A ROOM WITH SIX VIEWS
“Home Design: Rooms With a Point of View” (by Barbara Thornburg, Style, Oct. 10) was an example of a healthy approach to design in the ‘90s. Six solutions to dressing up an unfurnished room in two hours, the results very different but all in excellent taste. The reader is given a lot of eye candy, wonderful choices and information that tends to encourage personal decisions. It’s what people want to see.
KITTY BARTHOLOMEW, DESIGNER “THE HOME SHOW,” ABC, Burbank
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The decorators really missed the boat. That room had three major attractive features: the floor, the windows and the fireplace. The decorators seemed to feel that their contributions were more important than the development of the room itself. They covered up the floor, littered the walls so as to make the fireplace almost inconspicuous and focused the room away from the windows.
Could anyone live in the room as it was decorated?
JUDY MCKINNEY, Los Angeles
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Bravo for “Rooms With a Point of View.” Now, please, how about some more ideas for interior designs--perhaps for those on a budget?
JACK MORRISEY, Studio City
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Offering advice to help customers “sidestep the services of a professional interior designer, thereby saving them the traditional decorator markups,” is like advising your readers to go to a nurse instead of a doctor to save on medical costs.
Rarely are stores’ in-house decorators qualified by education or examination to offer proper design advice that addresses the visual, practical, health and safety aspects of a project. Also, using an in-house decorator eliminates the possibility of using items from other sources that might be more appropriate and less costly. Professional designers are free to use the entire marketplace to select the best item at the best price.
The designer’s markup is based on the wholesale price offered to professionals. Usually, the cost to the consumer is less than the retail price, often by as much as 20%. Using a store for design services usually costs full retail.
Using a member of a professional organization--the American Society of Interior Decorators or the International Society of Interior Decorators--assures a consumer of the help of a qualified, experienced designer.
BRUCE HERZLICH, ASID, ISID, New York City * Thornburg responds: The gist of the story was not to suggest that the services of designers be avoided but to offer readers ideas of how they might transform their rooms--with or without a professional.