How to Choose a Kitchen Designer

What to look for, what to ask, and a distinction worth knowing early.

Every kitchen project has a moment where the drawings stop being pictures and start being instructions. Who you chose to do the thinking shows up right there.

Three different people can design your kitchen, and they are not the same. A cabinetmaker builds beautifully, from whatever drawings they're given. Most also design, but the design serves the making. An interior designer shapes the whole room, but most specify joinery from the outside. An elevation, a finish, a handle. The internals are left to whoever builds it. A joinery led designer works from the inside out. What each drawer holds. Where the everyday things live. The joinery is resolved as the structural spine of the room, and the interior settles around it.

I'm an interior designer whose approach begins with the joinery. A decade of designing built ins from the inside out, awarded Australian Kitchen Designer of the Year along the way. Function is engineered, not specified.

What to look for. Documentation depth. Ask to see a set of issued drawings. If the internals are drawn, they were designed. Listen for whose language they speak. A good designer talks about how you live before they talk about what they make. And notice the questions they ask you. Most of the first conversation should be listening. Not to what you say you want. To what you keep returning to.

Questions worth asking. Who resolves the internal layouts, and when? What does an issued drawing set include? Can I take the documentation to my own maker? How do you decide layout before finishes? The answers tell you whether you're buying design, or drawings.

Where to begin. The Initial Conversation is a project strategy session. One focused hour, online, wherever your project is. $550 including GST, credited toward any future work with the studio.

Explore the Initial Conversation