What happens when the designer becomes the client?

The conversations. The ideas that get thrown around. The decisions that change three times before landing exactly where they should.

Because something we haven’t really talked about is what happens when the person holding the pencil suddenly becomes the person making the decisions.

Because this time, Emma wasn’t just the designer.

She was also the client. Eeeeeek.

How do you be both?

And let’s just say… being on the other side of the process is a very interesting place to be.

You would think after years of designing homes for other people that designing your own would feel easy. That having the knowledge, experience and confidence would make every decision simple, right?

Turns out… not quite.

Knowing how a design process works doesn’t make you immune to second guessing yourself.

If anything, it gives you a front row seat to just how many decisions, conversations and considerations go into creating a home.

There is something slightly terrifying about putting your own ideas, your own home and your own personal taste on the table to be questioned, refined and pulled apart.

Add in everything else Emma had happening in her world during this project, and there were definitely moments of wondering whether taking on a project of this scale was the right decision.

And then there was Anton. The voice of reason. The practical one. The person balancing out three designers with opinions. A three-against-one situation sounds pretty unfair… But unfortunately, Anton was also 50% of the end user, so every now and then we had to admit he had a point. (We won’t say how often that happened.)