If you ever wondered what does an interior designer actually do, this article is for you..
It is one of those questions people are sometimes embarrassed to ask. They have seen the television programmes, flicked through the Instagram accounts, and have a rough sense that interior designers make rooms look good. But what do they actually do, day to day, on a real project?
The honest answer is: a lot more than most people realise. And quite a bit less of what most people assume.
They Start With the Brief, Not the Mood Board
The first thing a good interior designer does is listen. Not to what you think you want, but to how you actually live. How many people are in the house. Whether you work from home. How you use the kitchen. Whether the living room ever gets used or whether everyone ends up in one room regardless.
This matters because the most common design mistakes are not aesthetic. They are functional. A beautiful room that does not work for the people living in it is a failed room, whatever it looks like.
Before any material is selected or any furniture is sourced, a good designer is building a picture of the brief. What the space needs to do. What the budget is. What the sequencing of decisions should be, so that nothing gets committed in the wrong order.
They Manage Proportion and Scale
This is one of the things designers do that is hardest to explain until you see it go wrong.
Most people buy furniture and then put it in a room. A designer thinks about the room first and then identifies what furniture the room can carry. The difference between a sofa that grounds a space and one that overwhelms it is often a matter of centimetres. The difference between a light fitting that works and one that sits awkwardly is usually about scale, ceiling height and proportion.
Designers understand these relationships intuitively, because they have spent years observing them. They know what a 3.2 metre ceiling can carry that a 2.6 metre ceiling cannot. They know when a rug is too small to anchor a seating group. They know when a wall needs something and what category of thing it needs, before they know exactly what it should be.
This is not taste. It is training and experience applied to a specific space.
They Specify Materials and Finishes
Interior designers do not just choose colours. They specify the full material palette for a project. Floor finishes, wall treatments, joinery details, hardware, fabric weights, paint sheens. Each of these decisions affects the others, and a resolved interior is one where those decisions have been made in relation to each other rather than independently.
This is where a lot of self-managed projects fall apart. Not because the individual choices are wrong, but because they were made at different times, from different reference points, without a consistent thread running through them.
A designer holds that thread across the whole project.
They Source Furniture and Lighting
Sourcing is a significant part of what a designer does, and it is one of the areas where working with a professional makes the most practical difference.
Designers have access to trade suppliers, European manufacturers and product ranges that are simply not available to the general public through retail channels. The furniture sitting in Irish showrooms represents a small fraction of what can be specified and sourced for a project. A designer working with the right procurement partner can access pieces that are genuinely hard to find elsewhere, at trade pricing that would not otherwise be available.
Beyond access, designers manage the sourcing process. They track lead times, coordinate deliveries, manage defects and ensure that everything arrives in the right order for installation. On a full project, this is a substantial operational task that most clients would not want to manage themselves.
At Laffan and Laffan, this is precisely what we do for the designers and private clients we work with. Sourcing, storage, delivery and white glove installation, managed as a single coordinated service so that nothing falls through the gap between the creative and operational sides of a project.
They Make Decisions So You Do Not Have To
This sounds simple. It is actually one of the most valuable things a designer does.
A medium sized home renovation involves hundreds of decisions. Floor finish for the hall. Which direction the boards run. Whether the kitchen handles are bar or knob. What the stair lighting does. Whether the master bedroom needs a reading chair or whether there is not actually room for one. What shade of white the walls are, because there are more shades of white than most people know exist, and they read completely differently depending on the light in the room.
A good designer makes these decisions. They bring a recommendation, they explain it briefly, and they move forward. They do not present seventeen options and ask you to choose. They tell you what the room needs, and they back it with a reason.
This is what Philip Laffan does with private clients. He takes the brief seriously, works through the decisions, and delivers something resolved. Clients who want to be consulted on every choice tend to find a different kind of service. Clients who want someone to take the problem away and come back with an answer find that this way of working suits them very well.
They Think About the Whole, Not Just the Parts
Perhaps the most important thing an interior designer does is hold the whole project in mind at once. Every decision is made in the context of every other decision. The flooring affects the furniture selection. The furniture selection affects the lighting placement. The lighting affects how the materials read. It is a set of interdependent relationships, and managing them requires someone who can see the whole picture while working on each individual part.
Most people, when they manage a project themselves, make decisions room by room, piece by piece, as budget and time allow. The result is often a home that contains a lot of good individual things that do not quite add up to a coherent whole. The rooms feel slightly disconnected. The palette drifts. The lighting was an afterthought.
A designer prevents that from happening by keeping the full picture in view from the beginning.
Do You Need an Interior Designer?
Not necessarily. Plenty of people manage their homes well without one, particularly when the scope is limited and the decisions are relatively contained.
But if you are about to spend a significant amount of money on a home, it is worth asking whether you have the knowledge, time and objectivity to make those decisions well on your own. If the answer is uncertain, the lowest risk starting point is usually a Design Audit rather than a full engagement.
A Design Audit is a two-hour in-home session with Philip Laffan. He reviews the space, identifies what is working and what is not, and provides a written summary of priorities, direction and next steps. It costs €450. It stands alone as a useful piece of work. And it gives you a clear picture of what the project actually involves before you commit to anything further.
If what you want is someone to handle the whole thing, from the first conversation through to the day the installation is complete, that is what Private Client Design is. Philip works with a small number of clients each year on that basis.
Either way, the starting point is the same. A clear understanding of what the space needs. Everything else follows from that.
Laffan and Laffan is a structured procurement and design service based in Co. Kildare. We work with interior designers and private clients across Ireland and the UK, managing sourcing, storage, delivery and installation as a single coordinated service.
To enquire about a Design Audit or Private Client Design, contact philip@laffanandlaffan.ie