Most people assume that when an interior designer walks into a home, the first thing they’re doing is making a list of what should be removed, what doesn’t work, and what needs to be replaced. And while I am taking note of these things to make sure I understand my clients’ needs, that’s not what I’m paying the most attention to. Because before I can understand what a room needs, I need to understand the person who lives there. And I do that by looking for clues.
When I say clues, I don’t mean anything formal or obvious. I’m not looking for a design direction or a style label. I’m looking for the small, unspoken things that reveal what someone is naturally drawn to without thinking about it too much. The painting that has moved with them from house to house. The chair that doesn’t necessarily match anything else but is always the one that gets used. The stack of books that never gets put away or styled differently because it always seems to belong exactly where it lands. Sometimes it’s a collection that has built itself slowly over time, not because it was curated, but because it mattered enough to be kept.
These are the things that tell me more than any questionnaire ever could. They reveal preference, attachment, and pattern. They show me what someone gravitates toward when no one is asking them to explain their taste or justify their choices. And that is where design really begins for me. Not with correcting a space, but with understanding what already has meaning inside of it.
I was recently at a client’s home for a site visit after a long break in the project. We were essentially starting again, picking back up where things had paused. A console we had ordered to go beneath a painting that had belonged to her grandfather had finally come in, and she was excited for me to see how things were coming together. We were ready to move into the next phase of the project. As we stood in her dining room talking about the space, our conversation turned to wall plates. I asked if she had any tucked away, and she started pulling out a few she’d collected over the years. Some with birds, and others her mom had given her throughout her childhood featuring famous racehorses. I also grabbed a beautiful horse statue she had sitting on another small table. It was the perfect size for her new console. We hung the plates on a wall adjacent to the painting and console. I remember her remarking that she didn’t know we’d be doing all of this today. She probably thought we had shopping to do to bring this space together, and we did but I wanted the pieces she had intentionally held onto to help shape the room before we asked anything new to do that job.
That’s one of my favorite parts of the design process. Yes, we still had shopping to do. The room wasn’t finished, and there were pieces we still needed to source. But by the time I left that day, it already felt more complete. Not because we had filled the room with more things, but because we had made space for the things that mattered most.
I think that’s the part people are often surprised by. They expect me to walk into their home looking for what needs to go. More often than not, I’m looking for what deserves to stay. Those meaningful pieces become the clues that help me understand who my clients are, what they value, and how they want to live. Once we know that, every other design decision becomes a little clearer. Because creating a home that feels personal doesn’t start with buying something new. It starts with seeing what you already love in a new way.
