Furniture store design services vs. an independent designer

How a store design service works

The model is simple: a designer employed by the retailer helps you plan a room using that retailer’s furniture, fabrics, lighting and accessories. Depending on the store and the size of the project, that can mean a consultation in the showroom, a visit to your home or a virtual session, followed by a floor plan, fabric and finish samples and a proposal of pieces to order.

There is usually no separate design fee because the retailer is paid through the furniture. Some tie the service to a membership or a minimum purchase; RH, for instance, describes its design services as complimentary for RH Members and reserves its most extensive whole-home service for very large furnishing budgets. Always ask the specific store what is included and what, if anything, it requires you to buy.

Where it is genuinely good

For the right project, a store design service is efficient and worth using:

• You already love one brand’s look and expect to buy most of the room there.
• The project is furnishing, not construction — a living room, a dining room or a bedroom where nothing structural is changing.
• You want scale checked before you buy. A floor plan that confirms the sofa fits, the rug is large enough and the dining table seats the number you need prevents the most common expensive mistakes — see space planning and furniture layout.
• Speed matters more than range. One vendor means one order, one delivery schedule and one place to call.

Where it stops

The limits are built into the model rather than into the people, many of whom are talented:

• The palette is one catalog. A room furnished from a single source tends to read like that source. Rooms that feel collected usually mix a few new pieces with antiques, art, workroom upholstery and things you already own.
• The room itself is usually out of scope. Moving a wall, rethinking a kitchen, designing built-ins, planning lighting or specifying tile is architecture and construction, not furnishing.
• Nobody runs the work. Trades, permits, schedules and site decisions sit outside a furniture service. If the project needs a contractor, you become the coordinator between the store and the builder.
• Custom work stays within the store’s range. Made-to-order usually means that retailer’s frames, fabrics and finishes rather than an independent workroom built to your dimensions — see choosing upholstery and fabrics.

What an independent designer adds

An independent designer is paid for the design and the management of the project rather than through one store’s furniture, so the sourcing is open: any manufacturer, workroom, antique dealer, fabric house or artisan. The common fee models, and what each one rewards, are set out in how interior designers charge.

The bigger difference is scope. An independent designer can take on the room as well as what goes in it:

• Layout and drawings — the floor plans and elevations a contractor prices and builds from.
• Construction and millwork — kitchens, bathrooms, fireplaces, built-ins and lighting, designed together with the furniture they have to work with.
• The build itself, where the designer is also the contractor. At Chateau Concepts, Jan Revels designs the project and can run the construction as general contractor, so the person who drew the plan is the one checking it is built that way.
• Procurement across many vendors — ordering, tracking, receiving and installing, which is where most of the time in a furnishing project goes. See furniture lead times and ordering.

Side by side

Questions to ask before you start

Whichever route you take, the same few questions make the arrangement clear before any time is spent:

1. What does the service include, in writing? A floor plan, samples, a home visit, a fixed number of revisions, installation?
2. What does it require? A membership, a minimum purchase, a deposit, or nothing at all.
3. Who measures, and who is responsible if something does not fit? Doorways, stairs and elevators decide what can be delivered, not just the room.
4. What happens when something is backordered or discontinued? Ask how substitutions are proposed and approved.
5. Who handles delivery, assembly and returns, and what the return terms are on made-to-order pieces, which are often final sale.
6. If construction is involved, who draws it and who builds it? If the answer is nobody, that part of the project still needs an owner.

An independent designer should answer the same questions about their own scope, and add one more: how the fee is calculated, and whether purchases carry a markup on top of it.

Using both

The two are not mutually exclusive. A common, sensible arrangement is an independent designer for the plan, the construction and the pieces that make the room, with some furniture bought from a retailer you like. If you already have a store’s proposal, a few hours of consulting can check the scale, the layout and the order of decisions before you commit to it.

Jan Revels

ASID, American Society of Interior Designers, Allied Professional Interior Designer · Chateau Concepts, Dallas

Jan has practiced interior design in Dallas since 1997 and founded Chateau Concepts in 2001. She holds a BFA in Interior Design from the University of North Texas. She designs and general-contracts residential and commercial projects across the Park Cities, Preston Hollow and North Dallas. Read her full profile →

Written and reviewed by Jan Revels before publication