We Tried It: A Virtual Interior Design Service with a Twist

What It Is: Havenly’s in-person design service

Who Tried It: Alex Apatoff, Executive Editor

Level of Difficulty: 3. The actual process of working with the designer was easy (and fun! and affordable!) and the results were exactly what I hoped; shopping had a few more hiccups but nothing prohibitive.

We moved into our house a little over a year ago, and everyone who comes by asks if we’re ever going to hang anything on the walls. That’s because, in the course of the renovations to our kitchen and bathrooms before we moved in, I became paralyzed by the potential of making a design decision I might end up hating at any time in the future. Every one of our walls is “White Dove” (or “Dove Wing,” if we’re feeling crazy), all of our new furniture is neutral, and all of our art is in the basement because I can’t commit to putting a nail in a wall.

The only room in our house that remained untouched by taupe was our three-season porch, which we’d been using as a staging area for the construction crews and had no vision for. It had potential, but felt a bit like a sauna in the ’90s with pink tile, an unpainted wood ceiling and dated fixtures. It needed a face lift, but with no budget left for a designer and no imagination left for the design, I just left it in its pink-and-brown glory and hoped for a fairy godmother to come make it over.

Shockingly, one arrived, in the form of Kasee Smith, an interior designer for Havenly (which had until recently been fully virtual). The site had just launched an in-person design package ($499 at time of publish) and they asked if I wanted to give it a shot. I was extremely excited to have someone make decisions for me, and the cost, while not exactly cheap, was a steal compared to most in-person designers I’d spoken to, who quoted in the $150/hr. range.

The Process: After submitting photos of the space and filling out a questionnaire about my design style (or lack thereof), I was connected to Kasee through Havenly’s on-site messaging system. She sent over a couple sample design boards to get my initial feedback, and then once we had a direction, drove to my home to see the space in person, measure everything and take photos. (After that first in-person meeting, we did everything virtually.)

With a little back-and-forth on some of her initial picks (I wanted a bigger couch and some black-and-white touches to tie to the rest of the house), she sent a 3D rendering of what the space could look like with the furniture she selected, which was one of my favorite parts of the whole process. I have absolutely no visual imagination, and the rendering helped me immediately realize I preferred the couch to face out towards the yard, and to have the dining area sized down.

Kasee was always super-responsive and very prompt with her updates, quickly sending back a floor plan so I could see how items would fit in the new configuration. I always enjoyed working with her. She was very positive and thoughtful in her responses and never made me feel like I was wasting her time, had bad taste or that my budget was limiting her — something that had intimidated me about working with a designer in-person.

I had told her my tragic story about being unable to commit to any decor with personality. Taking that and my budget into account, she pitched me a checkerboard-painted floor (as seen above) in order to cover up the pink tiles, add some visual interest and stay within my price range, as a full retile would have been pricey.

After thinking about it for a while, I finally admitted I’m just too chicken to go bold (even with a designer’s input!), so she gently steered me to a very pale blue-painted floor instead. Though still trepidatious about doing something slightly outside the box, I took her advice and it ended up being one of my favorite things about the space. (She did warn me it might chip, though, and it did almost immediately — so we’ll probably end up retiling down the road anyway.)

She also was great about keeping the mood boards updated so that if I wanted to buy anything additional for the space (outside of Havenly’s storefront), I had everything already on my “shopping list” in one easy-to-see, very visual format.

The way that shopping for items works on Havenly is that your designer makes you a “shopping list” with all the options she initially selected for you, from sites including Pottery Barn, Wayfair, Crate and Barrel and Artfully Walls, as well as Havenly’s in-house brand The Inside (a favorite of mine because you customize classic designs with the fabric of your choice). The shopping list also had a “designer alternates” tool that would allow you to see other options she had picked out in the same category, so you could easily compare items to each other. Finally, you’d add them all to to your cart and check out in one transaction.

In some ways this was convenient, because you didn’t have to go chase a whole list of items, negotiate with your designer’s trade discount and track a million different delivery emails. But it could be complicated in other ways. When trying to show her examples of things I preferred, it was difficult to use the brand’s shopping function, particularly on mobile; filters for narrowing things down by color or size are nonexistent. I found myself often going to the retailer sites myself, finding options and asking her if they existed within the Havenly shopping ecosystem.

However, I mostly found that if I gave Kasee specific feedback, she was able to pretty quickly come up with more picks from the (apparently easier-to-navigate) designer-facing side of the site, so we were able to move forward at a decent pace. (But I’ve tried to shop on the site since, and I don’t think I’d do it without a designer — it’s just too hard to find what you’re looking for as a shopper without designer guidance.)

All in all, I found the process of working with an in-person designer more seamless, more fun and more cost-effective than I would have thought possible if Havenly hadn’t invited me to try the service. I was wary of a virtual-only design service prior to this experience, believing it would be challenging for someone to get a feel for the space and my preferences over chat. But meeting Kasee in person gave me a lot more confidence that we’d work together well, and all of the features Havenly provides makes it much easier to envision the finished space before committing to a big purchase like furniture (something I had struggled with when using in-person designers who only provided floor plans).

The biggest obstacle? Furniture delays and sell-outs! Even though we began working on this process early last summer, manufacturing issues from the retailers meant that items were arriving (or selling out) well into September and October. But Kasee was so helpful and patient through the whole process, finding replacements within budget whenever necessary, that I knew the finished product would be worth the wait.

And it was! She absolutely nailed the serene, sort of nautical, low-maintenance vibes I was going for and hit all of my checkboxes for comfort, versatility and a good fit with the rest of my home. It feels polished and thoughtful without being overly “designed,” which makes it just a really pleasant place to hang out — and we use it all the time now. The first time I fell nodded off reading out there this summer, I slept the untroubled sleep of someone not haunted by her poor design decisions, because I had zero buyers’ remorse.

The Verdict: Surprisingly easy and enjoyable, and a process I am looking forward to repeating! My next big project is our primary bedroom, and I absolutely plan to use Havenly’s in-person design services again — I got everything I would have hoped to get from a pricey pay-by-the-hour designer (the attention to detail and personalized shopping list) and more (the 3D renderings and custom furniture from The Inside). Though I do wish the shopping experience was a bit more seamless — I have tried a couple more times to use their search because I like the idea of home goods aggregated in one shopping mechanism, but without the filters it’s just not usable — I am confident with a designer steering me, I’ll end up with another room I’m just as happy to fall asleep in as the first.