A designer comes to your home at a time you picked, with fabric in the car. They look at the rooms, measure every opening in three places, talk through what each window is failing to do, lay out a treatment with you, and write a quote before they leave. It takes about an hour for a few windows and longer for a whole house. There is no charge and no obligation, and nothing is ordered on the day unless you decide to.
Most people who mean to book a consultation and do not are not unsure about shades. They are unsure about the hour — who is coming, how long it takes, and whether it turns into something they have to get out of. So here is the hour, written down.
Before the visit
Four steps, and one of them is us driving to you
You send the form or call. We ring back within one business day (Mon–Fri 10am–5pm; a weekend message gets a Monday call) and ask a few real questions: which rooms, roughly how many openings, what the windows are doing that you want changed, and whether anything about the house is unusual. That is so the designer arrives with the right fabrics in the car rather than a general selection — it is a five-minute call and it makes the visit twice as useful.
If you tick that you have photos, we will ask for them. A couple of phone pictures of each window means the designer has already thought about the mount before they arrive.
The hour itself
We look before we measure
Which way the room faces, where the sun lands in the afternoon, what the trim is doing, whether there is depth in the reveal. The answers change what is worth suggesting.
Every opening, three times
Top, middle and bottom. Openings are rarely square — in a house from the 1920s they are almost never square — and the difference between the three decides whether it mounts inside or outside.
Fabric in your own light
The same weave looks like two different fabrics on a north window and a west one. This is the part that cannot be done in a showroom and it is why we come to you.
The trade-offs said out loud
Where an inside mount will leak light, where a cassette earns its place, where room-darkening is enough and blackout would be spending for nothing.
The quote
Written before the designer leaves, at your table, window by window. Not emailed a week later, not conditional on a second visit, and not a range.
You then decide in your own time. A designer who spends an hour in your house and leaves without an order has done the job properly if the answer was no — and we would much rather that than a signature somebody gave because it felt awkward not to. What moves the number, if you want to think about it beforehand.
What if you are not ready to buy anything?
That is a normal reason to book, and it is worth saying because plenty of people wait until they are “ready” and then discover the questions they needed answering were the ones a designer would have answered a year earlier.
If you are planning a renovation, the useful time to talk is while the walls are still open — hardwired motors, blocking behind the drywall for a heavy cornice and the depth of a window head are all decisions that get expensive after the plaster. If you are furnishing a room slowly, seeing the fabric in the light of that room costs nothing and stops a mistake. And if you simply want to know what a window ought to cost before you plan around it, the visit is how you find out.
Two things that genuinely help
- Have everyone who is deciding there. Not a sales tactic — the design gets decided in the room, and a decision made without one of you tends to get made again three weeks later.
- Say what is annoying you. “The sun hits the television at five” is more useful than “we need blinds”, and it is what a designer can actually solve.
Then what
The goods are cut and sewn in our workroom in Akron, and our own crew installs them. You get a real lead time at the quote, once we know what the goods are — we do not print one on the website, because a number on a page becomes a promise. The whole process · The workroom it comes out of.
Questions people ask
Is the in-home consultation really free?
Yes — no charge and no obligation. A designer comes to your rooms with fabric, measures every opening, designs the treatment with you and writes the quote before leaving. You decide afterwards, in your own time.
How long does it take and what should I have ready?
About an hour for a few windows, longer for a whole house. Nothing needs preparing, but two things help: have everyone who is deciding in the room, and say what the windows are actually doing wrong — “the sun hits the television at five” is more useful than “we need blinds”.
Book your free in-home design consultation
A designer comes to you with fabric, measures every opening, and quotes it before they leave.