What It Is:Havenly’s in-person design service
Level of Difficulty:3. The actual process of working with the designer was easy (and fun! and affordable!) and the results were exactly what I hoped; shopping had a few more hiccups but nothing prohibitive.
Shockingly, one arrived, in the form ofKasee Smith, an interior designer forHavenly(which had until recently been fully virtual). The site had just launched anin-person design package($499 at time of publish) and they asked if I wanted to give it a shot. I was extremely excited to have someone make decisions for me, and the cost, while not exactly cheap, was a steal compared to most in-person designers I’d spoken to, who quoted in the $150/hr. range.
Designer Kasee Smith.Lawrence Nallsforty
Lawrence Nallsforty
The Process:After submitting photos of the space and filling out a questionnaire about my design style (or lack thereof), I was connected to Kasee through Havenly’s on-site messaging system. She sent over a couple sample design boards to get my initial feedback, and then once we had a direction, drove to my home to see the space in person, measure everything and take photos. (After that first in-person meeting, we did everything virtually.)
With a little back-and-forth on some of her initial picks (I wanted a bigger couch and some black-and-white touches to tie to the rest of the house), she sent a 3D rendering of what the space could look like with the furniture she selected, which was one of my favorite parts of the whole process. I have absolutely no visual imagination, and the rendering helped me immediately realize I preferred the couch to face out towards the yard, and to have the dining area sized down.
Kasee was always super-responsive and very prompt with her updates, quickly sending back a floor plan so I could see how items would fit in the new configuration. I always enjoyed working with her. She was very positive and thoughtful in her responses and never made me feel like I was wasting her time, had bad taste or that my budget was limiting her — something that had intimidated me about working with a designer in-person.
I had told her my tragic story about being unable to commit to any decor with personality. Taking that and my budget into account, she pitched me a checkerboard-painted floor (as seen above) in order to cover up the pink tiles, add some visual interestandstay within my price range, as a full retile would have been pricey.
After thinking about it for a while, I finally admitted I’m just too chicken to go bold (even with a designer’s input!), so she gently steered me to a very pale blue-painted floor instead. Though still trepidatious about doing something slightly outside the box, I took her advice and it ended up being one of my favorite things about the space. (She did warn me it might chip, though, and it did almost immediately — so we’ll probably end up retiling down the road anyway.)
She also was great about keeping the mood boards updated so that if I wanted to buy anything additional for the space (outside of Havenly’s storefront), I had everything already on my “shopping list” in one easy-to-see, very visual format.
The way that shopping for items works on Havenly is that your designer makes you a “shopping list” with all the options she initially selected for you, from sites including Pottery Barn, Wayfair, Crate and Barrel and Artfully Walls, as well asHavenly’s in-house brand The Inside(a favorite of mine because you customize classic designs with the fabric of your choice). The shopping list also had a “designer alternates” tool that would allow you to see other options she had picked out in the same category, so you could easily compare items to each other. Finally, you’d add them all to to your cart and check out in one transaction.
However, I mostly found that if I gave Kasee specific feedback, she was able to pretty quickly come up with more picks from the (apparently easier-to-navigate) designer-facing side of the site, so we were able to move forward at a decent pace. (But I’ve tried to shop on the site since, and I don’t think I’d do it without a designer — it’s just too hard to find what you’re looking for as a shopper without designer guidance.)
All in all, I found the process of working with an in-person designer more seamless, more fun and more cost-effective than I would have thought possible if Havenly hadn’t invited me to try the service. I was wary of a virtual-only design service prior to this experience, believing it would be challenging for someone to get a feel for the space and my preferences over chat. But meeting Kasee in person gave me a lot more confidence that we’d work together well, and all of the features Havenly provides makes it much easier to envision the finished space before committing to a big purchase like furniture (something I had struggled with when using in-person designers who only provided floor plans).
The biggest obstacle? Furniture delays and sell-outs! Even though we began working on this process early last summer, manufacturing issues from the retailers meant that items were arriving (or selling out) well into September and October. But Kasee was so helpful and patient through the whole process, finding replacements within budget whenever necessary, that I knew the finished product would be worth the wait.
source: people.com
