Frequently asked.

By email, phone, Zoom, and in person, depending on what the decision in front of us requires. Our hours are Monday through Friday, 9am to 7pm. We ask clients to refrain from text messages, so that project decisions live somewhere both of us can find them again later.

You will tell us a great deal about yourself early on. Questionnaires, working meetings and sessions with us cover you, your family, and how you like to live. The design concept comes out of that material, which is why it reads as one of a kind and uniquely your own rather than a version of the last house we worked on.

We take on a limited number of projects each year in order to give each one the time and attention it deserves. Your retainer books you into our calendar and safeguards our bandwidth for your project. It is $5,000, and it is credited against your final invoice — it holds your place in the schedule rather than adding to the cost of the work.

Bring it to the Discovery Call. We may be able to build a package of services around what you are trying to accomplish.

→ Start a project (/work-with-us)

By scope, and we quote the fee after the Discovery Call. A furniture and accessories refresh does not carry the same fee structure as a complete renovation or a new build, which is why we do not publish a single figure, and why we do give you a real one as soon as we understand the project.

One distinction is worth making plainly, because it is the thing most often misread. The figures we publish — a minimum of $100,000, kitchen renovations from $125,000, full-home renovations from $350,000, new construction from $1.5 million — are total project investment. They are what the project costs: construction, materials, and furnishings. They are not our design fee. Nobody pays us $350,000 to design a house. Your design fee is a separate and considerably smaller number, set against the scope of the work, and you will have it in writing before you are asked to commit to anything.

It depends entirely on scope, and the honest answer is that the calendar asks more of you than the meetings do. A renovation runs four to six months of design followed by six to eight months of construction — ten to fourteen months from the first working meeting to the last piece of furniture. New construction runs twelve to eighteen months. Your involvement is heaviest through the design months, when the decisions are being made, and lighter through construction, when we are on site every other week and reporting back to you rather than asking you to be there. During the Discovery Call we gather enough about your project to give you a realistic sense of what it will ask of you.

If you do not already have a contractor or builder you love, we will recommend contractors we have used before who know our process. If you already have someone you trust, we are glad to work alongside them.

Either way, the contractor contracts directly with you rather than through the studio. That keeps the construction money and the construction warranty between you and the people doing the building, while we hold the design and drive the schedule from our side. During construction we are on site every other week.

Yes. We take on projects with a total investment of $100,000 or more. That is the cost of the project itself — construction, materials, and furnishings — not our design fee, which is quoted separately after the Discovery Call. Below that figure we will tell you we are not the right studio, and we will tell you early.

We are not the right studio for a single room refreshed with new furniture. A design consultation is $450 and carries no minimum project size — two hours in the house and a written set of recommendations you can act on without a full commission.

→ Compare services (/services)

Here is where our work usually lands. Every figure below is total project investment — construction, materials, and furnishings — not a design fee.

Kitchen renovation — from $125,000

Full-home renovation — from $350,000

New construction — from $1.5 million

Across all of it, a minimum of $100,000

Our design fee sits inside those totals and is a fraction of them. It is set by scope rather than by the hour, and we quote it after the Discovery Call, once we know what the project is. The one fixed price we publish is the design consultation at $450, which is a standalone two-hour session rather than part of a commission.

Every house moves these numbers. An older house with plaster, original windows, and mechanical systems laid out for a different century costs more than the same square footage built in 2010, and it is usually worth it. We will give you a realistic range on the Discovery Call rather than a number now that we would have to walk back later.

Our studio is at 5900 Detroit Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, and it is where we meet clients. Much of our work is in Greater Cleveland — Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, Chagrin Falls, Gates Mills, Hunting Valley, and Bratenahl.

We also work well outside Ohio, usually where a client keeps a second house — Florida, the Great Lakes, the Northeast and the Mountain West. Travel is agreed with you and written into the engagement before anything is booked, so it is never a line item that appears after the fact.

Scope decides it, and the full picture is longer than most people expect, so here it is.

A design consultation is usually scheduled within about two weeks, and your written notes and recommendations follow the session.

A renovation runs four to six months of design and six to eight months of construction. Ten to fourteen months in total.

