An Interior Designer
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I want to start today show with a public service announcement from a professional interior designer. I asked her how those of us without an interior designer could spruce so by our homes. And he said, first of all, your house is probably too cluttered, and there's an easy solution.

Let go of things. Let go clear out all out.

That's july. And birch, she's an interior designer based in new york city yeah.

just letting go of things and clearing things out. And we all have that pair issues we don't want throw away or that whatever. Probably that's the first thing that comes to and is just clearing space for new the things that accumulate. And i'd say leather so as sorry, I just like I can you .

know this.

I mean, I see leather soup as and I just think about sticking to them and I they are never a good idea, but that you see them it's it's funny. I'd love to do L, B and bees and things. That's the first thing I look at. No other other of .

that should be one of the options on the .

filtering exactly will be now.

I'm dan heath, and this is what it's like to be. In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession, a creative director, an ocean lifeguard, a high school principle. We want to know what they do all day at work.

Today, we ll ask Julian burch, what is like to be an interior designer will talk about how interior designers get paid, how you get a piano out of a high floor building in, and what a designer means when they talk about a moment in a home stay with us. Hey, i'm a cricket host of a podcast called the economics of everyday things. Each week we zero in on one thing and ask, what's the deal with that? Things like use hotel soaps, the song my shona or weird. Yet.

how many times you get to meet the world's foremost .

expert on dinosaur? A, it's truly an honor. Check out the economics of everyday thinks from the economics radio network. So a Julian told me this insane story. SHE had a client with a pen house on the upper west side in york city.

The client was going away with his family for a holiday weekend, and he wanted to come back and surprise his wife with their new apartment on the upper each side. You know that thing we all do where you come back from a weekend and you have a new home yeah that it's actually one of the services SHE offers her clients. And everything was moving smoothly with this plan, except for the piano.

Only way to get that piano out of that apartment was through the roof.

And the only way to get IT out through the roof was with a crane in new york city.

I've done homes all over the world, but new york city is certainly the place where the all of the most stressful stories occur. So we had to go through all of the hoops to organize for the crane on the street during a holiday weekend and oversee the whole process. And IT was a success. But a stressful success will tell .

you that just picture that piano dangling in the sky, held up by a crane. IT worked, by the way, SHE pulled off. The three day gorilla weekend move was a success. And that wasn't even the craziest logistical story.

He had a client. We ordered a very long, heavy table from holland, and IT was shipped over on a boat in a big carton. And when I arrived to new york, we realized that I was absolutely not onna fit into the elevator.

Which designer in new york will be rolling their eyes? Because it's always about measuring the elevator and what can fit and what can fit. And this table was going to have to go into a very high floor in a building right across from the town home.

I know I can, tribeca. So that was terrifying. Because what we have to do, and that kind of circumstances, every building has a certain elevator company that manages that building. So the super of the building, which is the manager of the building, we have to coordinate with the super and all of the staff in the building, and then we have to get permission permits from the elevator company and then hire movers. So it's evolves about twelve people, the whole process and get certain movers to ride on top of elevator.

what? wait. So you take this Normal table and then the movers ride with IT on top of the elevator.

That's right. So we gradual the time, the usually in the day when it's not rush hour traffic on the elevators and the why was so stressed use IT had to go so high up. IT was one of the highest floors.

And so they dropped the elevator down. They loaded the piece onto the top of the elevator. There's four, five guys.

And what they they have to do with, they have to hold this. So IT doesn't touch the sides of the elevators, still going all the way up. So it's incredibly dangerous. So IT was a success. But boy, when you're waiting for the elevator doors to open on the other end, it's, you know, you're holding your breath cause you just don't know somebody could have gotten hurt or that all of these certain things going to happen.

And what was even more wild about this particular situation is the client loved to the table, and IT was a table head, sort of these kind of wooden patchwork with the certain shale on top of IT. And a few months in into having the table, IT started to make these incredible loud cracking noises, like gung shots. So we ended up, they did a recall. We recalled IT back to holland. So we had not only.

i'm surprised the movers took that call, can you undo thing?

