Unfortunately, these two concepts often trip over each other in the process of developing a client’s design vision. The client gets to creatively free fall with their ideas, and those ideas contain the client’s feelings. The design team must find and maintain the balance point where decisions based on feelings alone are compatible with function, and serve the end purpose of the designed environment.
We can all remember our parents pointing out that they knew what was best for us, even though we wanted something else! It’s a little like that, but with a twist or two.
The potential for problems is quite high when the pragmatic necessities (or proven techniques that influence decisions for finished environments) are overruled by emotionality. That is, a client wanting something a certain way or a certain color, for instance, when those choices are clearly unworkable or inappropriate for the desired design end result.
Make no mistake, feelings are important. But, also make no mistake that driving your project choices with whims, feelings and personal preferences alone is one way to compromise your expectations from that environment. Some of your personal tastes and preferences may simply be impractical for certain aspects of your project. “Personal preference” sometimes gets confused with “appropriate choice,” and can unwisely influence decisions.
Case in point might be furniture design that would work wonderfully in in your Victorian themed Living Roomt, but is impossible to sit on comfortably in the real world. Color is another challenge where the wrong choice driven by “feelings” alone might be the very element that subliminally repels customers.
Your professional team has experience with what works and what just plain does not! There is a big difference between one’s personal feelings and the “feeling” an environment conveys to its “end user.” The end user may be a client, a customer, your employees or yourself. It’s that last one that is the exception! Your designer would most likely support, with little qualification, what you feel strongly about, for space exclusively yours to use — whether or not it exactly followed professional design choices and advice!
It is no secret that it is entirely possible there are ways for your personal feelings about some element in your project to be met and harmonized– but maybe not in the way you imagined. When your design team learns what you like, what colors appeal to you, what styles appeal to you, and what pleases or displeases you about other environments (i.e., what you feel) they are able to take your ideas and requests and make them work to your satisfaction.
These kinds of pitfalls are not always easy to predict, but both you and your designer will recognize them when you see them. When you do recognize that it’s an emotional argument, listen to alternatives. You’ll discover new insights, learn new techniques and solutions from your team that will help balance your design project from both perspectives: feelings and function.
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 and Instagram at Business Design Services.
