Your taste, not a house style
The only style in your house is yours.
Some designers are hired for their look, and the best deliver it beautifully. We’re hired for yours: we start with how you live, bring three options for every room, each with a reason and our suggestion, and you make the call.
Schedule free consultationSide by side
Your taste leads, from the first conversation.
| Item | Designers known for a look | Stanza |
|---|---|---|
| How you choose them | By a look you’ve seen and loved in their portfolio | By how we work: three options, our suggestion, your decision |
| If your taste is far from theirs | Some pass on the project | We take our direction from yours |
| Your finished house | Often photographed for the portfolio; the right is commonly in the contract, though many honour a client’s no | Yours. Photographed only with your permission |
Their column draws on designers’ own accounts in trade interviews (Business of Home, 2020 and 2024; 1stDibs, 2016). The full comparison: designers known for a look.
Where we start
Before we draw a line, we learn the house and the people in it.
The first conversations are about you. Which rooms you actually use, and when. The pieces you’re keeping and the ones you’d happily lose. The pictures you’ve saved for years and, just as useful, the rooms you’ve walked into and disliked.
Then the house itself, from your plans and photographs: where the light comes in, which wall can take a sofa, how far the table is from the stove. Your taste sets the direction; the house sets the limits. We design inside both.
Options, each with a reason
Three ways to do the room, and the one we’d choose.
For every room we draw three schemes on your own walls, and say for each what it does well and what it gives up. We mark the one we’d choose, and why. Sometimes you’ll agree. Often you’ll take B with the rug from C, and that’s the point.
Hate all three and we’ve learned what you don’t want, which is most of the work.
The living room, 22′-7″ × 20′-11″: three schemes drawn on your walls, priced, then redrawn until one is right.
Your call, every time
You decide. We make deciding easier.
You don’t need two hundred sofas to choose from. You need three good ones, sized to the room and priced, and an honest opinion. That’s what you get, piece by piece: the layout first, then the large pieces the room is built around, then the rest.
Lean on us as much or as little as you like. Our suggestion is always there to take, and nothing is settled until you say so. During your project, a settled room reopens whenever you ask.
A first conversation
Tell us about your house.
A free 30-minute call with the 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.
Schedule free consultationOr text (408) 355-4249
