About me
interior designer
“The UK designer shares how combining
humour and a human touch inspires authentic
living spaces and satisfied clients.
STEPHAN RABIMOV
”
“Alicja Wawrzyniak is not your typical interior designer. Like many, her creative side emerged at a young age. “I started designing when I was 13 years old. It started in my room where I didn’t like the wallpaper my parents put on the walls. I changed the layout of the room literally every few months,” she says. But unlike most designers, she has a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology. It is this brilliant intersection of psychology and design that gives Wawrzyniak her edge: The ability to create personalised spaces that reflect the individual character of her clients. “Everyone is different and the space we live in should express this,” she believes.
Here she discusses how she manages client expectations, draws out their stories and uses digital tools to work more efficiently and provide clarity throughout the entire design process”.
Telling Client Stories Through Design
“I got an ‘aha’ moment where I decided, ‘wow, I’m going to combine emotions and interior design together,’” she says. “I just made up the empathic design strategy for myself,” she explains. “It’s about expressing your emotional being in your interior. The best way to do that is to ask clients their story.” The dozens of renovation projects she has completed in the UK since she opened her Alwa Interior Design Studio in 2016 are “designed with stories, not furniture,” she says”.
Keep a Sense of Humour
After working in psychology for several years, in 2013 Wawrzyniak began pursuing her passion for design, and studied at the British Academy of Interior Design in London. Now she uses her skills as a psychologist to inspire design and to help her navigate the human relationship part of running a business.
Her best advice for managing the expectations of clients is to use humour and provide them with clarity about the design process. ”You have to be very clear and transparent with the client about what the stages are,” she says. “I’m also very logical, so I need to have steps and I have to finish one, two, three, four, five, six,” she says. When a client wants to jump ahead, she reminds them in an assertive, but kind way, that “we cannot move further if I do not finish, I need time to finish this.”
Wawrzyniak uses Houzz Pro to help her manage client expectations. She brings them into virtual renderings of the rooms through Mood Boards, where they can see how the products, materials and colours work together. “My clients absolutely love it when I give them access to their rooms,” she says. “They can go through the products and leave you the notes. This is a very efficient tool in terms of communication with clients.” They can also accept or reject products item by item. “There are no misunderstandings because once they accept the product, that’s accepted.”
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Effective communication is one of the most crucial paths to success, says Wawrzyniak. “I have a system of updating clients. They don’t mind waiting as long as I update them about the timing.” She also stresses the importance of being transparent. “I’m open with my clients about difficulties. I don’t stress them but I am open if there is a problem,” she says.
(…) “The communication is great because when I get leads, I have it on my phone. I’m going to set up templates with messages because I just don’t have time to answer all the messages.”
Finding Her Happy Place
Wawrzyniak took a risk leaving behind a psychology career to found Alwa Interior Design Studio, but she has never looked back. As a three-times Best of Houzz winner, she’s proven how incorporating your past with the present can bring success and happiness.
“I realised that I had to do something with my life because the job in psychology wasn’t giving me satisfaction. I had this urge inside me to express myself in a creative way,” she says. And the pay off comes when her clients see the final product. “When I finish the design and they say, ‘Thank you so much. I love it’ you have no idea how much happiness I have in my heart”.
I design with stories not with furniture ®
Alicja Wawrzyniak
Article written by STEPHAN RABIMOV
