Courtesy of Kevin Kenney
Hiring an interior design can be daunting. How do you do it? What do you ask? How do you avoid problems down the road? Where do you start? All good questions so we turned to Kevin Kenney, founder and owner of KDR Showrooms, based in St. Louis (11660 Page Service, 314-993-5020, kdrshowrooms.com) with additional showrooms in Lenexa, Ks. (for the Kansas City market) and Minneapolis. This is what Kenney suggests:
“Like any other professional, you want a contract that clearly spells out the pricing for services, any mark-up on any products that may be purchased or specified. You need to get references from past clients and you need to check those references. You need to see a portfolio of their completed work. The contract being big, big, big.”
With the advances in technology, designers can give clients a much better sense of how the room is going to turn out. “I’ve seen more and more people who want a more detailed representation of what that room is going to look like,” Kenney says. “The younger designers are much more engaged in technology and they can show you a rendering of what your room is going to look like. And you can ask for that.”
