You've got an architect. Do you need an interior designer too?

The two roles aren't in competition — they're two different disciplines, and the best results tend to come from both being involved early, not from choosing one over the other.

1. An architect's plan can be technically right, but still not feel quite right to live in. That's not a failure of the plan; it's a different discipline from architecture itself, one that starts with understanding how you'll actually live in each room, so that understanding can shape what the architect draws rather than being worked out once the walls are already up.

It governs proportion and flow: how furniture will sit, how you'll move through the space, where the eye should rest. It governs practical detail too — socket placement, door swings, sightlines — set against how your household actually uses a room, not a generic assumption of function.

It also governs lighting, which needs to light the right things: the furniture where it will sit, the art on the wall, the crevices and niches, the mouldings. An interior designer taking all of this through to technical design before the architect's plans are finalised means the wiring, the layout, and the lighting can be specified once, correctly, from the outset — rather than added back in later, when changes are harder and more disruptive to make.

2. A design can also be beautifully executed and still be the wrong design, if the vision behind it was never fully drawn out and shared before concept work began. An interior designer should work with you to uncover what you really want, then represent that clearly to the architect — helping keep the design anchored to your vision as the project develops. This is especially important when selecting architectural detailing, windows, or hard finishes, which go a long way to setting the tone of a home.

3. Bringing an interior designer in doesn't mean a second, separate project running alongside the architect's. The two roles complement each other rather than duplicate one another, and a focused review of the architect's existing plans — vision, room use, proportion, and lighting, resolved before construction starts — can be short and contained.

Early collaboration between the architect and interior designer leads to stronger execution in service to what the client wants.