Shopping for a Decorator

Stores Big and Small Offer Design Help At Home. Just Ask.

A mission to find Mission-style oak furniture led Trina and Bob Tyrer to Mastercraft Interiors in the Fair Oaks Mall, where Barbara Wright, an on-staff decorator, helped them pick out a Stickley bedroom suite. For the next two years, the couple followed Wright's advice in buying Mission-style tables, desks, cabinets, rockers, chairs and clocks to fill their new Arts and Crafts-style house in Falls Church. In her living room one day last week, Trina Tyrer contemplated a rug and accessories brought over by Wright. The store leaves such final touches with customers for 48 hours so they can decide whether or not to purchase them.

"What's nice about picking furniture from one store is that you don't have to spend time wandering with a designer from showroom to showroom," says Trina Tyrer, 51, an administrative aide to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) "You can proceed slowly, without having to pick all the window treatments and paint colors right away."

In finding a store that had the look they were after, the Tyrers also found a sometimes overlooked source for interior design help: on-staff decorators who will visit a customer's house and offer design advice about integrating the new furnishings with the old. This service can extend to suggestions about where to put the couch, how to dress the windows and whether to try pale yellow or periwinkle paint on the walls.

Such room-by-room assistance is available from specialty boutiques such as Contemporaria and Urban Country in Bethesda and national chains like Ethan Allen and Thomasville.

The level of expertise differs widely from store to store. A "designer" at one store may be a salesperson who is knowledgeable about the merchandise, but has no formal training. Another store may employ a full-fledged member of the American Society of Interior Designers, who passed the National Council for Interior Design Qualification exam.

Costs vary too, from complimentary design and installation to retainers refundable after the purchase and hourly fees. For example, Ethan Allen designers will visit a customer's home with no fee or minimum purchase. Some people have asked for help and, in the end, not bought anything. "That happens only occasionally, and we just smile," says Liz Haney, sales manager of the Tysons Corner store.

Mastercraft Interiors, on the other hand, collects a $400 fee up front that is refunded after a $4,500 purchase. Customers who want a design consultation for a single room but don't want to purchase furniture pay $100 an hour.

From the store's perspective, design services can establish a relationship with customers that extends well beyond the purchase of a single sofa. Alan and Betsy Leinwand, for example, have decorated -- and redecorated -- their entire North Potomac home over the past decade with the help of designers at Urban Country.

Most store designers are limited to creating interiors from their own merchandise; a few, including Urban Country, Apartment Zero and the Kellogg Collection, will accompany a customer to the Washington Design Center and other to-the-trade sources for an hourly fee. "We do the same things as any designer, but for many people, it's less intimidating to go to a store than hiring a decorator," says Amy Gudelsky, lead designer for Urban Country.

Independent interior designers, however, tailor a custom look using merchandise from many sources. "It's the difference between off-the-rack clothing and couture," says District designer John Peters Irelan, who began his career as a designer for Woodward & Lothrop and Lord & Taylor before opening his own firm. "[Independent] designers command a wealth of workrooms and special craftsmen that the average store doesn't have. I don't have an inventory that I have to sell."

Fees for independents average $100 to $150 an hour in the Washington area, according to administrator Leslie Ehrmann of the Washington Metropolitan chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID).

Store-supplied decorating help is not new. Decades ago, when most upholstered furniture had to be custom-ordered, department stores and furniture retailers routinely offered design assistance. Staff decorators from such venerable retailers as W & J Sloane and Woodward & Lothrop would trek to a customer's home carrying heavy swatch books of fabrics and wallpapers.

"It was very prestigious to get your home decorated by Sloane's," says Susan Vallon, who, like several successful local designers, started her career at the now-defunct Washington emporium. "The store supplied a total design package, from drawings to custom furniture and draperies."

