Let’s start broadly. For the person who didn’t hire an interior designer, what advice can you both give?Alexa Hampton: Ok, well first they should hire an interior designer [laughs]!
First you have to look at your setting, your surroundings, because you want your design to be either compatible or an interesting juxtaposition, but you don’t want it to just not work. And then when I’m working with clients, I always want to know what kind of life they lead because you don’t want to be uncomfortable in your own house and you don’t want it to be unuseful to you. You have to figure out, do you want to entertain? How many people are going to live in the house? Where does the trash can go? I would start with a furniture plan. For me that’s the roadmap of the job. You just need to sit down and plot it to scale on a piece of paper so you know, ok, I’m looking for a square piece here. I’m looking for an eight-foot sofa. Oh no, that sofas too deep; I’m not going to be able to fit it through the door. All of that stuff comes out of the furniture plan, and that’s also a great way to make a project you can chip away at. If it’s just this big amorphous task at hand, it can be intimidating and you can stall out. That makes it something you can wrap your arms around and it demystifies the whole beginning. Get the size of the room and figure out all of the pieces, not just the quantity but also the dimensions.
