Interior designers do far more than recommend paint colours and finishes. They have expertise in how homes are constructed, and they offer their advice not just to beautify a space but also to sometimes make wholesale changes to the way a client lives in their home.
Chantal Ross’s St. Albert-based interior design firm takes on broad design challenges, both residential and commercial, that sometimes include redesigning entire living spaces for people whose lives have changed.
A recent client approached her needing someone to totally restructure the ground floor of an older home because he was winding down his home-based business, he and his wife wanted a living space that would suit their future needs. Ross had to do more than suggest dĂ©cor changes. The Lacombe Park Estates couple wanted to expand their master bedroom, modify the en suite bathroom and closet, as well as the family room. They also wanted a dining room and guest bedroom, which wasn’t possible when the office took up so much of their ground floor.
“The fun for me is reworking an entire space from a renovation perspective,” says the NAIT grad, who has been in the business since 1992, the last 13 working independently.
Interior design is as much about making a space work as it is about helping a client make a personal statement.
“It has to be highly functional to start. If your space isn’t functional, even if you put in top-end finishes, it’s still going to be frustrating,” she says.
Her clients tend to be busy professionals, and they put a lot of trust in her knowledge.
“They don’t have the time, and they want something well done that looks nice. They need to be able to hand it over. There’s a lot of blind faith involved.”
Ross wants people to know that the home reno reality shows don’t accurately reflect the reality of her work.
“In a half an hour, they manage to pull off these fabulous renovations, and you don’t see what goes on in the middle. And it’s all about what’s in the middle.” The middle part, with all its disruption, can be “brutal,” she says.
Rebecca Gagne also got her training at NAIT and certification through an American-based association. She’s been in the business for 18 years, and currently works for Cucina Bella, a family-run company in Edmonton’s west end.
Early in her career, Gagne discovered that there was more to designing a kitchen than popping in a few appliances and putting some cabinets in around them, and so she has been focused on kitchens ever since.
Like Ross, Gagne emphasizes the importance of being practical when designing or redesigning a space, particularly a kitchen.
“Style is one thing, but you have to be conscious of things like ergonomics, safety, getting really involved in the function of a kitchen, how can you really make things work better in a kitchen.”
Part of her job, she says, is educating clients about the difference between what they’d like and what’s reasonable and possible.
“There’s no point in renovating a kitchen if what we’re going to do isn’t improving on what you already have.”
Like the boomer couple in Lacombe Park, where Gagne’s young family also lives, many of her clients tend to be older and committed to staying put rather than downsizing.
The general trends she sees tend to reflect her sense of the typical Edmonton and St. Albert resident.
“Edmonton and the St. Albert area tend to be ‘transitional’ in style, which means we’re not really traditional and we’re not really modern. We like to have a bit of a classic look. Simple, clean lines, with a bit of style.”
