A scenario: you are building or have purchased a luxury residential property and are seeking the services of an interior designer; if you have not had a personal recommendation, you will invariably turn to Google which will populate pages and pages of interior design and decorators search results.
All are adorned, as is our site, with exquisite exterior and interior styled photographs of immaculately curated spaces, your first objective will be to find reference photos that appeal to your sense of style and the vision you have for your project. You narrow it down to half a dozen or so sites with other considerations being reputation, the size of the interior design agency, their Google ranking, and indeed their geographic location, the latter being less of a concern with today’s online communication tools. What will immediately become obvious is that interior designers do not like publishing information about how they charge. We prefer to support the transparency strategy immediately and indicate how we calculate our professional fees.
For an investment of this magnitude, one should aim to talk to a director or partner of the firm and set aside at least half an hour for your first introductory call. Unless for some reason you do not feel any synergy early into the phone call, defining the scope of works is your main priority to give the designer an understanding of the size of your property, the area, whether you are looking for an interior designer/architect or an interior decorator, the decorator being focused on furnishings and designer playing a far more complex and critical role in supporting your architect and project manager. The size of the interior design agency is also a most important consideration.
Interiors by Wanda Michelle is a smaller ‘boutique’ design firm where you are guaranteed to have the attention of ‘Wanda’ as the creative and managing director. Larger design agencies will have many teams of interior designers and project managers with varying capabilities. You will need to try to secure the services of an A-team within the ambit of your budget.
The second most important discipline is to give the designer a sense of the level and quality of fixtures, finishes, and furnishings you envisage to get a feel for a budget. A good interior designer should be able to share their costing experience by calculating the size of the property under roof, the level of finishes required, and subsequently, the amount that may need to be spent on your project. This process is essential to give you a broad indication of what will become a low, mid, and high-end budget to see the project to its completion and a starting point for the subsequent negotiation that may take place.
Let’s assume that your property is seven hundred square meters under roof, you have established that you are looking for upmarket finishes and the interior design firm has proposed a budget figure of ten million Rand to take your ‘shell’ and deliver a professional project handover. A common protocol, and one we endorse, is to negotiate a ‘design fee’ as a percentage of the expected budget. This percentage, or design fee, as an industry norm, is between ten and fifteen percent of the budget and so in this case the design fee would be between one and one and a half million Rands. The lower-end percentage will be based on the size and scope of the project, whether you are a returning customer, and what resources the design firm will need to allocate to see the project to a timely conclusion.
Spend less, pay less, or spend more and the design fee increases proportionately at the agreed percentage. Once the design fee is agreed upon, one must negotiate when the draws of the design fee will be paid, usually at different milestones as the project progresses. At Interiors by Wanda Michelle, we typically look for fifty percent of the design fee to start the project, with various draws until we manage the final handover and snags at which point the final five percent becomes payable.
You may ask why the design fee increases as the expenditure ramps up. This is an industry norm as typically the larger the budget, the more expensive the fixtures and finishes become, more time-consuming the design process becomes for the designer. By way of example, a moderate budget may call for curtaining, and a high-end budget could call for automated blinds, automated block-out curtaining, and sheer curtains, plus recessed fixtures hidden away behind bulkheads. These are two completely different jobs to design, specify, and execute, so their billing will be handled differently.
Spend less, pay less, or spend more and the design fee increases proportionately at the agreed percentage. Once the design fee is agreed upon, one must negotiate when the draws of the design fee will be paid, usually at different milestones as the project progresses. At Interiors by Wanda Michelle, we typically look for fifty percent of the design fee to start the project, with various draws until we manage the final handover and snags at which point the final five percent becomes payable.
You may ask why the design fee increases as the expenditure ramps up. This is an industry norm as typically the larger the budget, the more expensive the fixtures and finishes become, more time-consuming the design process becomes for the designer. By way of example, a moderate budget may call for curtaining, and a high-end budget could call for automated blinds, automated block-out curtaining, and sheer curtains, plus recessed fixtures hidden away behind bulkheads. These are two completely different jobs to design, specify, and execute, so their billing will be handled differently.
Another variable in the negotiation may be to reduce the design fee percentage, and you agree that the interior design company can charge a percentage of all or some of the items they procure. You may wish to purchase all materials, fixtures, and fittings at a net rate from the suppliers, in which case the design fee will be higher, or if you are willing to share a percentage of procurement so be it. There are no industry standard commissions for such procurement, and it is open to negotiation.
You have now established and factored in the designer’s fees but one should always set aside a percentage of the budget (typically ten to fifteen percent) for unexpected costs. Establishing priorities and identifying must-have elements versus optional enhancements must be managed closely. Always ask for budget figures for materials, furnishings, and labour, a professional design company will provide these estimates based on their experience and vendor relationships. Be prepared to regularly review the budget and adjust based on actual spending and any changes in project scope.
By understanding these elements, you can better manage the financial aspects of an interior design project and work effectively with your designer to achieve the desired results within your budget.
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