Initial Consultation
- Understanding your style preferences, your likes and dislikes. Perhaps you like a mid-century modern design but your husband prefers Martha Stewart Park Avenue. Knowing your preferences hones our thinking and lets us narrow the search so you have fewer choices to make. We can learn how to assist you. For many of our projects the process of design begins with helping our clients better understand what they like. That is why we can come armed with magazines, photos, and samples and encourage our clients to explore as we work together to determine their stylistic preferences.

- Understanding how you want to use your space. Perhaps Sunday afternoon is your time to bake and you’ve dreamed of a befitting Baker’s Kitchen adorned with Hafele Hardware to lift your heavy mixer. Just downstairs, your partner and ten friends raise the roof every third play and steel into your Zen-like kitchen to grab beers from the refrigerator. A good interior design should offer solutions to this like a retractable kitchen door to dampen sound and a wet bar with ample room for beer and ice. Understanding how you want to live is key to adapting your space to accommodate it.
- Understanding how you make your decisions. If choice is paralyzing, you may prefer fewer choices and strong recommendation from us. On the other hand, you may love making choices and only want our help in a supportive role. Either way, the key to successfully working together is to know how you like to work so we can tune into it. It’s also important to understand the dynamics of decision making – do you like to make decisions quickly? Are you and your partner joint decision makers? Understanding your process helps us tailor our process to you.
- Understanding your budget and the relationship between cost and getting the perfect choice..A dining room chandelier may cost $300 or $13,000. Our goal is to create a design that you can implement which means the design has to fit your budget. There may not be funds to accomplish everything you had hoped for but proper planning gives us the best chance to optimize the use of your funds.

- Understanding your priorities and schedule If you leave town every spring for two weeks of skiing that might be the perfect time to remodel the kitchen which means the time to start preparing is in the fall. Knowing your specific needs helps us plan to meet them with the smallest impact on your lifestyle.
- Do we match? Your home is a statement of who you are. The better we can understand one another, the better we can interpret your vision. Interior design requires a great deal of trust and the first meeting is your chance to determine whether the relationship feels right to you. A one hour initial consultation with our Designer is $100. This includes creating a proposal, itemizing your specific design goals and estimating the cost of your project.
The Contract
Our designers will do everything to stay within the range and will tell you when you are heading beyond the contract range and guide you to complete the project within the estimate. It is not always possible nor is it always desired. Design work is one of the least expensive parts of a project, however, it has one the largest impacts. Less expensive materials when properly utilized as a result of good design will look better than more expensive materials in a poor design. The cost of design work often gives pause to our customers but they rarely regret the expenditure when they see the results.
The contract is returned to you for your review at which point you may add or eliminate services. In fact, you may adjust the services at almost any time during the process as we work on an estimate basis. We are extremely flexible and top goals are keeping our clients 100% satisfied and creating stunning design that makes our clients happy everyday when they enjoy their beautiful homes.
Deliverables
- A complete set of floor plans.
- Elevations and Renderings.
- Specifications for all materials including flooring, tile, cabinetry, plumbing fixtures, lighting, all trim, and hardware.
- Purchasing list for furnishings.
- Post-design consultations with outside contractors when Stratagem Construction is not the general contractor.
- Additional construction management services by arrangement (to oversee outside general contractors).
Purchasing Services
Set Up
Construction
Understanding Cost
Time Frame & Fees
We do our best to meet your needs and to give you a realistic idea of how long different parts of your project will take. Our staff includes a number of designers and their availability varies (though each and every one of them is excellent). You can work with whichever designer you choose, however, their availability will impact time frame for delivering the work. Small projects can often be delivered in several days or several weeks. More complicated project may take one or more months.
Kitchen Design
Custom Built-in
Entertainment Center
Gun Rack Design
Library Design
Fireplace Design
Complete Home Renovation
10-25
5-15
5-20
10-60
10-40
4-8
10-150
Interior Designer
Associate Interior Designer
Interior Design Assistant
Principal Construction Designer
Initial interview
Brief consultations [4 hours + prep]
$125/hour
$100/hour
$55/hour
$175/hour
$100 [credited after $1000 of services]