab needs to be adjusted to accommodate the revised size, and not doing so will absolutely affect the ability to shut your doors properly, and affect the build of the door casing and base transitions, creating an awkward transition between flooring materials that are not the same thickness. Having these elements assessed beforehand saves you the headache of change orders and re-dos down the line.
Similarly, I can’t stress enough the importance of vetting and prequalifying your contractors and design professionals before signing the dotted line. Just because someone knows how to make it happen doesn’t mean they will be able to design or construct a space in the way you imagined it to be. What are their training and experience credentials? Do they have the proof to show that they know how to implement big ideas? It takes more than a tax ID, desire, and a bit of flair to pull of high-end design, and when you’re paying good money, you deserve to have the best in the business. I once specified on a project that custom boxed cabinetry be built to the ceiling. When I inspected the cabinets after they were built, they were not built to the intended specifications. The reason, according to the millworker, was that “that would be another piece of wood,” which was obviously entirely unacceptable. Hiring a contractor that will be on site daily supervising and has long term relationships with their subs is priceless, and regularly inspecting the work as it is in progress can go a long way towards ensuring everything is in alignment with the design intent.
As I say, it always comes back to the details.
Thus, in my practice, I begin with a package of drawings and materials specs for preliminary pricing, keeping my clients fully informed throughout the entire process, and making adjustments that always maintain the original intent of the design. I place communication at the forefront of all that I do, knowing that it simply isn’t enough to show a general contractor a photo of a beautiful space and expect them to replicate it down to the specialty elements. To achieve the results you desire, it requires clear and specific plans and instructions; what you communicate, you get.
So, with this blog, it is my intention to take what I’ve learned over the course of my years in this business and focus on all that goes into making a space as fabulous as the ones you see on Pinterest or Instagram every day. I hope to break it all down into user-friendly bits in future posts, and I truly hope that you will find this information useful both for ongoing projects and for spaces you’re longing to transform down the line. The Details, you see, is about more than trends and color palettes; it’s about acknowledging the finesse required to implement high end design that stands the test of time, and that is why I do what I do.
Thank you for joining me. I can’t wait to see where this journey takes us.
Here’s to living in spaces you’ve only dreamed of -
