Emily Davis

Emily trained as an interior designer and moved into client management because she was consistently better at the conversation than at the CAD. She now runs the studio’s residential accounts and writes most of what clients actually read.

The part of the job nobody teaches

A residential project is a negotiation inside a household before it is a negotiation with a builder. Two people rarely arrive with the same brief, and the difference usually surfaces around week six, at the worst possible moment.

• Separate briefing conversations, so both voices are on record early
• A written brief that names the disagreements rather than papering over them
• Decision deadlines set in advance, with what happens if they slip
• A single weekly update, on the same day, whether or not there is news

Why the weekly note matters

Emily’s discipline is the Friday update: a short written note on every live project, sent whether progress was excellent or nonexistent. Clients report that the weeks with no news are the ones they value most, because silence in a renovation is where anxiety grows.

Most complaints about designers are really complaints about not knowing. You can absorb almost any delay if somebody told you about it on Friday.

She also runs the studio’s post-occupancy visits at three months, which is where the genuinely useful feedback comes from, and feeds it back into how the next project is briefed.

Emily reads floor plans for fun and has strong, unprompted opinions about hotel bathroom layouts.