We had to write a back down then. Not only that, they fixed to the tables. So then I had to go back on the ship, back over the hall lands. They fixed the table, brought IT back, and we had to write IT back to the whole process .

all over again. I have thought about just how much of your work, especially in in new york city, or another very dense metropolitan, an area would be gated by something, you know, as prosaic as, like the dimensions of an elevator, because there's no other way to get to the thirty third floor, whatever.

right? Well, the other thread, and in fact, that same client with a piano that was really kind of earlier on had started in two thousand six in the city. And that was the hard lesson where, you know, the last minute you wake up in the middle night and think, oh, did I measure that elevator? That was.

And that same client, they actually had a sofa that couldn't fit on in the elevator. And we didn't have time to organize IT because I was such a last minute project. So we didn't have time to organize for IT to ride on top of the furniture. So on my speed dyle, there's a place called doctor sofa and they're literally the nine one one emergency rescue service for furniture that doesn't fit in, so in an elevator. And so they're on my sedia.

So I I, so how do they solve that problem?

So they literally come over and they take the sofa completely apart and put IT back together again in one day.

There's no like Franklin stitches.

No, they do at their excEllent, excEllent at what they do. They are the best. My clan interfaced. That particular situation was definitely on me because I hadn't prepared. I didn't.

Anyway, there was one thing up to the next, and I didn't even let the client know that we had to do that because absorb, they found out that you have to absorb things like that so that they panic. And the sofa is exactly the way that I was in their old house. So IT works.

Listeners, if you ever need your sofa cut in half in an emergency situation, call doctor sofa.

That's right in the wrong.

So the best I never thought about what a logistics and supply chain aspect of of your work there is. I mean, that seems like a big part of this is just getting physical assets from one place to another on a certain time.

Oh, it's it's ninety percent of the job IT really is yeah, it's there are so many moving parts. I mean, even just picking a fabric, you've go to the design center, there's millions of options. You write down your fabric selections, you hand in the little slip, they give you back fabric samples that you take with you.

You present those to the client. There's just it's it's a whole process, everything every all the ordering and shipping. And um in fact, firms have usually they have a one person devoted only two orders, full time job for orders.

Wow, wow.

Yeah it's a lot and know it's stressful when it's out your hands and lead times. And with the pandemic and so much material is coming from overseas, I mean, I have so much all the fabric coming from italy, from france, from not only navigating you know time fy time blank age, then you have you know everybody goes on vacation in August so you can expect anything to come out of europe pan. So many moving parts is IT is a small miracle when the .

house comes together. So do clients come to you because they like your taste, is like they are hiring your taste? Or are they hiring you because you have a good reputation and then they want you to to kind of run with their taste? Or how does that dance work? Yeah.

that's a great question. There's a kind of always category, ed, as there three types of designers to generate. There's the type of designer that you're mentioning there where you you really hire them for their particular taste, their particular style.

Then there is the type of designer you hire to do to work on some reseed value, like if you're about to sell your home and you want to stay at or do anything to do you reselling IT. So you're not really worried about your own taste or the designer. It's just what's gonna sell the best.

And then the third type, which is where I fall, is translating my clients taste. I always make sure that they know it's absolutely their space, not mine. IT has to absolutely reflect what they're wanting, not me.

Hey, folks, then here, first of all, next time we've got a great show, marine biologist. The guest is totally fascinating. Don't miss IT. And thanks, by the way, for your ideas about a profession for the holiday season. We've actually ended up with three episodes in a row coming up that are winter or holiday thee't.

I'm going to leave you in suspense about two of them, but the third, which will be recording really soon, is with a Christmas tree farmer. What would you like to know from a Christmas story? Farmer, send us your questions to jobs at what it's like that come.

And as always, thanks for listening. Julian told me that sometimes she's hired to do a refresh on a home, you know, come in, update the look and feel, or the colors, or spruce up the furnishings. But what surprised me was that a lot of her work involved new construction, and SHE serves as one of the key team members that's on the project from the start.

So with sam was like putting a movie together. You know, you have the producer, the director, you so you have the designer, you have the architect, you have the contract or the builder, you have the people, the subs that come with all of those people. So the very first step is putting together the right team. If we're doing a new build, though, it's not putting together the team. If i'm just coming and doing a refresh, it's just a throw interview with the client and building a list of items needing completion.

On a new construction, the architect gets to work first, designing the structure of the house.

Every architect works differently, but generally it's a good idea to had the architect will come up with either one drawing to work off of or a couple of options just depending on what they're looking for. And then once and then those those meetings happen and we tweet you know, we tweet those drawings until they are satisfied with a look and the fear of IT.

