You might have just moved into a new house and want to put your own stamp on it, perhaps extend or repurpose the space. Or maybe you’re refreshing your existing home because it no longer meets your needs. My clients are usually interested in design and appreciate quality fixtures and fittings, but the prospect of renovating can seem too time consuming, completely overwhelming or both. Or they may have managed their own projects previously and prefer to have some professional help this time around.

I specialise in whole home refurbishments, most often of family homes with three bedrooms or more. A full refurbishment may involve an extension or structural changes, for which I will partner with an architect. Interior designs cover the kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, storage, lighting and electrical works, painting and decorating and choosing furniture, curtains and blinds and accessories. While different rooms may have their own use and look, the home has a common feel and flow making it feel homely, welcoming and a joy to live in.

Budget will vary enormously depending on the project. I work with clients on budgeting early in the process to make sure their project is feasible and scoped to meet intended spend. You’ll be advised on three distinct areas – 1) contractor budget for materials and labour; 2) spend on fixtures, fittings, equipment and furniture and 3) professional services fees including interior design.

If you’re looking to fully refurbish a newly purchased home, its reasonable to start with an overall budget that is 10% of the purchase price and work from there. Additional structural work might cost more; if its more about redecoration, lighting and furnishing it could be less.

To ensure quality of service I work on three projects at a time or fewer, depending on project scope. This outstanding client service has been recognised by leading home renovation service Houzz four times – only 3% of professionals on Houzz win this annual ‘Best of Houzz’ award: Houzz Awards

An architect will design the shell and layout of the building for an extension, structural alterations or a new build. If you need planning permission or steelwork to hold the building up you’ll need a qualified architect to draw and submit your plans, often in partnership with a structural engineer. The architect will detail how the structure is built and the materials to be used, producing drawings for the contractors; they will often handle the contractor appointment and project management too. If your project needs an architect I can introduce you to some I have worked with before.

You might have see ‘design and build’ written on the side of builders vans. In some cases this means they have an architect on staff or as a subcontractor or partner. When they talk about design they also mean structural design, where pipes and drainage go, what bricks, windows, rooftiles you’ll have. Sometimes they will also offer bathroom, kitchen and electrical designs, but they’ll often be basic and not very interesting. I can introduce you to trusted builders and manage the project with them, or you may introduce me to a builder you have worked with before.

All this leaves what goes inside the shell for the interior designer. Bathrooms, kitchens, flooring, lighting, electrical, colour scheme, curtains and blinds, furniture, accessories, even doorknobs. Anyone doing a refurbishment without an interior designer will need to make all these decisions themselves, and will be asked by their builder about choices often at the last minute and item by item. If you think of the architect and/or builder working on the shell of the oyster, your interior designer adds the pearl on the inside.

A trend will come and go, and you’re going to be living in your newly beautified home for a long time. It’s best to go with what you love and what’s right for your property. If you want to incorporate trends perhaps go with something that can be undone easily, such as paint, wallpaper or accessories.

One of the trends that’s massive at the moment is colour drenching, where you paint all the walls, woodwork and ceiling in a room in the same colour or tones of it. I’m a big fan it looks great and can make rooms feel bigger. And if you don’t like it in a couple of years its dead easy and relatively cheap to paint over it.

That huge sofa with the expensive botanical print? It’ll cost thousands to change when you get bored with it; a neutral sofa with scattering of cushions in that expensive print could be a smarter way to embrace the botanical trend.

A lot of prospective clients ask that. I charge a fair fee for my time, tracked on monthly timesheets, and clients pay me for the time I spend on their project – no more no less. Importantly this includes ordering everything in the design – from tiles to taps, appliances and cushions, paint, furniture, lighting – everything. What many interior designers won’t tell you is that we all get trade pricing on these products. In return for my fee, I pass on these discounts to you without charging markup. Most clients save around 20-30% on the stuff needed to make their house great, and in many cases that goes a long way towards offsetting my fee.

This means that clients working with Design Penguin save money and get a valuable service.

When I set up my studio I talked to a lot of established interior designers and found the traditional business model to be full of jargon and fug about how money was made. It wasn’t very client friendly. I wanted my service to be simple and transparent for clients, in black and white.

With a bottle of wine thrown in that turned into Design Penguin – the little fun friendly bird that turns up at your house and simply makes it better.