The moment most people start thinking about hiring an interior designer is when the room they thought they could solve on their own keeps looking wrong — one expensive sofa later, two paint samples on the wall, and a rug that’s a half-size too small. The pieces are nice on their own. They just don’t add up.
If you’ve been circling that feeling, this post is for you. It’s the conversation we have most weeks at the showroom — what a Lexington interior designer actually does, when it’s worth hiring one, what it costs, and how to find someone whose taste lines up with yours.
What an interior designer actually does (and doesn’t)
The job is part editor, part project manager, part translator between you and your house. On any given week the work might include:
- Walking a room and diagnosing why it isn’t working — scale, sightlines, lighting, traffic flow, color temperature, the spot where everyone sets their keys.
- Specifying furniture, lighting, textiles, and decor that fit your dimensions, your budget, and the way your family actually lives.
- Reading construction drawings and weighing in on a kitchen layout before the cabinets are ordered.
- Coordinating with your builder, your electrician, your upholstery workroom, your delivery crew.
- Showing up on install day with a punch list, hanging the art, placing the rugs, swapping the lamp if the proportions are off.
What a designer typically isn’t: an architect (they don’t stamp drawings), a contractor (they don’t swing a hammer), or a decorator-for-hire who shows up with a single mood board and disappears. The good ones live somewhere in the middle of those three, and they stay through delivery.
When it makes sense to hire one in Lexington
You don’t need a designer for every room. You probably do need one when:
- You’re renovating. Kitchen, bath, primary suite, mudroom — anything where you’re moving walls, picking finishes, or specifying lighting in a ceiling that’s about to be closed up. The mistakes here are expensive and hard to undo.
- You just bought or built a house. Empty rooms are easier to plan for as a whole than to furnish piecemeal over three years. A designer’s plan keeps the early purchases from boxing in the later ones.
- You’ve been buying for a while and the rooms still feel scattered. Two chairs from one place, a rug from another, a light fixture that seemed great in the catalog. None of it talks to each other. This is the most common reason clients reach out to us.
- You’ve been paint-paralyzed for six months. Choosing palettes, finishes, and undertones is one of the hardest things to do from a paint chip. A designer can short-circuit it in an afternoon.
- You’re about to spend serious money on a single piece — a custom sofa, a dining table, a chandelier — and you want a second set of eyes on the dimensions and the proportions before you commit.
- You’re hosting something that matters. A wedding weekend, an anniversary, a Derby party. Sometimes the deadline is the reason.
The rooms we see this in most often, in Lexington specifically: new builds out in Hamburg and the developments off Old Frankfort Pike, full-house refreshes in Chevy Chase and Ashland Park, kitchen and primary-bath renovations in older Bell Court and Kenwick homes, and second homes for clients who split time between Lexington and Keeneland season.
What it costs — flat fee vs. hourly
Designer pricing models can feel opaque. Here’s the honest version of how most of us bill in this market.
The first step is almost always a flat-fee in-home consultation. Ours is a 90-minute visit at your house, scheduled directly with Katie. We walk every room in scope with a tape measure, talk through what’s not working, and leave you with concrete direction on layout, lighting, and palette — plus an honest read on where to spend and where to wait. You can take what you hear and run with it yourself, or you can keep us on.
From there, smaller work is usually hourly. An afternoon of art placement, a furniture plan for one room, sourcing a single sofa, a paint consultation. You buy time as you need it; we track against a written estimate so there are no surprises.
Whole-home programs and renovations are scoped as flat-fee projects. After the consultation, we send a written plan: scope, deliverables, payment schedule, timeline. Predictable, no hourly creep. The dividing line is usually around four rooms or any project that touches construction.
Most one-room refreshes settle in well under what a flat-fee “e-design package” would cost elsewhere — partly because we live in your market and don’t need to pad for unknowns, partly because we can pull from our own showroom inventory instead of waiting on samples to ship in. Our full pricing model walks through how we scope each type of engagement.
How to choose a designer (questions to ask in the first call)
A first call — whether it’s with us or someone else — should leave you with a clear sense of whether the fit is right. A few questions worth asking:
- What’s your design background? You’re hiring a person, not a firm. Where did they train, what kinds of projects have they spent the most time on, and how long have they been doing this on their own?
- How do you bill, and what’s included? Hourly, flat fee, percentage of furnishings, retainer? What’s the consultation fee, and does it credit toward future work? When are payments due?
- Who’s actually doing the work? If you’re hiring a larger firm, ask whether the senior designer is on your project day-to-day or whether a junior team takes over after the first meeting.
