The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Theory Of Decoration

While on this point it may be well to mention the fact that a common complaint of decorating shop owners and managers is that young or inexperienced decorators frequently spend several hours with a client discussing prospective work and fail to make an appointment to see the room in which the work is to be done. Many times such inexperienced assistants have been heard to say "She is going out of town and will call me when she comes back." Probably the long looked and much hoped for "call" never comes. What the assistant might well say is "She has taken up my afternoon and I have given her many suggestions, but that is the end of that particular job!"

The student may ask what one might do in just such a case. If the client is going to be away, it is an opportune time for the decorator to make an original survey of the room and have some plans, regarding it by the time the client returns to town. It is frequently an advantage to the decorator to make his original survey of the room alone so that he may sit down with pencil and paper in hand and study the situation thoroughly without the diverting influence of the client's conversation.

There are one or two other factors which should be taken into consideration in the first interview with a client. A decorator should not allow himself to be rushed into giving ideas and suggestions regarding a room to a prospective client before he has seen the room in question. Suggestions given under such circumstances usually prove unsatisfactory and are in the last analysis a detriment to the decorator. No matter how much experience the decorator may have had, he will find it difficult to get an accurate visualization of a room from the verbal description given by a client. If the client presses the decorator for such suggestions he should state very definitely that the room will have to be studied.

It is also during this original interview that the decorator should decide whether or not the client has serious intentions of doing the work under discussion or whether she is merely a shopper for ideas. This is in some cases a difficult decision to make, and if there is any doubt in the decorator's mind, he will do well to carry on a bit further, at least through the first survey of the room. If, however, the decorator is definitely convinced that the client is merely a shopper, he should terminate the matter as quickly and as tactfully as possible. It can be done by stating to the client that a consultation fee will be charged, the amount per hour or the amount for the entire work should be mentioned. If the work is actually done this amount can be deducted from the final bill.