Email and Internet Design Consultations

By Robin Callan

It's natural in a down economy to explore new revenue streams. As a business person, if your bottom line is shrinking, you have to expand your clientele somehow if you want to stay afloat. Opening up your client base to the broad reach of the Internet can seem like an attractive prospect. The concept is simple enough...someone admires your online portfolio, they send you all of the pertinent measurements of the space they want you to design, you collect a few hundred dollars from them and throw together a mood board. What's the harm?

I would ask, where's the real value for the client?

Anything you can do for a remote client is probably better than what they are currently living with. But is that good enough? So much of what we designers do is incredibly personal. In order to create the best possible designs for our clients, we have to get to know them pretty intimately so that what we assemble for them is a true reflection of their style, their taste, and their personalities. If you're not creating a personal space, you're staging...and that's a whole other business. Most of what we learn about clients happens through osmosis. We notice their wardrobe, the art on their walls, the books they read—even the neighborhoods they live in shed some light on what makes our clients tick. If I don't have the benefit of meeting my client in person and walking through their home, how can I possibly pick up on all of these important context clues? Photos and video tours can’t tell the whole story—anyone who's toured a home on the market after seeing it online can attest to this fact.

Not only is it difficult to get to know your client via email or get an accurate read on the volume or flow of their home without seeing it for yourself, it's impossible to get a true sense for color. Let’s say you need a sofa, two chairs, and a rug for your own living room. Would you be willing to go online and plunk down your hard-earned Benjamins on all of these furnishings based on the pictures you've seen on the Interwebs? How about picking out a paint color for your walls? Would you compare paint swatches for your living room while standing in your powder room? You wouldn't dream of it, because we all know how lighting is completely different from one room to the next, and how that can dramatically impact our paint selections. And yet, it's the same thing as designing for a remote client if you’re basing your design plan on photos of their space or if you're selecting paint for their bedroom while sitting in your office.

I thought I could bypass all of these objections with a friend of mine who lives in Scottsdale. I've known Jeannette for close to twenty years, so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on her design taste and her personality. We worked together for four years in New York City, played pranks on co-workers together, were roommates during a company trip, and have gotten together a time or two over the years since we both left Manhattan. You'd think I'd know her well enough to advise her on her living room makeover. But I found myself playing it safe with her design plan—afraid I would inadvertently select something that would clash with her existing sofa. Unless you’re working on a staging project, you know that "safe" is a four-letter word in the design community. I don't want to deliver a safe design plan—I want to knock it out of the park, don't you?

Of course you may be able to help a remote client with some aspects of their room's design, but there are huge risks when designing-by-Internet that are disproportionate, in my opinion. For me, the payoff is much greater when I have a more personal connection to both the client and their space, and can confidently create a design plan based on my experience in reality versus some kind of virtual simulation.

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Robin Callan is the founder of Room Fu, a Best of Austin award-winning interior design firm and long-time defender of affordable design. Her blog, Fu for Thought, features steals and deals, design-related musings, and interviews with celebrity designers.