Three Lessons From Our First Renovation Stage With an Interior Designer in Dubai

The living room doesn’t echo anymore. It doesn’t sound as though I’m stood in a car park, and last Tuesday when I had a video meeting, nobody asked me to mute my microphone, which almost made me cry with relief.

In my last post, I shared how we were comparing five designers before hiring one interior designer in Dubai to work with us. We’ve now completed the first stage of work, and I vowed to share what I’d learned. The good news is, it’s better than I feared, slower than I hoped, and full of valuable lessons.

Here are the three most important ones.

Lesson One: Choose Your Workplace First

Most days, I work from home. In our first meetings I told our designer I wanted ‘a desk somewhere in the living room’, which wasn’t as specific as I thought.

Amanda D’souza, our designer, asked me to spend a week noting down where I actually sat to work, when the sun shone over my shoulder, and where I took calls. It felt like I was at school again, but it defined the stage.

The desk I thought would be perfect, by the big window, was unusable due to the glare. The corner near the kitchen that I had written off was cool and quiet. The desk went there, meaning we moved two power points and added in a data point before painting the walls, because it’s much easier to move power points around before the walls are finished. We’d have paid far more to do it after painting.

If you work from home, choose your desk first. Then, everything else will fit around it.

Lesson Two: Sound Counts

I had no idea how much of our echo problem was caused by the materials in the room. Our apartment had tiled floors, exposed walls and little in the way of soft furnishings. I knew it contributed to the problem, but nothing was really absorbing sound.

The solution came in big soft furnishings. A big wool rug under the sofa, full-length curtains, a fabric headboard in the main bedroom and a bookshelf behind my desk are all helping. I read up a bit on sound absorbing, and it makes sense why the bookshelf helps so much. None of it was expensive, and none of it was on my wish list. I was thinking about colour, and my designer was thinking about sound with two kids running around the room at 5pm.

Lesson Three: Decision Fatigue is a Thing

By week three I had picked out the tiles, the grout, the paint, the door handles, the light fittings and the kitchen tap. By week four I couldn’t tell the difference between every shade of white paint, and nearly approved a paint colour I’d hated a week previously.

The resolution? We set a decision day. Every Thursday morning, Amanda would send me a short email with a list of things to decide on, with two or three options per item, and I’d reply with my answers. It meant I made all my decisions in one go with a coffee in hand. I didn’t have to think about grout all week.

My advice to anyone working with an interior designer in Dubai is to ask them to batch their decisions like this. You’ll make smarter choices, and you’ll still love your house at the end of the project.

What I’d Do Differently

If I were to do it all again, I’d write out how we used all of our rooms in our first meeting. Where the school bags go, where I sit to take calls, where everyone sits to watch TV. I told my designer most of this eventually, but most of it came out over several weeks, and some parts were too late to change without paying more.

I’d also accept that some decisions can’t be made without seeing where you are. The rug was bought in week five, and was the perfect choice after a few evenings in the apartment. It’s the star room furnishing for me.

What’s Next

Stage two is the kids’ bedroom, and the storage space in the hallway, currently filled with shoes and scooters which greet every guest. I’ll share how that goes once the dust has settled. For now, I’m enjoying working in a quiet corner, taking calls without an echo, and not worrying about grout, until next Thursday.