Take “Advice” With More Than One Grain of Salt

When you are selecting a home, in the city or elsewhere, it’s important to make up your own mind about the options available to you and not be cajoled into living here or there by the opinions of agents of various sorts who report that they have design or similar training—specifically, whether these other people like a space or not.

Trusting the opinions of architects and interior designers pre-design is something that should be done with care. Architects and interior designers are excellent sources of information about future options for a space and a fact-based take on a place as you buy it—but comments made by architects and interior designers about whether they “like” it should not affect whether you decide to live there.

Why so negative about rental agents, etc.?

Our design expertise influences how much we like a space, whether we prefer it or not, and people who offer opinions and have more design training may select, etc., spaces that ultimately will leave those without so much training unhappy.

Training influences what we find familiar, and in a general sense we prefer the familiar.  People who are more open to experience are a little less tied to familiar stuff than the rest of us, but still find it comforting when design elements in places that they frequent are consistent enough with their past experiences to be “understandable.”  Individuals who spend hours pouring over colour palettes and façade options and layouts and furniture forms, for instance, come to find some unusual colours pleasant, for example, that only very open-to-experience members of the general public would respond positively toward (i.e., most people would paint over them as fast as they possibly could).

Becoming an expert, a designer in this case, also influences what people perceive, literally.

People with training can also become attuned to details and situations that people without training are not and some assessment criteria can reasonably differ.  Someone with training may come to find very crisp, precisely executed joints between pieces of material an important consideration and someone without training may not require the same sort of exacting workmanship to be happy, as long as those connections meet a much more basic standard.

Experts can develop different criteria for assessments than the rest of us, and those differences are key to making successful design decisions at all scales—but whether you like a place is a decision you should make for yourself, one that should be informed by your worldview not the preferences of others.