What to take to an interior design consultation

A small measuring tape is best. I often clip it to myself or hold it in my hand when talking, so it needs to be stylish and not very heavy or clunky.

You wouldn’t be expected to do a survey during an interior design consultation but if you need to quickly know the ceiling height or room width, it’s much less embarrassing to whip out your laser than fumbling around with your tape measure.

Sometimes your laser measure has the feature for measuring angles. Mine does, but I have to admit I don’t use it! I much prefer using my angle measure tool.

This helps me measure simple obtuse angles as well as skirting and some cornice profiles.

I used to take any old camera in the past as I’d only use the photos for the duration of the project. These days, I have a high-quality camera with at least 2 lenses (one wide-angle lens and one around 50mm) and try to take the best photos because I might need them for social media in the future.

My camera battery life is actually really good and so is my laser’s. I always check how much battery life I have before I go, but I never want to be caught out, so I always take a spare, just in case.

I take a few different coloured pens and make sure I have some variation in terms of highlighters, pencils, coloured pencils and non-ballpoint pens. I will usually have a clutch pencil or two with different coloured leads too.

I find that client’s who hire me for an interior design consultation are hoping to solve a quick problem that they have due to potential or current building work. For that reason, I often find that my client has a few sets of plans on site waiting to talk them through with me, so in order to understand the size of things when sketching on plan, I just always make sure I have a scale with me.

I will often try to have a look online to see if I can find the general layout of the property I’m visiting. Sometimes client’s don’t explain things very well, so you can whip out the existing plans and ask them to sketch out what they mean.

Call me old fashioned but I prefer to have a hard, flat surface to draw, sketch or communicate my ideas on. When I worked in an office, all we had were our diaries and I always felt this just wasn’t good enough because for one, my pens seemed to always go missing and my not so great hand sketching skills looked far worse when trying to sketch on a page that was soft and squishy.

I use my diary for writing down the minutes of the meeting and any action steps required. These days I have a separate diary for each project. When I worked for someone else we only ever had the one and I found that referring back to a project and finding something I was looking for was unnecessarily time consuming.

The one I have is from Benjamin Moore, although a large one from Dulux, Crown or any other major supplier will do. I wouldn’t go too niche with this. I use it to try to help and match a colour rather than to choose colours.

I often take a few different paint colour charts to my interior design consultation. I’ll take a low to mid-range supplier like Dulux or Crown and then I’ll take some high-end niche ones like Farrow and Ball or Fired Earth. Cost is usually the reason a client won’t choose a high-end supplier, but it’s a chance to show the client the difference in the colour choices.

Often I’m helping clients choose tiles for kitchens and bathrooms, so I always bring a grout swatch to make sure I specify the grout too (you don’t want the builder making the design choice for you).

Metal colours for folding sliding doors and windows are specified by using RAL colours. So I always make sure I have an accurate RAL colour chart with me at all times.

This has a swatch each of gunmetal, copper, brass, stainless steel and bronze. I got a great one at a trade show one year and it has polished as well as brushed versions of each. These have slight variations from certain suppliers, so it’s not always accurate, but the undertone of each swatch will usually be the same, so at least you’ll be making a decision based on a real sample rather than your memory.

This is helpful to describe the different types of wood grains, colours and types when choosing timber veneers for joinery.

I use Formica and One World Swiss Crono. The Formica ones are heavy but pretty good as a collection to take to show a spread of potential surface options if you are thinking about getting creative with bedheads, bespoke finishes or furniture.

Having some fabric swatches in all the primary and secondary colour groups can help your client visualize how something might feel or look, so will help them make confident decisions much more quickly. If I know what supplier the client is planning on using, I will make sure I take their swatch kit too.