Interior design is not a regulated title, which means anybody can use it. That makes the questions you ask before appointing someone matter rather a lot.
Three different jobs
People use one word for three services. A decorator works with colour, fabric and furniture in rooms that already work. A designer changes how the space itself works: layout, joinery, lighting and materials. A design and project management service does that and then runs the trades who build it.
Being clear about which one you want saves everybody a wasted meeting. A decorator cannot solve a bad layout, and a full project management service is overkill for a room that needs curtains and a repaint.
Questions worth asking
- Who will actually be on my project? In larger practices the person who wins the work is often not the person who does it
- Will I see the design in 3D before anything is ordered? Flat drawings hide problems that a model makes obvious
- Do you manage the trades, or do I? This is the single biggest difference in what a project costs you in time and stress
- How do you charge? Fixed fee, percentage of the build cost, or hourly. All three are legitimate; what matters is knowing which
- Do you take commission from suppliers? Common and not a problem, as long as it is disclosed
- Can I speak to a recent client? The answer should be yes without hesitation
What good looks like early on
A good designer asks more questions than they answer in the first meeting, and most of them are about how you live rather than what you like. What time you get up. Where everybody ends up on a Sunday. Which room you apologise for. That conversation is where the design actually comes from.
Be wary of anybody who shows you a scheme before they have measured the house. It means it was not designed for your house.
On budgets
Tell them the real number. Designers are not trying to spend all of it; they are trying to put it in the right places. A designer working with a made-up budget will design something you then have to strip back, which wastes the fee you paid for the design.
What you are actually buying
Partly taste. Mostly the decisions that stop expensive mistakes: the layout that works, the material that survives, the thing ordered eleven weeks before it is needed. On most projects that is worth more than the fee.