When it comes to redesigning your kitchen, there are several reasons why you should hire a professional designer. Professional kitchen designers stay within budget, avoid costly mistakes, and follow the minefield of government residential construction ordinances to the tiniest detail. Perhaps more importantly, hiring a professional kitchen designer ensures you create a beautiful kitchen.
They love designing kitchens, and they’re educated about how to make the most of the space and about what’s safe, just like you go to a doctor specializing in a part of the body, the specialist for that part of the home is the kitchen designer. They understand how it all fits together and why the parts are necessary. You’re going to do it right the first time with a designer, rather than spending many hours and thousands of pounds experimenting of your own accord and potentially getting it wrong! Of course that isn’t to say your shouldn’t tackle smaller tasks by yourself as part of the overall picture, but perhaps leave the meat of the task to the professionals.
How to Find the Right Kitchen Designer
Search for a professional kitchen designer by accessing the NKBA website. The vast database organizes members by geographic area. Simply type your location into the search database to start the hiring process.
Screen Kitchen Designer Candidates
Kitchen designers possess a wide variety of professional certifications, but you need to be careful of fakers and learn what the initials mean, it’s pretty easy to pick up initials by buying a membership in some organization. A NKBA certification requires education, work experience, client references, and passing difficult examinations.
Meet Every Candidate
Treat the hiring process as employers treat job interviews. You must meet every kitchen designer candidate in person to analyse credentials. Present the floor plan of your current kitchen design and see what each candidate comes up with in terms of an overhaul. You want a kitchen designer that thinks quickly and makes aggressive, yet tasteful kitchen design recommendations. Make sure you have an idea on what you want and ask to see photographs of each kitchen designer’s work.
Which Kitchen Designer Makes the Best Fit?
If you’re not comfortable with a designer, there’s probably a good reason for it. One of the biggest problems that can arise is working alongside this person for the many weeks it takes for them to get the job done, unfortunately there is no way round this, so if personalities are going to come to blows this is certainly the time you’ll likely see it. To avoid this it’s always far better for everyone to be upfront and honest with their opinions, after all you’re letting this person make major changes to your home so you need to be comfortable with the decisions they’re making.
The final step on how you hire a kitchen designer involves setting the terms of the project. Designers submit bids based on much of the work you plan to accomplish. Settle on a fixed price project to ensure you remain within budget and prevent the drama caused by hourly billing.
Consider a kitchen designer that handles the project from the blueprint stage to completion of the project. After all, you can’t put a price on peace of mind.
