Do I Need an Interior Designer for a Renovation?

You need an interior designer when the hard part of your project is choosing: finishes, fixtures, lighting, furniture and how the rooms relate to one another. You need an architect or an engineer when the hard part is permission: walls, plumbing, gas and whatever else the city wants drawn and filed. Many New York renovations need some of both, and some need neither. Here is how to tell.

What a designer does for a renovation

• Saves your time. Researching and shopping for fixtures takes far longer than people expect. Someone who already knows the products narrows a hundred faucets to three.
• Sees the whole room. Each trade looks at its own part of the job. A designer looks at how the space is used, plays up its good qualities and plays down the weaker ones.
• Heads off expensive mistakes. A door that swings into a vanity, or a light fixture too large for the ceiling, costs nothing to fix on paper and a good deal to fix on site.
• Turns taste into instructions. Drawings and a schedule of finishes give a contractor something exact to price and to build.

When hiring one makes sense

• The project covers a large area or several rooms that have to feel like one home.
• You do not have the hours to choose every tile, faucet and light yourself.
• You know what you dislike but cannot yet say what you want.
• The apartment has to work harder than its size allows, and storage, light and layout all need thought.

When you can do without

A single room replaced like for like rarely needs a separate designer. A kitchen can be laid out by the people who make the cabinets. And a firm that designs and builds under one roof covers the design within the same contract. Having a full plan in your head is a good start. Getting it onto paper before work begins is what matters, whoever draws it.

Designer, architect or engineer: who can file

The Department of Buildings says most kitchen and bathroom renovations need an application that must be filed by a professional engineer or a registered architect (NYC Buildings). An interior designer, however good, is not that person unless they hold one of those licenses as well. If your project moves plumbing, gas or walls, you will need an architect or engineer whatever else you decide, and the designer works alongside.

New York State protects a title, too. Only a licensee may use the title Certified Interior Designer, and the license takes seven years of combined education and experience and a three-part examination (NYSED). Plenty of able designers are not certified. It is simply worth knowing which kind you are hiring.

How designers and contractors work together

There are three common arrangements. You hire a designer and a contractor separately, and stand between them. The designer brings a contractor they know. Or one firm does both, which is the design and build model. We work in more than one of these ways: we offer in-house design services with all work under single management, and we also build from drawings by a client’s own designer or architect. Our design and build page explains how a job is run, and for a kitchen in particular see kitchen design-build in NYC.

Questions to ask before you hire

• Have you worked in a building like mine, with a board and an alteration agreement?
• Who produces the drawings the board and the city will ask for?
• How do you charge: a flat fee, by the hour or as a percentage?
• Who orders the materials, and who deals with what arrives damaged or late?
• Will you visit during construction, and how often?
• May I see a finished job and speak to that client?

For the kinds of projects this applies to, see apartment renovation in NYC. If cabinetry is the heart of the job, our custom cabinets page shows where the design is done with the maker.

Questions people ask