And that's a long process because that's really the bones of the whole of the whole project. And then once they sign off on the drawn and they are comfortable with IT, the builder steps in and puts together the estimates in the pricing on what it's gonna to build IT. Then I step in and do what's called the hard finishes. So that's all of the, the and the walls and what we call elevations, so that every wall is drawn out, what every wall looks like, the build, where there are going to be bookcases, just all of the hard finishes, and then the kitchen design and all the clarets.

Next up is virgin to work on what called the soft finishes.

so that all of the furniture, the, the furniture. Today, I do furniture layout ts first. And so let's take a living room for example.

I usually provide two or three, maybe four, depending on the shape of the space, and depending on, sometimes clients like more options. Sometimes they say, just give me a few at, it's overwhelming. So i'll give them, for example, three, two or three options of a living room layout.

So those are drawings of where, how they want to live in each space. And then then once they sign off on that, then we come up with the colour plot in the field, in the tone, the texture, how they want to live in the space, with the field of IT. So then that's a separate meeting and we decide on all of that and then we come up with an items needed list.

So that's basically the shopping list of the whole project and then the work needing completed list. And then once they sign off on all of that, I present to them options, you know, with all of the furniture options and then fabric options and color pallet I did at all of those options. And it's quite a process IT will .

let me cause for once, have the items needed. This is incredibly clear, by the way, mean, I should feel like you give me the perfect overview of a project.

But when you start looking for particular pieces, like, you know, you need an in table here and a floria m here and a sofa here, how do you know where to go to to provide those pieces? Are you using the same suppliers repeatedly? Or are you like the rest of us googling minimal alist floor lamp, you know, online and looking for options?

I love that question, and it's one of my favorites. Because what I think the biggest misconception or the biggest surprise, I think that people are always fascinated by as the amount of options we have available, it's just in the longer what's wonderful about this profession is the longer you spend doing that, the Better you become. The more resources you have, the more source it's called sourcing.

So the longer you spend doing at, the more places you can source from and the more educated you become on where to go for what? So for example, if i'm doing a living room and it's also dependent on budget, right? So all of that comes into play. So I would ask you, okay, what kind of pieces there is also what pieces do you really want to invest in? And what if you're not want not are to have .

so much that strikes me the sourcing aspect strikes me as where your experience would really accumulate over time, just knowing where to go to different kinds of items, who to trust in terms of quality, who can turn this around.

That's right. And also my team of artisans. So most of minutes getting is change. The industry is changing.

But most of my artisans, my, my furniture makers, my rug makers, my wood cabinet tree makers, they only will work with designers. It's to the trade. So that's called to the trade only.

So you really hire designers for their resources because they have the best. They have their they're tried and true team of window treatment makers at curtain. You know, all all of the different sort of resources that you you know that's the biggest factor. I would say, when you're hiring an interior designer is you're hire .

ing their people and when you're working with folks like that, like what is the level of specificity of the instructions you give to them? Is IT more of an inspiration, like we need something like x? Or is IT quite detailed?

IT starts casual and ends up very detailed, right? So for example, I wanted my woodworker here, and for much to make a desk with iron legs. So IT starts like that.

You know, I want to make IT a desk that could also be a dining table. And IT needs to have four chairs and needs to be rectangle, smooth edges. And what do you recommend? Here's what it's gna go.

It's gonna sit outside. But IT does have orders. IT can be partially covered in the winter time. And I don't hold I don't micro manage. And you take their lead so you kind of throw those few few general ideas out there and then they always that's the fun part of that inspiring good people in paying them well to do their best work because they get so excited to really show off, right, to show off what they can do.

So then he'll come back with drawings and some ideas, two or three options and and you know, when you're presenting to someone, you always want to be able to answer the question why, right? So let's do this. Would why? Because it's going to work in this climate and these temperatures.

Yeah, you always want to be able to answer why, anything to the client. So then he'll come up with, for example, three or four drawings. He'll say, oh, I have have this curly Cherry wood in my shop and is gorgeous, and this would be the perfect table for IT.

So I present that to the client and then and then we say, we want iron legs. And he says, why don't we do IT like this? And I just discovered this new company who makes the iron legs curbed and like this.