Bloomingdale's is one of the few department stores that still offers the service. "We'll go to your home, measure the space, do a floor plan, put together a color scheme and show you what goes into the room," says Eileen Joyce, vice president of interior design at Bloomingdale's in New York. For that service, the store charges $750, $500 of which is refunded with a purchase of $10,000 or more.

Such in-home service waned in the 1980s and '90s with the corporate consolidation of department stores and the rise of lifestyle design chains, such as Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Ikea and Crate & Barrel. They attract consumers with a defined signature style: the denim-covered sofa looks good with the white-painted coffee table, the jute rug and block-print throw pillows. They do not offer home visits.

"Our buyers do the editing that a designer might do," says spokeswoman Bette Kahn of Crate & Barrel in Chicago. "Our collections are edited so you can take one coffee table and put it with four or five sofas and chairs."

In-store designers help traditional retailers compete with these catalogue-happy lifestyle companies, attracting shoppers who want a more customized look but don't have time to flip through swatch books or debate endless choices of lamps and chairs. The ongoing boom in home construction and remodeling also has fueled the growth in store-supplied design help, some retailers say.

"At least 50 percent of our customers take advantage of our design services," says Beth Boggs, director of interior design for Mastercraft Interiors, which operates five stores in the Washington area. "Our design jobs have grown over the past year. We're now looking for more interior designers."

Marie-Therese "Mimi" Shipe, a designer who has worked for Ethan Allen in Tysons Corner for the past decade, says design services bring customers to the store again and again: "I've helped their kids and relatives," she says.

Among her loyal customers are Samar and Toni Srour, owners of a pastry shop, who have spent the past four years filling their Vienna brick colonial with traditional Ethan Allen furnishings. "Once we saw what Mimi did in the dining room, we decided to do the living room," says Samar Srour, 40, pointing to the Chippendale-style dining chairs and table, reproduction Old Master paintings and artificial flower arrangements -- all purchased from Ethan Allen.

Last year, the Srours remodeled their kitchen and furnished it with a Deco-inspired table and chairs from the store's modern Horizons collection.

"Next year, we'll do the bedrooms," says Samar Srour. Though Ethan Allen's service requires no minimum purchase, Shipe estimates that the Srours spent more than $85,000 on their furnishings.

Design from a single store, emphasizing a particular style, appeals to some homeowners. "I like the control," says realtor Ethan Carson, 45, who spent about $38,000 to furnish his Adams Morgan home with minimalist designs from Contemporaria in Bethesda. "The store helped me enhance my own ideas."

It also saves customers time. Alison Sackman, who runs the "Immediate Interiors Design Service" at the Kellogg Collection, says clients come to the store for its formal English or country French look. For $250, she will measure a room, draw up a floor plan and suggest furnishings and fabrics sold at the store. Once a customer has agreed to the list of purchases, Sackman arranges delivery and installation.

Most furniture stores provide only decorating help, though a few offer kitchen and bathroom design services. For extensive renovation jobs requiring demolition and rewiring, some will recommend architects, builders and other sources.

"We may have to call a kitchen planner," says Urban Country's Gudelsky, surveying the kitchen appliances in the North Potomac home owned by the Leinwands. Having decorated nearly every room, Gudelsky is now being asked to add more counter space and remove a low wall between the kitchen and family room.

In Chantilly, designer Vivianna Irizarri recently opened the new boutique Caché as a spin-off of the decorating and millwork company she started seven years ago. Irizarri not only sells furniture and drapes, but custom cabinetry, constructed in a 17,000-square-foot workroom next door to the store. She also offers a service called "Caché on Wheels," which brings a rolling suitcase full of pillows, mirrors and lamps to a home.

Buyers beware. A shopping expedition for a single accessory, chair or sofa may turn into a room's worth of furnishings.

"A customer may come into the store just needing seating," says Janice Kanter, owner of Theodore's, a longtime contemporary furniture store in Georgetown. "That need may grow into lighting, cabinets, carpet and window treatments. It's hard to put an $8,000 Italian sectional in a room and not design an environment around it."