If you are familiar with this series of discussions on Interior Design, you would know that I have discussed the importance of maintenance from various perspectives. Strategic maintenance begins with a balance of the Client’s taste and preferences with the Interior designer’s applied knowledge and experience in guiding good and appropriate choices. Done well, those choices will respond with longevity of quality, performance and presentation through conscientious maintenance.
So, strategic maintenance begins at the beginning! The materials, finishes and equipment selected for your installation must pass the tests of quality and durability – in partnership with the recommended, required and appropriate maintenance. And the key word is required!
It is fine for a manufacturer (and your Interior designer!) to strongly emphasize “required,” but the enforcement, of course, is up to you. The overreaching emphasis is simply that, if the required maintenance is not practiced, the expectations for durability upon the original quality, becomes moot.
I have often found it interesting, when a complaint comes my way say, a year or 18 months after installation, and the Client is surprised at how an element has not held up. More often than not it is because conscientious maintenance has not been followed through. Sometimes, it is connected to the assumption that the particular maintenance wasn’t due – that soon!
It is not a waste of time to spend the time and invest the attention to learning just what may be needed/required in terms of maintenance for a particular element before deciding that’s your choice. Your Interior designer will be sure to emphasize any situation that has a high maintenance factor. If it seems you think you do not want to, or cannot, devote the time (periodically) to the essential care that element will require, a different choice would seem wise.
Some manufacturers offer initial warranties for specific time lines with an element’s purchase price; and, sometimes, extended protection for an additional investment. Your Interior designer will know about such protections, and can advise you appropriately. Trouble sometimes arises when the Client makes choices and decisions for personal reasons (outside the Interior designer’s awareness) that may not include complete insight and essential information. It can get dicey if trouble pops up. That’s not to say don’t make independent choices! It’s your project! It just means be thorough, do the research, ask questions and read the fine print – especially where maintenance requirements have serious bearing on warranty compliance.
Maintenance has may faces. There are many modes of compliance, many options for the pragmatic work of it and some even requires certified, qualified individuals to do the maintenance. Once again, your experienced professional Interior design team can guide you. In some cases, do-it-yourself is a deal breaker – and can void a warranty.
Get the answers at the front end of your Interior design project plan. If you want a very low maintenance installation, you can save yourself (and your Interior designer!) a lot of headaches down the line. The important choices offered, that you make, will take low maintenance into consideration at the get-go.
Sometimes a Client falls in love with some element and decides to go with it – despite cautions concerning vulnerability and high maintenance – even though that same Client previously requested low maintenance! Your Interior designer will most likely caution and remind you, then go with the flow. It’s your project!
Thanks to contemporary science and chemistry, most installation elements have greatly reduced maintenance requirements compared to 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago! And the improvements just keep coming. It is far from ‘hands off,” but pretty close in some cases! As Mom used to say: Ask! Read the instructions!
Better yet, pay attention to the Interior design experts you are paying – they have answers!
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.
