How to Choose an Interior Designer: What to Look for Before You Commit
If you're planning a significant renovation or building a custom home, you've probably started looking at interior designers — and quickly realized that the category is enormous.
There are e-designers and in-person designers. Boutique studios and large firms. Designers who specialize in staging, in retail, in commercial spaces. Designers with twenty years of experience and designers who started an Instagram account last year. The price ranges are wide. The service models are wildly different. And the stakes — financially and personally — are high enough that choosing wrong is genuinely costly.
This post is meant to make that decision easier. Not by telling you which designer to hire, but by giving you the framework to evaluate the options clearly and ask the right questions before you commit.
Start with scope, not style
The most common mistake people make when hiring an interior designer is leading with aesthetics. They find a portfolio they love and assume fit. But style is actually one of the easier things to evaluate — and one of the less important ones early in the process.
What matters more is scope. Specifically: does this designer's service model match what your project actually requires?
A designer who does beautiful e-design — digital presentations, curated shopping lists, remote consultation — is not the right fit for a full-home renovation where someone needs to be coordinating with contractors, managing procurement, and making decisions on-site. A staging specialist is not the right fit for a custom build. A large firm with multiple designers is a different experience than a boutique studio where the person whose name is on the door is the one doing your project.
Figure out what your project needs first. Then look for designers whose service model matches those needs.
What to look for in a portfolio
Once you've narrowed by scope, portfolio evaluation matters — but not in the way most people approach it.
Don't just ask whether you like the work. Ask whether the work is consistent. A designer who has a clear, evolved point of view — even if it's not exactly your personal taste — is more trustworthy than one whose portfolio looks like ten different designers worked on it. Consistency signals that the designer has genuine convictions and a developed aesthetic, not just the ability to execute whatever a client Pinterest-boarded.
Also look at the scale and type of projects. Has this designer done work at the level of complexity your project requires? Designing a single living room is a different skill set from coordinating finishes across a 4,000 square foot new build. Make sure the portfolio reflects relevant experience, not just pretty rooms.
The questions worth asking in a consultation
A consultation isn't just an audition for the designer — it's also your chance to figure out whether this is someone you can work with closely for months. These are the questions that actually reveal the answer:
Who will be doing my project? At a larger firm, the answer might be a junior designer with senior oversight. At a boutique studio, it should be the principal. Know which you're getting before you commit.
What does your process look like from start to finish? A designer who can walk you clearly through the phases — design development, sourcing, procurement, installation — understands their own process. Vague answers here are a signal.
How do you handle procurement and vendor coordination? This is where a lot of projects quietly fall apart. Sourcing from trade vendors, tracking orders, managing lead times, handling damaged pieces — that's a real operational function. Ask explicitly whether the designer manages it or whether it gets delegated to you.
What's your communication style during a project? Some designers send weekly updates. Others are in touch only when decisions are needed. Neither is wrong, but you should know what to expect and whether it matches how you work.
Can you tell me about a project that didn't go as planned — and how you handled it? This one matters. Things go wrong in renovation and construction. The designer who can answer this clearly and specifically has real experience. The one who deflects probably doesn't.
Red flags worth knowing
A portfolio with no through-line. If the work looks like it could have been done by anyone, it probably was — or it means the designer doesn't have a real point of view yet.
Vague pricing. Designers structure fees differently — flat fee, hourly, percentage of procurement, or some combination. Any of those models can be appropriate. What's not appropriate is being unable to explain clearly how you'll be billed before the project starts.
Reluctance to talk about process. A designer who wants to show you pretty pictures but gets uncomfortable when you ask how the project actually runs is telling you something.
No trade relationships. A full-service designer should have established relationships with vendors that aren't accessible to the general public. If a designer is sourcing from the same places you can shop yourself, the value proposition gets thin.
Over-promising on timeline. Renovation and custom construction almost always take longer than the initial estimate. A designer who tells you what you want to hear on timeline is either inexperienced or not being straight with you.
Experience matters — and here's why
There's a version of interior design that is mostly taste. Choosing colors, finding nice furniture, making a room feel put-together. Plenty of people can do that.
And then there's the version that involves coordinating with architects and contractors from the early phases of a project, managing complex procurement across dozens of vendors, knowing which decisions are permanent and which ones aren't, and being the person who understands the full scope of the project at every stage. That version requires years of experience at a high level, and it's not something you can shortcut.
I started Gatehouse Studio in 2004. In the years since, I've designed homes across coastal Southern California — Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Malibu — at a level where the clients are exacting, the price points are high, and the details get scrutinized. That experience shaped how I think about every project, including the work I'm now doing in Brentwood, Franklin, and throughout Middle Tennessee.
It's not biography. It's the thing that makes the difference when a project gets complicated — and they all do eventually.
One more thing: trust your instincts about the person
The best design outcome happens when you trust the designer enough to let them do their work. That trust is hard to build if you don't like the person, don't feel heard in early conversations, or sense that they're telling you what you want to hear rather than what they actually think.
Pay attention to how a designer listens in a consultation. Are they asking good questions about how you live, what you need, what hasn't worked in your home? Or are they already talking about their own aesthetic and what they'd do?
A great designer is curious about your life before they're opinionated about your house.
Thinking about hiring a designer in Nashville or Brentwood?
If you're planning a renovation or custom build in Middle Tennessee and want to talk through what the process looks like — and whether Gatehouse Studio is the right fit for your project — reach out. I personally review every inquiry and am happy to have a real conversation before anything else.