At Sarah Wooldridge Design, we work on many client projects, from one-room to full-scale renovations. We cover a broad area around the Thames Valley, including Berkshire, Bucks, Surrey, Hampshire and London. With this in mind, we wanted to share more about what goes on behind the scenes and how we work with our clients through a case study.
The brief
Our client had been working on an extensive house renovation with the support of an interior designer. When Harriet, our Sales Director, first met with the client in the spring of 2022, construction was complete, and she was pulling together the final touches to her new home. We can get involved at any stage of the process and often tackle the project in phases on large builds, as we did in this case.
The challenges
When we started the project, our client had already visited Chelsea Harbour Design Centre to select fabrics, so she had a clear vision of the kind of look she wanted to achieve. However, some fabrics the client liked couldn’t be applied in situ, so Harriet used her expertise and worked collaboratively with the client to find beautiful alternatives.
1. The Kitchen Box Seat
The first project we worked on together was in the spring of 2022, it was to provide Roman blinds and soft furnishings for the kitchen and playroom.
During Harriet’s initial visit, we realised we needed to choose the right fabric for this project carefully. The client originally wanted to use the red chevron patterned fabric for the base of the box seat, this was not ideal for two reasons. The first, because this would be a high-traffic area and needed to withstand small children’s shoes and spills, we needed to pick a heavy-duty and robust fabric without compromising the design. The second was that we also needed to ensure the fabric was aligned over two box seats, which would have resulted in lots of wasted fabric, making this an eye-wateringly expensive project.
Through conversation, we agreed to make a plain base and instead used the chevron fabric in the cushions on top. The result, as you can see, is striking.
2. The Daughter’s Bedroom
Once we had completed the first phase, our client asked us to look at the Roman Blinds and soft furnishings for her daughter’s bedroom in the summer of 2022. This room has a bay window, which makes measuring and calculating the angles quite complicated. Whilst the fabric is plain with the tassels, it would have been immediately obvious if things had not been aligned. We needed to ensure the blinds fitted well within the frame and did not let in too much light.
Whilst the fabric is plain with the tassels, it would have been immediately obvious if things had not been aligned. We needed to ensure the blinds fitted well within the frame and did not let in too much light.
3. The Orangery
Our final project was to look at the blinds and cushions for the orangery in spring 2023. The chosen Romo fabric made the blinds complex to calculate because we had to accommodate different lengths, working around a door and two smaller windows. By double-checking our measurements, we ensured a great finished look. It is important to ensure that any patterned fabrics are in alignment. Otherwise, it can be the kind of thing you notice, but when it works, you don’t even think about it.
A large part of the success of this project was managing to create such large Roman blinds and not only centring the flowers but making sure the pattern ran consistently around the whole room across multiple blinds.
While we were working on the final installation of the orangery blinds, the family caught COVID. We were trying to install the blinds in time for Christmas, but we needed to be flexible, so we pushed back the installation date to the new year.
Whilst the fabric measurements were quite complicated at some points during these projects, the hardware was fairly straightforward. Harriet recommended some solutions that would work well, and the client was happy with her suggestions. Attention to detail was important for this project. Because the calculations were quite complicated, we also asked our fitter to reconfirm things before placing the final fabric orders.
The Outcome
The client was super happy with phase one of the project, so she invited us back to complete two more projects. We had a good, open working relationship, our client is a busy lady, so keeping things as straightforward as possible was important. After the initial consultation with Harriet, we worked remotely, but she was happy for us to go back and confirm the measurements or work on the project at the house, even if she was not there. She had confidence in the team to do what we said we would do.
If you would like to look at a window dressing project in the new year, please get in touch to arrange a no-obligation discovery call.
