Designer or Marriage Counsellor

The more I’ve worked with couples who are renovating or building a new home, the more aware I’ve become of the pressures they feel. Sometimes my role seems pretty broad - not just designer but marriage counsellor.

A common renovation story starts with a phone call from one member of the couple, lets say the one who spends the most time at home, noticing all the annoying little things that make life more difficult. Could be anything. The annoying way there’s no direct view from the living space to the garden, where the young children play. Or how hard it is to reach the back of the corner cupboards in the kitchen.

Sometimes that phone call is all that happens in the journey of a renovation because the other member of the couple comes home from work with no intention of spending their hard earned money on new kitchen cabinets.

At other times things progress well through the design process with person 1 driving the decision making, (‘She’s better at these things” I’ve heard more than once.) Only to come to a moment of crisis when person 2 takes a closer look at the drawings.

And actually, the more heads that work together, the more information that’s fed to the designer, the better the design solution. Sometimes it feels easier to have just one client, but in the end, even if I have to work harder juggling differing viewpoints or listening to the bickering, the outcome is improved by collective inputs.

In my experience - tackle a renovation together and you’re more likely to be happy together at the end, like the two clients I visited this week, so pleased with what we’d collectively created. They were making lunch together when I arrived, enjoying the new view (and the soft close kitchen drawers!).