DIY : Choosing The Right Interior Design Options – Archiscape – Medium
Choosing The Right Interior Design Options
It’s that forever-etching moment when you got the possession of your much-awaited home. The jingling keys bring in a new excitement and announces the arrival of a new phase in your life — that of being a proud home-owner. Fantastic feeling indeed! No more running around for loans, the end of builder-related miseries, the EMIs have finally paid off, and possibly some peace of mind after a harrowing few months. Errrr, Hold on! Now awaits your next big challenge — interior decoration and furnishing.
So, what are your options? Maybe the following?
1. Do your own research — look up hundreds of free images online and have a fair understanding of how your home might look like.
2. Contact an independent interior designer, who you hope is a thorough-bred professional.
3. Hire skilled carpenters and individual service providers, who again, you hope, will be reliable.
4. Opt for a turnkey, end-end interior solutions company such as Archiscape
Let’s weigh the pros and cons for each.
1. DIY — Do It Yourself
If you have an earnest interest, the luxury of time and the necessary understanding of what it takes to decorate your home, this is a good bet. It not only takes care of your specific requirements but also gives you a feel-good factor. However, there are certain pitfalls to consider. While the interior budget is tight and there is little wiggle-room, you may find it hard to fit all your design ideas with your allocated budget.
The dash of colours, coherent design patterns, visual placement of elements and the overall décor scheme may suffer, unless you have a firm understanding of the subject. As they say, “if you think a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur”. Also, by DIY, you invite the unnecessary overheads of managing the contractors and service providers. In a disorganized, sometimes unprofessional and unreliable market, finding contractors with total ownership is a hard job.
2. An independent interior designer
This is a semi-professional approach, should you supplement this option with a tactical team that can deliver what is designed on paper. A professional interior designer brings in years of experience and the necessary expertise, to envision the overall design and to communicate the same to the workforce. But, the accountability is still a factor to consider. Will the independent designer take full ownership of the project? Will they realize that there is no harmony among the service providers and take up only the design work? Who will then take over the necessary execution? It’s one thing to put together a great design. However, the execution is a different beast altogether.
3. Hiring carpenters and individual service providers
While this may have worked for a few of your friends and relatives, and they recommend that this is your cheapest option, you may be wise to ignore such advice. This model works best if you have a trusted set of carpenters, electricians, plumbers, stone masons, labourers and umpteen number of different service providers, necessary to complete the job. It is an established fact that around 60% of the daily wage workers tend to be drifting and are considered unreliable. We have seen many instances where such workers collect an advance and then go mute. They do not adhere to the committed timelines and will not take complete ownership of delivering the job. It then becomes your problem to switch between multiple such service providers to complete the job. And, by no means, are the piece-meal job workers cost effective.
4. On-boarding a professional, turnkey interior solutions company
The need of the hour is total ownership and accountability, and that’s where a turnkey player with a proven track record comes into play. With thousands of customers over the past decade switching to solutions providers, it is easy to state that this is a preferred model for the modern-day home buyer. Hiring a professional company with a proven track-record, verifiable customers and transparent pricing model is what is the order of the day today.
A professional turnkey provider becomes your one-stop destination for your complete home interiors. From consultation to design to execution, companies such as us, take total ownership of quality, craftsmanship, timelines, budget and delivery. You only need to sign the contract, arrange for the necessary instalments, and get a hassle-free experience. There is absolutely no need to switch vendors or to talk to multiple people to get the job done. With the necessary benefits that a turnkey provider brings to the table, at a marginal cost increase, there are a set of invisible value-adds that you may not realize with the other 3 options listed above.
