What to Ask Before You Hire Anyone to Design Your Home
- Sofia Mantoni
- Jul 10
- 5 min read
The right questions, asked early, save more money than any negotiation later.
This is not a cynical observation about the design industry. It is a practical one about how projects go wrong — and they almost never go wrong because the designer was incompetent or the client was difficult. They go wrong because two people began a project with different assumptions about what it was, and nobody asked the questions that would have revealed the gap before money was spent and decisions were made.
The questions below are the ones worth asking before you sign anything, commission anything, or hand over a deposit. A good studio will welcome every one of them. The answer to that test alone tells you something useful.
What will I actually receive, in writing, at each stage?
This is the first question and the most important one. Not because designers are untrustworthy, but because memory is imperfect and projects are long. What feels clearly agreed in a conversation in March can feel very differently recalled in September when the project is mid-construction and something unexpected has come up.
Every stage of a design project should produce a document. A written brief. A concept summary. A specification. A Studio Report after a consultation. These documents are not bureaucracy — they are the shared reference point that both parties return to when a decision needs to be made or a disagreement needs to be resolved. If a studio cannot tell you clearly what you will receive in writing at each stage, the project's accountability structure does not yet exist.
Ask this question first. The answer tells you how the studio thinks about its own process.
Who makes the final decisions — me or the studio?
There is no universally correct answer to this question, but there is a correct answer for you — and knowing it before the project begins saves an enormous amount of friction later.
Some clients want full creative control and a studio that executes their vision with technical expertise. Others want to hand the creative decisions to the studio entirely and trust the outcome. Most are somewhere in between — happy to be guided on technical and spatial decisions, but wanting final say on things that feel personal. None of these positions is wrong. The problem arises when a client who wanted guidance ends up in a project where every decision comes back to them for approval, or when a client who wanted involvement finds themselves presented with a finished scheme they had no hand in shaping.
Ask how decisions are made. Ask what happens when your instinct and the studio's recommendation diverge. The answer tells you whether the working relationship will feel collaborative or directional — and whether that matches what you actually want.
How is scope creep handled?
Scope creep is the most common source of tension in any design project — the gradual expansion of what the project covers beyond what was originally agreed, often without anyone noticing until the budget has been significantly exceeded.
It happens because design decisions are connected. Changing a floor finish affects the skirting. Changing the skirting affects the door frames. Changing the door frames opens a conversation about the doors themselves. Each individual decision seems reasonable. The cumulative effect is a project that is significantly larger than the one that was commissioned.
Ask directly how the studio handles this. Is there a change request process? How are additions to scope priced? At what point does a change to the brief trigger a revised fee? A studio that has thought carefully about this will have a clear answer. One that has not will give you something vague about being flexible — which sounds reassuring and is actually a warning.
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Is the person I am speaking with the person who will design my space?
In larger studios this question matters enormously. The principal whose name is on the door, whose portfolio won the commission, whose aesthetic you responded to — that person may have very little involvement in the day-to-day of your project. The work may be done by a junior designer under their oversight, or under very loose oversight indeed.
This is not necessarily a problem. Junior designers can be excellent. But you should know what you are buying before you buy it. If you commissioned the principal and you are getting the junior, that is information you are entitled to have.
In smaller, architect-led studios this question tends to answer itself — there is often only one person, or a very small team, and the person you meet is the person who will do the work. This is one of the genuine advantages of working with a studio at this scale. What you see in the consultation is what you get in the project.
What happens if I only want to do part of the project now?
Life changes. Budgets shift. A project that begins as a full apartment renovation sometimes needs to become a single-room intervention when circumstances change mid-way. Or the reverse — a Quick Fix consultation reveals enough potential that what started as one room becomes a whole property.
Ask how the studio handles phased projects. Is it possible to begin with one space and add others later without starting the process from scratch? How is a phased project priced compared to commissioning everything at once? Is there a minimum scope below which the studio does not work?
The answer tells you how flexible the engagement can be — and flexibility, for most private clients, is not a luxury. It is a necessity.
What the right studio sounds like
A good studio welcomes these questions because they are the same questions a good studio asks itself when scoping a project. They signal a client who has thought carefully about what they want and understands that a design project is a relationship as much as a transaction.
The answers themselves matter less than the quality and confidence with which they are given. Hesitation, vagueness, or deflection on any of these questions is useful information. So is the studio that answers all five clearly, before you have finished asking them.
At Sinopia, the process begins with a consultation — a focused conversation that produces a written Studio Report before any larger commitment is made. It is designed to be exactly the kind of low-risk, high-information starting point that these questions are pointing toward.
The Quick Fix consultation is €95, available online or in person in Palamós. The Studio Report is included. It is the right place to start — and the right way to find out if we are the right studio for your project.