THE JOURNAL
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ABOVE: Designer Martin Brudnizki’s west London flat, on the top floor of a Victorian mansion block. Brudnizki says that it’s more important to have a like-minded personality with a client than aligned aesthetic tastes ABOVE RIGHT: The grand staircase of a Georgian villa in Hampstead, decorated by Brandon Schubert, who starts a project by asking clients what their needs are – how a space looks and feels comes later on in the process
o you take baths or showers? Do you entertain in the kitchen or prefer a formal dining room? Do you like total darkness when you sleep? These are just a few of the questions an interior designer might ask a client at the beginning of a residential project – and they demonstrate how personal this unique kind of
professional relationship is. “I always start by asking someone what their needs are,” says interior designer Brandon Schubert. “Detailing how they want to use the space from a practical standpoint is easier to wrap their minds around but the second element is how someone wants to feel in it. Trying to tease that kind of thinking out can be more difficult because people don’t often approach interior design that way.” For Martin Brudnizki, whose eponymous design studio has recently moved to Design
Centre, Chelsea Harbour, images are equally important. “We normally ask the client to share pictures that inspire them,” he says, describing his role as part anthropologist, part friend. “We keep it quite light on the first meeting as a lot is about personality and understanding if you want to work with each other. A house is a big journey and likely to last at least a year. Ensuring you get on and have fun during the process, even if you have slightly different tastes, is so important.” Similarly, during initial briefings with clients, Salvesen Graham founders Mary Graham and Nicole Salvesen, observe how they interact. “We often walk them around the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour to see what they like and don’t like,” says Graham, who believes that honesty and communication are key. “Sometimes a client doesn’t know what their brief needs to be or how to articulate it,”
continues interior designer Henry Prideaux, referencing a Georgian house in Bermondsey as an example of helping someone create a space that’s more than what they envisaged. “With this house, the client asked for something simple with a few lovely pieces of furniture. Seeing it was a listed building, I elaborated on that to enhance the architectural details and gain back the heritage value that had been lost.” There is always a turning point in a client-interior designer relationship, he says. “A switch is flicked and then a client trusts your decision making. It’s usually when they can see how everything you’re doing will work out.”
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