Digital Witness

Hello my fancy friends, thank you for tuning in today! Interior design reaches into the far corners of the earth in many different ways. Designing spaces can be fun and creatively satisfying. There’s a true sense of accomplishment when a space comes together visually and functionally - this can be true whether we are the ones doing the designing or just watching the experience unfold. I remember when I was in high school I loved watching the show Trading Spaces, which was one of the earlier reality home improvement shows that aired on The Learning Channel. The premise was two teams of neighbors would pair up, each with a designer, to completely transform one single room in the opposite teams house. They had 48 hours and a budget of $1,000. The rooms created were dramatic, often colorful, highly themed, and had various degrees of success. But what I loved about the show, was that we got to see the behind the scenes of how it all came together, or at least part of that process. From the designer’s inspiration to the on-site carpenter dealing with tricky dimensions, it was so exciting. I wasn’t the only one who thought so, as shows like this began popping up all over television in the early aughts, always with a short timeframe and the excitement of everything falling into place at the very last second.

This love of interior design has spread to every new media type that springs to life. From YouTube to TikTok, there are countless creators dedicating their time and content to giving everyone a peak into the world of interior design through their personal lens. There are even games on your phone where you can play interior designer, decorate a new living room, or build a new house, and in some cases, entire towns. 

If this gets you so passionate, so enthralled with interiors that you decide to take on a true project of your own like a renovation and or a makeover, how can you be prepared to make the switch from fun fantasy to real life road test without whiplash causing you to quit before you’re halfway through? Today we are going to look at the ways you can prepare to take your dream design from fantasy to reality.

But first, let’s talk about the Color of the Week. It’s fall in New York City, my favorite time and place, and we get the thrill of watching the trees shift from green to yellow, orange, and red. Pumpkins are showing up on building stoops and in store windows. The color orange feels like it’s everywhere. But what I realized the other day is this color palette is also with us 365 days a year in the interior of the older MTA subway cars. Any model numbered between R44 and R68 features a design from 1974 with faux walnut panelling and an array of yellow-orange plastic seats. Many of these are still running on the tracks today, and have a distinctly different vibe from the newer corn flower blue interiors of any car manufacturer after 1999. These trains can feel dated sometimes but in the season of jack-o-laterns and all things spooky, they are the ride of chose. That’s why MTA orange Pantone 165 is our color of the week. Bringing this color inside is a bold move, and the nod to the 1970’s has to be embraced. This color looks its most natural in a split-complementary color scheme, meaning choosing a few colors very similar to it, like peach or rust, plus bringing in a few tones of its opposite on the color wheel, so this case aqua or even teal. This will make it feel refined, bohemian, rich, and inviting. No one will guess you got your inspo from a train car.

Okay so, you’ve been having so much fun playing, whether it’s watching design videos on TV or creating 3D spaces in a building-style video game or app, and now you’re ready to take things to the next level and actually make changes in your space! Congratulations. This is going to an endeavor that’s well worth it. You may have gotten used to some aspects of the digital playscape while you’ve been stoking your love of all things interior, so I’m giving you my list of realities to expect, now that you’re ready for the real thing. 

First, I want to say, it’s so important to acknowledge that there is a mental and emotional distancing in society from the idea of home economics. Home-Ec used to be a required class in public school systems, and we learned so many practical things from quick weeknight meals, sewing, we even touched on furniture making when we visited the school’s wood shop. But now, home economics is an elective, non-compulsory, and  rebranded as Family Consumer Science  – and it's under attended and underfunded because we associate it with some of it’s more outdated philosophies. There were certainly perspectives within the old home economics that are gladly left behind– the idea that all women could only fall into the role of wife and mother is certainly not an assumption that is reflective of our world today. But what’s great about home economics is it teaches us to take care of ourselves, basic cleaning, personal finance, how to be our own Mr. Fix-it. And because this learning foundation is no longer emphasized, when we want to decorate and customize our homes, we don’t refer to it as home-making. The role of home-maker used to be a title that someone would be proud to call themselves. This was unfortunately tied to concepts that kept women out of the workforce, but when we broke down that barrier, we threw the baby out with the bath water.  And now, there’s this tendency to professionalize any home-making project and say we are learning about interior design. And that’s true, but the science of interior design is more focused on designing spaces for others, not designing spaces for ourselves. And home-making is a beautiful thing that does share many principles with interior design, but it’s important to distinguish and celebrate it as it’s own unique, and special adventure.  So let’s make you a home. 

When switching from the digital fun of design for entertainment to the real thing, the biggest and most far reaching factor is the addition of actual human beings. Whether you hire an interior designer, work directly with a contractor, bring in friends and family for their opinions, or become besties with the sales team at your local furniture store; you’ll find the decisions and direction that may have come with ease in the digital space, now have more layers attached to them, in the form of phone calls, emails, chit-chats, and just overall more information. Whether you’re dealing with loved ones’ opinions about what looks good, a contractors feedback on what is structurally feasible to build, or a furniture company’s schedule for your new sofa delivery - these multiple avenues of information and complexity may start to feel burdensome and as if they are simply slowing you down. But remember, these are trusted professionals and confidants that you really can’t get the job done without, and although they might not always tell you what you want to hear, they’re insights are what will make your ideas a working, living, breathing reality.