And then you present IT to the client. And then he says, oh, that I would never thought to do curve legs. That's brilliant. So much softer. So with a conversation back of worth, but by the end of IT, when you're having someone sign off on a piece, it's every single detail they need to approve. So it's even a signature on the drawing so that they know exactly what they're gonna.

It's important that clients aren't surprised by anything in the process. Obviously, Julian wants them to be happy, and their happiness is also a business imperative because happy clients tend to bring in other clients.

Word of mouth is probably ly ninety. Well, I guess it's probably one hundred percent of my business right now. My bigger store of our force always come from real estate agents or anyone else in the in the business. So we were architecture or any of us who are in the same home making business, just the word gets out. So IT is funny that, that I you have start working for particular demographic. I'd say maybe a doctors and then all of us I have a year where i'm doing, you know all doctors, you and so and then there was one year where I was just working with all the banker was a lot of all street people and I was just it's sort of um disna .

ural shows up who is the most a difficult .

client you've ever worked with? A divorce. There is a divorce. Yeah, that was just difficult because IT was if that they were going through a really nasty divorce and just the tension of IT, there was a lot that you just get in between, a lot of that. So usually just it's the client, it's the couples, you know, because you have to be really delicate and with navigating those waters, I was just a really nasty divorce, IT worked out, but IT was just a lot of handholding and and patients.

I asked Julian how he gets paid, and he says, interior designers handle payment really differently. Some might charge a flat fee by a project. Some do hourly. Others might just take a cut of the furniture they're buying. So one thing you may or may not know is that designers get huge discounts on furnishings from fifteen percent, sometimes up to seventy five percent, so they could keep the difference between the regular prize and their discounted designer Price. But Julian does IT a little differently.

So what I found works the best for me as I do a flat retainer fee month and then plus hourly of any time, i'm any face time i'm found. So the retainer recovers all communication, telephone call, all of that just to have me on the project. Then any physical time, I am spending a charge an early rate and then I mark fifteen percent of my vendors. So that means if i'm hiring my window, try anybody i'm overseeing. So anyone grow vendors i'm overseeing, i'd mark that fifteen percent up and then I extend my um designer discount to the client.

What's the most stressful part .

of the job installation day? The you know the final the final installation, installation can happen in different ways. So for example, if you're doing a new build and you have the space, if as things are becoming available and as orders are being completed and lead times for furniture is always different, so if something could take ten weeks to make, something could be available immediately.

So sometimes you move things and as they are available, if the spaces available and sometimes if you're doing a new built, for example, and you want to do an installation all at the same time, we have we rent uh storage unit and have all the pieces in the storage unit and then move everything in on in one day. And that's just stressed because it's just hectic. And I guess also it's stressed when you've ordered something.

That has taken a long time and is very expensive. And you've had a particular fabric put on IT or something. It's always a bit of a panic when IT arrives.

And I always inspect IT before IT goes up to the apartment. So you always hold your breath when they and rapid because I could be the wrong color, the wrong fabric. You know you just never quite now. So that's probably the most stressful part is the installation .

and that sort of like the the cultivation of the project.

Yeah that's a yeah it's game day. It's everything goes in.

So Julie, and we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Let me fire away here first. What's a word or phrase that only someone from your profession what would be likely to know? And what does the mean?

I'm gonna pick my favourite, which is a moment.

So a moment .

and it's when if I walk into a room and lets am speaking with maybe one of my assistance, i'll say this is a really good moment. And what that means is I might be pointing to a corner of the room that has a pillow on a chair with a cup of something. A designer will say, oh, that's a really good moment. Or IT encourages the pause. And that synergy between what IT looks like visually, what IT feels like and IT just, is the pause to have the experience of IT.

What's the most insulting thing you could say about an interior designers work?

I would say if someone says something .

is pedestrian fighting words.

you right, and you hear a lot of designers also, so that so pedestrian, which just means ordinary and not at all interesting and it's ftd, because I knew you were going, asked me that question, so I looked IT up what that we're just to make sure I got IT right. And yes, IT says ordinary and not at all interesting. So yeah, you don't want so want to call your work pedestrian.

And what phrase are certain strikes fear in the heart of an interior designer.

IT would be any communication that comes in the middle night. You don't want to hear from your clients in the middle night about anything so that .

have you clients in the middle the night?

Oh yeah, the two things ring about the usually hydra, a clients who you have just happen to Operate during those hours. But there was one where we had done a library on the western SHE, had a picasa very important painting, and the move her had put in the wrong place and SHE .

couldn't find IT. And oh, you when you can find that I think I get for that's right.

