The Case for Client-Led Design vs. Signature Style
As an interior designer, I’m often asked to describe my “signature style” or aesthetic. It’s a reasonable question, but one that I struggle with and there are a few reasons why.
Inclusivity Breeds Creativity
The first reason is because I’m as inclusive about design as I am about my life in general. I think of myself as a sort of anthropologist when researching both a design and the people I’m working with on that design. So rather than going after a singular aesthetic time and time again, I’m much more interested in appreciating the details of a great design that bring any aesthetic to life in a new and evocative way. That may be modern, contemporary, traditional, historical, or any other number of named and unnamed styles.
I don’t want to be pigeonholed into one of those categories as a designer. Rather than being known as a great minimalism designer, or maximalist, traditionalist, etc. etc., I’d rather be known for timeless design that is client-led. I’d rather leave a legacy of happy clients than similar spaces.
Your Home is Your Story
That being said, the second reason I struggle with the question is because I strongly believe that great design starts with your story, not mine. I do my best to lean into the details of what brought my client to their current moment. I want to know about them, their background, their family, their lifestyle, their daily rituals, where they’ve traveled and places from their past where they felt welcome and at home.
Even when people can’t articulate their personal style or the way they want something to look, they can typically tell you a story about a place and time they’d be happy to crawl back into. Getting to know this story helps me uncover what they really want to create in their home. I always want to leave a space looking better than before, but really what I’m after is for the space to feel more like home for my clients.
Stay Flexible
The last reason is that many clients are flexible about their own aesthetic and prefer to be led by the architecture of the home in informing the creative brief. Simply put, they want their interiors to be informed by the exterior, but in a way that meets their specific needs.
Of course, some clients have the opposite approach and want to create an interior space that meets their dreams regardless of the style of home they live in. Both of these approaches can work and are reasonable, but attempting to force a “signature style” into any home or onto any client that is not congruent with that style – that doesn’t work for anyone.
That’s not to say that the designers who have a particular style that they’ve honed in on and created a niche out of aren’t doing it right. For many homeowners, finding someone whose style matches their own or whose style they’d like to emulate in their home is their preferred way to work with a designer. It can take a lot of the guess work out of the process.
My personal niche, however, will always be less about the way a home looks, and more about digging deep to uncover and create spaces that make my clients feel at home. That feeling might be relaxed, energized, focused, or fun-loving – the key is that it’s up to them.