Guide
A designer and your builder.
Your builder, your general contractor, builds what’s chosen. An interior designer helps you choose it, draws it to the inch, and hands your builder every selection on the date they need it. If you already know every finish and where every light goes, you may not need one. If you don’t, the questions arrive on your builder’s schedule, not yours.
Schedule free consultationUpdated October 2026
What your builder needs
Every selection, on a date.
A builder needs the item, finish, quantity and maker’s lead time for every tile, stone, plumbing and appliance selection, and needs each one before the trade that installs it starts. Where a selection depends on a field measurement, it waits for that measurement.
One kitchen alone is 36 decisions. The full list, in order.
What a designer adds
Seeing it before it’s built.
Every room drawn, dimensioned and rendered before anything is ordered, the guest bath as fully as the kitchen.
Three options for every decision, each with a reason it belongs in your house, and the one we’d choose.
Where it goes wrong without one
Chosen in a rush.
Each decision means searching, vetting and ordering on someone else’s schedule, and each has to work with the last. When a selection isn’t ready, the trade waits or the choice gets made in a hurry, and a piece that arrives too big for the stair landing is found out on delivery day.
A Selection Calendar dates every decision against your builder’s schedule, and a Fit Check measures each piece against your plans for scale, stairs and doorways, with two alternates sized to the same wall.
How it runs with us
Inside your builder’s plans.
We work inside your builder’s plans. They get the parts list above and a Selection Calendar dated to their schedule, and their questions come to the same text line as yours.
Your builder orders the tile, stone, plumbing and appliances from our parts list, with nothing added by us. We order the furniture, decorative lighting and decor, and anything we buy for you is delivered to site on a date they set.
Most of the work happens virtually, for houses in Austin and San Francisco: we work from your plans, photos and measurements, and meet you in person when a project needs it. Site visits and installation aren’t part of what we do. If walls move or the work needs stamped drawings, you need an architect too.
What it costs
One design fee, agreed first.
One design fee, $2.50 a square foot of the rooms in scope, agreed in writing before you pay anything, plus $249 a month while we design and a flat 20% on our trade price for what we buy for you. Your builder bills you directly. Every fee, on the Fees page.
You work with the same small team throughout, from the first call to the last order. About us.
A first conversation
Tell us about your house.
A free 30-minute call with Preston and Sunthar, the two people who will design it. Walk us through the rooms you want designed, with photos or plans if you have them, and we’ll work out your design fee with you on the call. Nothing to sign.
Book a free consultationIf you don’t love the direction after your first three design reviews, we refund your design fee and membership, no questions asked.
Or text (512) 270-6283
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