Read What Suzanne Kasler has to Say:
From her Atlanta, Georgia-based studio, celebrated interior designer Suzanne Kasler discusses how her team works with her clients to edit myriad design details and ideas to ultimately forge a winning outcome.
Especially during this last year, Kasler says, her clients have come to a deep understanding of how central their homes are to them. “The home is such a key part of their lives…both the little and big details are all worth focusing on.”
The keen focus on refined nuances and details have become top-of-mind for homeowners, especially those who are driven by design findings on social media.
“I find so many people with their social media focus have taken a strong interest in design. In some ways this interest and focus can be challenging for the interior designer as clients can come to us with too many ideas.”
This “design info overload,” as Kasler calls it, is easy to mistake for a negative, but she prefers to view it with an ever-positive approach—and uses it as a springboard for finding the perfect design: “Now that they are really engaged and excited about design, the challenge is how do we help them edit?”
Some of the highlights Kasler and her team take on with their clients include:
- Talking to them about what they love
- Delving into their personal collections
- Creating a design plan that reflects them, while involving them in the actual design process every step of the way
According to Kasler, the challenge lies in helping her clients get through the volume of all the options and possibilities.
The Power of Professional Design Editing
“The role of the interior designer has actually become more important than ever,” says Kasler. “Our clients cannot make all those decisions…As much as we talk about how you can buy anything in the world, and you can go on social media and get ideas and inspiration, and we can all order everything from the far-flung reaches of the globe, our job is to help them not make wrong or imperfect choices.”
As always, it comes down to setting expectations: “I believe we have to be diligent and address this issue in the very beginning when we first meet with our new clients, because most of the time they only see the glamorous part of the interior design world. To me, it’s critical to have them see the reality of how we work and how we make a difference in their projects. And then we come away with not only that really happy client, but a really successful project.”