ArcLight Design Group specializes in creating bespoke living spaces to reflect your lifestyle, your personality, and your objectives. Bringing an architecture/design education together with top-notch management consulting experience and a working knowledge of building science, Laura Chung offers a rare blend of sophistication, responsiveness, technical knowledge, and creativity that's won repeat engagements from clients all over the country.
These are some of the uncommon beliefs about design that set us apart from conventional interior designers:
- Good design is green design, period. Despite what many undereducated interior designers will tell you, sustainable design is not about vacuous notions such as always sourcing locally or using the latest recycled building material in fashion. Sustainability in interior design is about the timelessness of your interior, the total life cycle carbon or waste footprint of your furnishings, and simply being smart about what really has the highest impact from efficiency or environmental perspectives. For example, few designers grasp the importance of the building "envelope" in sustainability (e.g. lighting, insulation, and window treatments) and subsequently falter when pressed to explain even the basic green features of the room they are standing in.
- Pricing should be transparent. Common practice in the legacy interior design industry is to bury markups on products and even shipping costs in an obscure, frustrating invoice to the client. ArcLight is always upfront about what things cost, or why a seemingly high-priced object is a more worthwhile selection over lower-cost alternatives. A successful project is a win-win for client and for ArcLight, and we have found that price transparency is one of the keys to project success and long-lasting client/service relationships.
- Product selection should be supplier-agnostic. While many designers are not truly independent (they are guided by sales rep-style incentives to push certain lines), we take a refreshingly unbiased approach to furnishings sources and boast an unprecedented source list of over 500 suppliers we have familiarity with. Our goal is to find the right furnishing for you, not us.
- Customization is worth the effort. Imagine a room where every piece is custom-made...not customized in size from a catalogue piece, but designed from scratch - for you. This is bespoke design, and we know how to do it. Many designers will not touch truly bespoke design and attempt to satisfy some of your specific requirements based on what's available, convenient, and known to them in their limited world of product offerings. Despite our unprecedented source database of suppliers, we still insist on making sure you wind up with the right furnishings, and that often means bespoke.
- Cultivating your vision for your luxury living space is the goal. Some interior designers use their clients' homes as a canvas upon which to realize their own unrequited decorating dreams. Horror stories abound of designers who don't listen, who don't deliver, and who act like prima donnas. Often, homeowners have little in common with their designer; a chasm in education and values leads to a costly and painful communication gap. Consequently, many people who can afford to transform their living space into that "magazine look" never get there - because it's just too frustrating to deal with the available design professionals, and it's too complex a task to succeed with alone.
A good interior designer brings to your table a breadth and depth of technical product and process knowledge that is just not easily replicated...and an open, consultative approach to your project that leaves you in control. Done right, interior design is a complex problem in resource allocation, portfolio decision-making, and realization of your personal lifestyle and aesthetic values. Hire someone who gets that.