New construction runs twelve to eighteen months.

Add to that the fact that we take a limited number of projects each year: our calendar is currently booking eight to twelve weeks out before design work begins. Working back from the date you want to be living in the finished house is usually the most useful way to think about it.

We would rather give you the whole number now than a shorter one that only counts the part we control.

No. We do not offer e-design or any remote-only service.

Our process depends on being in the house — seeing how the light moves through it, how the rooms connect, and what the existing conditions actually are rather than what a photograph suggests. Scale and light are the two things a room is usually getting wrong, and neither photographs well.

Distance itself is not the obstacle. We will travel anywhere for the right project and bill the travel to it. If you are outside the area, ask us and we will tell you honestly whether it can work.

It runs thirty minutes, it takes place by phone, and there is no charge for it.

We ask about the house, what is not working, who lives there, and how you want to use it. We talk plainly about scope, budget, and timeline — including our own constraints. If the project is a fit, we explain the engagement, how the design fee is set, and what the $5,000 retainer does. If it is not a fit, we say so on the call rather than in a proposal three weeks later.

You do not need to prepare anything. If you have plans, a listing sheet, or images you have been collecting, bring them.

→ Start a project (/work-with-us)

Send us the project details through the inquiry form. We read every submission and reply within two business days — whether the answer is yes, not yet, or no.

If the project looks like a fit, we will invite you to book a Discovery Call. You can also reach us at Hello@himandhisdesign.com or (216) 236-3883, Monday through Friday, 9am to 7pm.

→ Start a project (/work-with-us)

We specify the furnishings and present everything for your approval before it is purchased, so nothing arrives that you have not seen and agreed to.

We place every order ourselves. Clients do not buy their own furnishings on our projects, and that is a deliberate part of how we work rather than an administrative preference: one party ordering means one party tracking lead times, one party responsible when a piece arrives damaged, and one schedule that everything is working toward.

We do, all of it. We procure every furnishing on the project; you are not asked to place orders, chase suppliers, or take delivery of anything.

Goods are delivered to our receiving warehouse, Delivery by the Falls, where they are inspected on arrival and held until the house is ready for them. That is the part of the process clients tend not to expect and appreciate most. Rather than furniture arriving at your door in pieces across several months, with you signing for crates and storing a headboard in the garage, everything lands in one coordinated installation: delivery, placement, styling, and the last details, followed by a walkthrough together.

It also means damage is found in a warehouse by someone whose job it is to look for it, and replaced before it was ever due to be in your house.

Yes. Several of the communities we work in review exterior changes before a building permit is issued.

Shaker Heights is the clearest example: its Architectural Board of Review must approve new construction, additions, and alterations that change a building's exterior appearance, and much of the city sits inside the Shaker Village Historic District. Cleveland Heights, Chagrin Falls, Gates Mills, Hunting Valley, and Bratenahl each maintain their own review requirements.

We have taken projects through architectural review boards across northeast Ohio, and none of it is an obstacle. It is a brief. It rewards knowing the original fenestration pattern before proposing a window, and having drawings prepared properly the first time. We plan for review as part of the schedule rather than discovering it midway.

→ Interior design in Shaker Heights (/interior-design-shaker-heights)

Then we have not finished.

The concept is built from what you told us in the questionnaires and early meetings, so a complete miss is unlikely — but a first presentation is a decision point, not a formality, and "I do not like it" is useful information rather than a problem. On a full commission the concept is developed with you across the design months. It is a working relationship, not a reveal.

One distinction worth knowing before you start, because the two are easy to conflate. The $450 design consultation is a fixed piece of work: two hours in the house and one considered set of written recommendations, with no revision rounds included. It gives you a point of view to act on. A full commission is the other thing entirely — that is where the developing, the drawing, and the revising happen.

What we will not do, in either case, is quietly proceed with something you are not behind.

Yes, selectively. We have completed commercial work and we take on a small number of those projects where the fit is right.

Our focus is residential and stays that way by choice — it is what the studio is built around and where our process does its best work. If you have a commercial space in mind, ask, and we will give you an honest answer about whether it belongs with us.

→ Commercial work (/storefront)