Stop Talking Yourself Out of It

Every so often, a prospective client tells me I'm expensive.

And every time, I want to ask the same question back: expensive compared to what?

"Expensive" isn't a fact. It's a comparison — to a number someone already had in their head, to a different designer's rate, to what they think a room should cost. But that number belongs to them, not to the work. What's expensive to one person is simply the going rate to another. So before that word gets used as a verdict, it deserves a question: expensive relative to what, exactly? Often, once we talk it through, what looked like a price problem was really a mismatch in expectations that a five-minute conversation could have solved.

The Other Version of This Conversation

There's a second pattern, and it's the one I actually want to talk about, because I find it more interesting — and more of a shame.

It's the client who tells me they really want to work with me. And then, in the very next breath, starts building the case for why they shouldn't: I know you'll want to do this, and I know you'll want to do that, but I really just want the basics. They're not asking me a question. They're negotiating themselves down before I've said a word — pre-editing the experience, pre-apologizing for wanting something, talking themselves out of the very thing they called me for.

I understand the impulse. It feels responsible, even modest, to scale your own ask down before someone else can. But it's a strange thing to do to yourself when the person you're negotiating with hasn't asked you to.

What You'd Actually Be Trading Away

Here's what I want people to sit with instead: it's not really about whether you get a full-service experience or a pared-down one. It's about whether you end up loving where you live.

A great room isn't a luxury add-on to a design project — it's the point of the whole thing. When someone talks themselves into "just the basics," what they're often really doing is talking themselves out of the outcome they wanted in the first place. They're optimizing for a smaller ask instead of a better home.

So my invitation is simple: stop justifying, and start asking. Tell me what you're picturing. Let's figure out together what it actually takes to get there — instead of you deciding, on your own, before we've even spoken, that you don't deserve to ask for it.

Because in the end, the goal was never a discounted process. It was a home you're proud of, and a space that feels unmistakably yours.