Design FAQ

I love a good design FAQ. I learn so much from our projects, client experiences and I love sharing those lessons and expert tips with you. It’s the perfect platform for designers, design enthusiasts and future clients to inquire about their design questions!

Part of our audience has grown into not only those incredible design enthusiasts that love to source out and be inspired by the world of design, and take on their own design projects, but also those prospective future clients that are looking for the right fit in a designer and design team. Another great line of questions comes from those studying to be or building their own design businesses. 

Either way, the questions are layered and unique and I thought instead of posting these to a 24-hour story, I would tackle them here so you can revisit when they apply to you or someone you know! We are picking our top five DMs and post questions to answer right here. 

What is the process of hiring MPD and how does it work within my budget? 

We are always thrilled when prospective clients reach out. It’s such a thrilling experience to be a part of the design planning and curation of our clients projects, as it can be one of the biggest emotional investments of their lives. We start every design project off with a quick phone call with one of our designers to discuss the scope, the budget, timeline and of course get an idea of fit!

We begin every project with a 2-hour in person consultation. This is an opportunity for us to meet and connect in person, as well as a download of everything we need to discuss design related to get your project started. We love consultations, it’s also usually a great stage to discover if there is a budget for our services full scale. It always amazes me how much we can get accomplished in the 2-hours together. 

This is also a great opportunity for us to assess the value of our clients taking on a full service interior design team for their project. As conceptual designers and project managers there are so many benefits offered to our full service clients, that given the correct budget can also balance our costs with some of our shared trade discounts.

Next step in our process is to collect a retainer, review and sign our contract and then we are off to races. I’ve outlined more about our Design Process here. Our design process allows us to have some control over the project flow, make expert assessments on timelines, budget and schedules, as well as keep the overall decision making and process on track. 

Curious if hiring a full service designer is right for you? Here is our Services Page, let’s connect and chat more!

As a new designer what would recommend as a way to get new clients? 

This is such a great question as the design landscape can look so different for all of us. 

I would say personally, my primary source of new clients at MPD is a mix of social media leads as well as happy client referrals. We love building our community on all channels (Instagram, Pinterest, You Tube, TikTok) and connecting with new clients this way. 

Social media allows us to share of our expertise, current projects, and love of design in an every day, more personal narrative way. I think our clients start to see some of themselves in our designs, and for us a large part of working with our clients is helping them to find their own personal design voice. 

I would recommend building your brand identity and creating a booklet that summarizes what your personal goals and ethos are for your design company. Use that to translate into how you build your social channels, by sharing authentic and real design opinions and narratives. It’s wonderful once you are able to nurture those future client relationships and then that will lead to happy referrals.  

I would also recommend to nurture as many relationships as you can. By living an authentic life, and sharing your passion for design, hopefully you can connect with friends, loved ones, friends of friends looking for design help. And make sure to document! Our goal is always to have complete finished spaces that we can photograph professionally, so a great way to build to that with clients is to be upfront from the beginning in your contract that you want to share the design journey. 

How do you visualize spaces you’re designing?

I feel very lucky to be able to walk into a space be able to visualize it’s potential. I have a very multidimensional way of seeing spaces. That being said, one of the biggest tools I learned through my post secondary education in Architecture and Interior Design was how to communicate that vision to our clients and trades. We currently use AutoCAD, Sketch Up, renders, and sometimes even hand sketches and mood boards to help articulate our spaces. It’s one thing to be able to personally experience a space transformation but another to be able to clearly communicate those spaces, so I would recommend leaning on as many tools as needed to get that across. Another reason why we love presentations and why we put so much behind that stage in order to communicate our conceptual designs as clearly as possible. 

Looking for hardwood floor colours that don’t show everything. Currently have black and hate it! 

You are speaking my language. I love creating spaces that are for living, and in our case that means puppies, outdoor life, and entertaining. I will say, we did invest in a very high quality vacuum that gets a lot of use to keep our floors nice and clean. 

But in terms of wood stains and finishes that are best at hiding everything, we do use a lot of natural oak, french wide plank oak in lighter stains to keep spaces brighter, more contemporary and more liveable. This year we feel a big full towards warmer, caramel coloured wood stains, even using more hickory woods and darker stained wide plan oak floors. So if you’re looking for more forgiving, I would say lean on a wood that has beautiful wood detailing and lighter tones. 

Favourite white paint colour for the ceiling…if walls are dove white do you paint the ceiling the same? 

Ceilings are having a renaissance in so many ways. I like to stick to lighter/softer ceiling colour, especially if we are dealing with lower ceilings. I would stick with your instinct to go with white dove on the ceiling. It has a grey undertone and isn’t too bright that it will draw your eye to the ceiling. And if you are going for light, bright, white walls, then absolutely you can continue this to the walls as well.

The difference? The finish. For ceilings we usually go with a Flat Finish and for the walls we usually go with an Egg Shellf Finish or a Satin Finish, which is a little more durable and adds more sheen and depth.

We love answering your design questions and connecting with you on all social platforms. Let us know in the comments below if you think we should make this a more regular Design FAQ!