I'm not a big video game player, but I have seen several iPhone games that are oriented towards interior design. One thing I've noticed about them is that they'll give you a finite number of options from which to choose. So, maybe you're going to pick out a rug and the game will give you three options. When you're working on designing your own space, the options are affectively infinite. For us designers, this is a treat. We get to dig through to the far corners of the earth and find pieces that are absolutely perfect for any given project. However, if you're used to having a small selection, this could easily be overwhelming. Especially because this is the case for every single decision that you have to make. It's not just the area rug, it's the paint colors, and the sofa, if you even have a sofa at all. You could choose to forgo a sofa completely and have four lounge chairs instead. So it’s easy to get overwhelmed or feel like you might be missing out on something. Decision making can be super challenging, and if this is something you struggle with, feel free to go all the way back to episode one of this podcast, You Are Here, to help you get organized in your selection process. Another helpful episode is called, Free Your Mind, where we covered the topics of interior design styles, their limitations, and how you can use the basic design building blocks to make any space look great, and the idea of style or a time period is far less important than these essentials.

Time is a key factor in any project, whether you’re cooking dinner or renovating your kitchen, and while you can build a whole neighborhood with a few clicks in a Sim’s game, real projects have time constraints called lead times. Every item you order for your home has an associated lead time with it - this is the amount of time it takes from the moment you make a payment to when the item arrives at your door. We live in a world of instant gratification, two-day shipping, and automatic renewals. But with custom projects, creating the perfect home can be anything but instant. Lead time is determined by three main factors; the time in takes to process, produce, and ship any particular item, from the hinges on your cabinet to the lights in your ceiling. Processing time is usually fairly quick. A manufacturer gets an order, puts together any necessary paper work - and you’re done. Unless of course, you’re ordering an item from China in January during Chinese New Year, or from Italy in August, when the entire country is closed for the summer. Timing matters. Once the paper work is processed, the actual creation of the item begins. If this product is in-stock, already made, sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting for you, this can be as simple as grabbing the item and getting ready to ship it. But if it’s made to order, you’ll have to wait for the piece to be created. This can be a lengthy process, as it’s affected by the lead times of all the components and materials that make up the piece, like fabric, wood, metal, and glass; plus factoring in however many other pieces where queued up ahead of you for other orders. Once the piece is finished, it will need to be shipped. This could be by train, plane, or boat depending on the location where it was made, and can take anywhere from a few days to many weeks. Global issues, such as tariffs, weather, labor shortages, and other news-worthy factors can add time to the shipping process, especially if it’s an item coming from overseas. But eventually, your precious pieces will arrive. It’s important to understand this is sometimes a painfully slow process. Managing your own expectations will help you feel more at ease along the way. This is one of the reasons I love buying local and second hand items - it shortcuts a lot of the waiting that can happen with off-the-shelf items, and can get you a finished product quicker.

Here’s the big reality check - every project, big or small, has a budget. It could be $20 or $20 Million, but your real life project will have a dollars and cents value. Whether or not your vision and your budget have been right-sized, is a whole other topic. Pricing in the construction world is ever fluid, and what cost $100 to achieve last month could cost $300 to do today, and vice versa. Until you’ve gotten a full project quote from your contractor and furniture supplier, it can be tricky to pin down an exact dollar value. The best thing to do is research as much as possible, listen to the professionals you’ve hired, and expect things to be more than you anticipate. Preparing and walking clients through sticker shock is a huge portion of many interior design projects, and it’s easy to get carried away in the dreaming and visioning of a project with no real anchoring to reality. At some point you have to decide if the dollar amount is more important, or if creating your ultimate dream space is worth the prices you’re seeing. I’m not saying one or the other is better, but I am saying most people can’t have both. In the world of interior design, it’s easy for your eyes to be bigger than your wallet, or as my old co-worker used to say, having champagne taste on a beer budget. Another way to think of it, and I didn’t come up with the analogy either, I think I heard it from a creator on Instagram - if you think about how much a custom pair of shoes would cost - from a high-end luxury brand that you love, made to fit your feet exactly, look the way you want, feel just perfect all the time - what would you expect to pay for that? Then think about expanding that number to how many custom shoes it would take to full up the room you want to decorate. Now, we’re getting a better idea of what the budget should feel like. Because the services of design and construction are in fact, custom luxury services.

But let’s not get luxury confused with the vicious cycle that is consumerism. Interior design games and TV shows rarely address the issue of sustainability - we see everything shiny and brand new, everything old magically vanishes - but it’s our privilege to act with care and thoughtfulness when it comes to reusing and recycling older elements. It’s even more important to resist the fallacy that if something is new, it’s good, or even better, than what we already have. We talk all the time about the perils of fast-fashion, but we need to be having this same conversation around fast furniture and fast decor.  Home refreshes and renovations should be made with lasting intentions, which means you get to select things that make you happy, and things that have high quality to them - not necessarily what we can pull up on the first page of a google search. Be careful and painstaking with your choices and remember it’s okay to take your time. As I mentioned early, and if you’ve listened to this podcast before, you know I love secondhand furniture, and another benefit of vintage pieces is they often have stability and quality to them that newer pieces simply lack. So consider the source before finalizing that purchase. Will you have these pieces in a year, two years, or even 20?

So there you have it. Remember, working with other people, and dealing with time and money are going to be the biggest differences for your first time with a real project. I hope you found this run down of what to expect when starting a real interior design project, and if you’re still in fantasy mode, enjoy that home decoding game - it’s meant to be fun.   I hope you have a beautiful day, and I will talk to you in the next episode.