- What brands and vendors do you typically work with? This tells you a lot about taste, price point, and quality. A designer who only quotes catalog brands is a different animal from one with real trade access.
- How do you handle the install day? The best designers show up. They hang the art, place the rugs, walk the punch list. Ask explicitly.
- What does after-delivery look like? If a finish reads wrong in the room, will they swap it? Are they available for the next phase, six months from now, or do you have to start over?
- Can I see three or four recent projects? Not the highlight reel — the real ones. A designer’s eye is most visible in the rooms they don’t put on their homepage.
What working with Marais Home looks like
Marais Home was founded by Katie DesMarais — a Lexington native who studied interior design at the University of Kentucky, then spent more than a decade designing in New York City and Austin across residential, hospitality, higher education, and luxury development. The hospitality and luxury-development work taught her to design for daily wear, not photo shoots: kitchens that hold up under a 3-year-old and a Labrador, lighting that’s still right in year five, fabrics that don’t pill the first time the dog jumps on the sofa.
Every project starts the same way: a 90-minute in-home consultation at your house. From there, hourly engagements pick up for most rooms, and flat-fee projects pick up for whole-home programs and renovations. Throughout, we’re pulling samples and sample-able pieces from a working showroom at 882 E High Street in Chevy Chase — ten minutes from most of the homes we work in, which means fewer days waiting on memos to ship and more time spent sitting with finishes before committing. If you’d like to walk through it before booking a consultation, visit the Lexington showroom any open day — Tues–Fri 11–5, Sat 11–4.
A few rooms we love working on
Living rooms with one wrong piece. The sofa is right, the rug is right, but the room reads flat. Usually it’s the lamps or the lack of a third light source. Our designer lighting edit pulls from Hudson Valley, Mitzi, and Troy — the brands most local lighting stores don’t carry — and a single floor lamp swap often solves what felt like a whole-room problem.
Dining rooms that never feel finished. The table is gorgeous; the chairs are fine; everything else feels half-considered. Usually it’s a missing layer: a sideboard, a sconce pair, a textured rug to absorb the echo, a real chandelier instead of the builder-grade pendant. Our furniture program handles the anchor pieces; the styling layer comes from decor and textiles.
Bedrooms that need to feel like a hotel suite, but in real life. Linens, layers, low ambient light, a real bedside reading lamp. Our textile edit — pillows, throws, bedding, rugs — favors natural fibers and small-batch makers over the mill stuff, which is most of what shows up in a bedroom that actually feels considered.
Ready to start?
If you’ve read this far, you probably already know whether you want help. The next step is the easy one: book an in-home consultation, or come walk the showroom first.
Book a consultation with our Lexington interior designer · visit the Lexington showroom · send us a note
FAQ
How much does it cost to hire an interior designer in Lexington, KY?
Most engagements start with a flat-fee in-home consultation (a 90-minute visit). From there, ongoing work is billed hourly for most rooms, or scoped as a flat-fee project for whole-home programs and renovations. The hourly rate is in line with the broader Lexington market; the consultation fee is fixed up front, with no obligation to continue afterward.
How long does a typical interior design project take?
A single-room refresh with stock pieces can land in 4–6 weeks. A custom sofa or dining table runs 6–8 weeks on its own. A full-house program with construction is typically a 6–12 month engagement, sequenced around the build calendar. We give you a written timeline before any sourcing begins.
Do I have to buy all my furniture through you?
No. We’re happy to incorporate pieces you already own or want to source elsewhere. That said, most clients end up sourcing the bulk of new pieces through us — partly because our trade access opens up brands not available at retail, partly because consolidating sourcing makes the install day cleaner.
What if I just need help with one room?
That’s most of our work. Single-room refreshes — living rooms, dining rooms, primary bedrooms, nurseries, home offices — are exactly what the hourly engagement is built for. Book the consultation and we’ll scope it from there.
Do you work with builders and architects, or only homeowners?
Both. We coordinate regularly with builders, architects, and trades on new construction and gut renovations — specifying lighting, finishes, plumbing fixtures, and built-in millwork alongside the design. If you’re a Lexington builder looking for a designer to bring in on a spec or custom build, get in touch.
Where is your showroom?
882 E High Street in Lexington’s Chevy Chase neighborhood — on the strip just past the bridge, with parking out back. Tues–Fri 11–5, Sat 11–4, Monday by appointment. Visit the showroom for the full address, map, and what’s on the floor.
