Any place you spend time in directly affects your being. The place along with its interiors affects what you think, how you think, what you do, how you interact with people, how motivated you are and a million other aspects of your daily life. This makes the interior design and architecture of your home or your office extremely critical to your well being. If the space around us matter so much, it does bring you to an important question – Should I hire an interior designer to build the interiors of my home, office, shop, hotel or any other space that I may be building?
With all the time I’ve spent working on projects with a number of designers, here are some of the reasons I have figured out which make it extremely important for you to hire an interior design consultant for that dream space you have in your mind:

1. PROFESSIONAL APPROACH

Have you thought about building the space around you without the help of a professional interior designer? Well, it is not surprising if you did. You do have access to the internet and the ocean of ideas, concepts and techniques that come along with it. One google search and you have nearly 5 million design concepts right in front of you, free of cost.

But it is one thing seeing a design and a completely different task implementing it successfully. In fact, most designers appreciate inputs from their clients when it comes to the designing the elements of the place. An experienced designer will not only point out the feasibility and practicality of incorporating concepts you’ve seen online, but will also help you find the right materials for those locally. This becomes extremely important because you may like a certain type of sofa but a good interior decorator will point out the utility in terms of the seating capacity, fabric and a load of other things.

You can always tell a home was planned out by a professional because of the spacing and layout. Various elements will be in harmony with each other and you will notice a lot more symmetry in a professionally designed space.

2. THEY WILL SAVE YOU MONEY (A LOT OF IT!)

There are many ways in which an interior designer will save you money. Once your interior designer is adequately informed about your budget, it becomes their responsibility to fit everything into that figure. I keep mentioning to all my clients that there is no minimum or maximum a person can spend on interiors. But honestly, a lot of times it is just not worth spending money on things that do not add value to your property.

Your interior designer will balance out a lot things to help you create the best interiors in your budget and the space restrictions. What should be sacrificed and where should you compromise is an art, mastered by these experts.
Even with the contractors hired to build your space, architects and decorators make sure that the wastage of materials procured is minimal, saving you a good 10-15% which would be wasted otherwise.

3. MATERIAL RECOMMENDATION (TRUST ME, YOU’LL NEED THIS)

There is a huge list of materials you will have to procure for various places in your home/office. Let’s take the example of a bathroom. You will need to procure the tiles, faucets, water-closets, hand showers, health showers, lights, exhaust systems, get the waterproofing materials, mirrors, towel racks, other hardware, storage furniture and a load of other things depending on your requirement.
There are tens and hundreds of brands for each one of them. Each one of them will be priced differently. Your interior designer can recommend the best bet for each requirement keeping in mind the price, quality, the design language of your space, durability and feedback from previous clients.

They will also know the right places to visit to select the items and the right time to place the order. This may seem a small task initially but as your project moves on, spending time and effort on each of the materials becomes an extremely tedious task best left to the expert.

4. SAVES YOU A LOT OF TIME AND EFFORT

A lot of commercial interiors in Kolkata are built on properties taken on rent. It becomes extremely critical that the process of getting the place ready does not waste a single day unproductively or beyond the rent-free period as the case may be. It requires a coordinated effort from the designer to make sure that the quality does not suffer due to the time constraints.

When it comes to residential projects, I have found home owners to be a lot more passionate about the interiors. For a homeowner, it will always be about getting it right rather than getting it done in a strict timeline. However, most home interiors take anywhere between 4-12 months depending on the scope of work. The entire process requires a lot effort and time commitment. Your work gets hampered and each passing day comes in with a lot new set of challenges (be it with the labourers, materials or just the basic coordination).
Hiring a designer relieves you of a lot of pressure and effort. They supervise work of the labour, recommend the right materials and the right place to purchase them, coordinate with the labour contractors, handle on-site issues and a lot more. This saves you a lot many hours than you can probably imagine. It not just makes sure that your site gets completed on time, but also that the journey is pleasant for you.

5. ACCESS TO THE BEST LABOUR AVAILABLE

You can plan your interiors to the best of your ability, but it’s a total waste of time and effort if the people executing them produce something different altogether. Every project needs contractors for various purposes – Carpenter, Marble, Electrical, Plumbing, False Ceiling experts. There are a lot of these available in Kolkata and every other town or city. But it is difficult for any layman to gauge the expertise and the finishing without actually having worked with them.

A good interior designer in Kolkata always has a fixed team of contractors who they’ve worked with before. It is important that your wavelength matches with that of the designer and subsequently their contractor team.

6. KNOWLEDGE OF TECHNICALITIES

Interior design has evolved into a proper field of study. A lot of institutions have been offering this course for years now in cities like Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore. Every project needs inputs from professionals in a number of areas. Questions like these are best answered by the experts –
How many LED lights you need in your room?
What should be the distance between my television screen and my bed?

7. ACCESS TO THE LATEST DESIGN TRENDS AND PRODUCTS

Design concepts are like bread and butter for your designer. They are extremely updated on the latest trends prevalent in the industry, not just in India but across the globe. While you can access the designs available on the internet, your designer will have access to the best of the professional world through the journals, magazines, blogs and a lot more, some of which are exclusively available to them.


Even when it comes to products, most of the brands and manufacturers inform interior designers about new launches before they reach the market.

8. VISUALISE YOUR INTERIORS

Most interior designers in Kolkata and other cities create a 3d model of your space incorporating your design inputs and what they they feel would be the best fit. This is extremely crucial because you will spend a lot of money into the decoration process and you would want to be sure of what you’re investing in.
Most designers have a team of 3D visualisers and artists. A 3D design is made using a software called 3D Max. It gives you a 3 dimensional view of your interiors. At this stage you can get anything altered or added. Hiring an interior decorator becomes a lot more important because of this service.
Here’s an example of a high resolution 3D design:

9. BEST UTILISATION OF SPACE

A lot of people forget the importance of free space in any interior design. You may have a 500 square feet space or a 200000 square feet space, if it is not planned scientifically, it will make you claustrophobic and uneasy. I have witnessed a lot of interior designers in Kolkata play around beautifully with small spaces.

When you have relatively small space, an intelligent design can solve a lot of your issues. There has been a humongous amount of research globally into creating utilities for smaller spaces with property prices skyrocketing in most metropolitan cities across the world. Your expert will know a lot of them and incorporate them into your floor-plan.

10. VISUAL PRESENCE

If you’re getting an interior designer for shop, store or showroom interiors, it becomes all the more important to find the right expert. Visual Merchandising is a field of study that has developed aggressively over the past few years. What you show to your customers, how they feel about your products, what products they end up purchasing is directly affected by the interiors of your showroom/shop/store.

Intelligent Retail interiors that you witness in the best stores across your city do not happen by chance. They are carefully planned and coordinated keeping in mind the clientele and the product range.

Internationally, people have written about how it is important for you to hire an interior designer. It does provide a broader perspective into the topic, however, my intention was to tailor make the answer for the Indian markets. Here are some of the articles that compliment some of the things I’ve mentioned:

1. Freshome
2. Houzz (Discussion)
3. New York – CBS Local
4. Homedit
5. Quora (Discussion)