That's sorry. It's so yeah. The fear I guess the fear is when you check your you don't want to hear from your clients during the night. So if you check your phone first thing in the morning and you've heard from someone, fear will be ignited.

And and do you sort of feel an obligation to be on call? I get at all hours in that sort relationship. No.

no, no, no. Clients are respectful. I think earlier on, I have to say I had some wild clients who were doing a lot of drugs and having lots of girlfriends and things, so i'd hear from you know.

But IT they the clients are, are pretty respectful of ours and time. The one thing is you do have to get used to in the profession. You always have to understand that this is not their like.

This is our job. But I so I accommodate IT. I have meetings a lot of the time on the weekends and after hours and things like that because they have A A job during the day.

And this is a fun thing for them, right? This isn't their job. So now we have to get used to accommodating your point to your client schedules, but that doesn't mean any kind of like emergency phone calls.

IT seems to me there would be an ongoing tension between the kind of nesting aspect of what you do, you know, helping the environment fit the clients in the way they want to use the space and the things they do in their life, and the kind of branding aspect of a, you know, presenting an image to the public into guests and yeah, is that a real attention? If so, like how does that show up in your work? Oh.

IT shows up right away. You can you always can tell exactly. There's really it's kind of like all of its where we have been, right? What is hot? Let's safe for doing a home.

What is home to that person, which is what fascinates me the most? What is home to that person? Where they've been, where they are and where they wanted go to navigate that, to negotiate what that is.

And then if you throw on top of that, the clients who really are interested in bragging rights, which is very, which is fair, the end of everything, the keeping up with the jone's kind of attitude, how many, how often they entertain. I remember when I worked for who I was meant, who meant told me he had zero budget. In other other words, we could go.

There was no limit. And her life was just really focused around her children and her children's friend. So SHE had a gorgeous apartment on the upper, and this lab ish beautiful dining room that he had has turned into a playroom.

And so SHE really didn't have bragging rights situation. SHE just wanted you to to have that was child focus. But then there will be other clients who they entertain a lot. They just want to really show off. They're hard to earn dollars. And so it's just but really it's more about kind of negotiating or navigating through what they're telling you and what you what they really want and kind of figuring that out.

And he says, when an interior designer does figure that out and everything comes together, you can tell you .

just IT feels right. There's a feeling to the space and it's all it's all of your senses are engaged and IT just somehow works. And I think that's the brilliance of our profession is finding that sweet spot.

And IT doesn't even really have to do with the colors, the style that is a feeling. And I just and it's it's like the perfect pitch or it's that song that just has that magical thing. And so I think that that's the the best part of being an entire red designer making homes is when you feel that you hit that, you just want to always keep doing that forever after.

I just feel so grateful that I found IT every day. I'm just so blessed and so grateful that I have devoted my life to making spaces for people. It's just an environment.

It's just I can't think of anything more important. Even all of the people who do such incredibly important work, right, doctors and who are really saving lives, I still get to make their home. I still get to decide what did they come home and sleep. And I just think that's extraordinary.

Julian burch is an interior designer based in new york city. What I kept thinking about after the interview was how a lot of the value Julian bring to her clients is those relationships that he has with artisans and craft people. You're not just hiring her.

You're hiring her team. I was trying to think about other examples of professionals that had that same trade a venture. Wedding planners seemed similar.

Like when you hire a wedding planner, you're also hiring their network of Venus and caters and photographers and flourish. Same thing with the hollywood camera Operator. We talk to a few episodes back, SHE said.

A director of photography will often bring her along like she's one of the dp people. And the other one that came to mind was the crisis. P.

R. consultant. You're hiring the consultant network of media contacts. The other interesting similarity between the P R. Consult and the interior designer is how close the relationships can get with their clients. Partly, that's just a function of time.

They spend so many months collaborate and closely, but it's also about how in those professions you become the clients advocate. You are the person trusted to be their voice. Collaborating with artisans, perfecting the soft finishes, ordering the fabrics, moving the piano, is bringing an esthetic vision to life and ultimately making a home for someone, folks.

That's what it's like to be an interior designer. A shout out to recent apple podcast reviews a macon alan b. Twenty thirteen and Green mama two nine. This show was produced by map party. I'm dan heath c nx time.