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Beyond the Interior Design Consultant – The Homemaker Coach

An innovative concept floated in Bangalore by Bougainvillea Design Studio, where you have a professional Interior Designer available to you and by your side on need basis and for some specific services. While it is best to engage a full-time Interior Designer to implement your design scheme it is sometimes not practical for smaller works, room makeover, furniture remodeling or for cost constraints.

What does one do for such situations? Are there professionals available, whom one could reach out for advice or employ for specific service say for evaluation of carpenter’s work or advise on color coordination or furniture and furnishing styling? Bougainvillea offers this service in Bangalore. “We are flexible to customize our consulting based on client’s specific need. It may be to clarify some niggling issues or to get a full design scheme; we do it all keeping in mind lines of confinement clients draw” says Bharti Girdhar, founder of Bougainvillea Design.

Bharti further said, “I risk sounding boisterous and cliché but there are immense takeaways by hiring services a professional if one is planning to set up a house or make a change in a particular area”. She emphasized on HOME and how she ends up taking the role of a Homemaker Coach. She believes that a professional Design Consultant must have attributes beyond the Designer; Most important being able to decipher the unsaid desires, needs including the limitations of the clients – the clients, many a times, come with a pre-conceived design scheme without an assessment as to how it serves their requirements or how it may affect their budgets. In the era of Copy Paste and abundance of choices on Internet, the clients tend to ignore the effectiveness of the design.

Bharti says that such conversations especially with young couples tend to be very interesting and at times argumentative amongst the couples where she has to play a role of Therapist, Conflict resolver and Relationship Mentor even at early stages of engagement. The conversations around discovering the real design & functional needs of clients go over their financial and family aspirations for next 5-10 years much like a career coach or HR function does for their careers.

What generally starts as a consulting assignment with a problem statement of design confusion ends up into a full-fledged homemaker coaching including the elements of design connected with efficient kitchen works, guest & in-laws management, pets’ management and several other aspects of talent and personality.

Bharti says that she never realized that how transformation to Coach happened – Probably it is the blend of her Personality, her basic Education of Home Science, Passion for intricacies of Design, experience of Mothering the grown up children, dealing with the Cynicism of ageing spouse and Insight into a vast spectrum of clients & their lifestyle.

Most importantly, it works – “I like it and clients love it, all my clients are friends, I am part of their thick & thin, I get invites which obviously starts from Housewarming to their Anniversaries, Special Occasions and Weddings. Like people have family doctors and accountants, I am a retained homemaker advisor by some, a small percentage of my clients running into 2nd generation”.