What is eDesign? Online interior design explained
The word’s American, the idea’s simple, and the price has far less to do with the design than with everything that usually surrounds it.
Rachel Hannah
Someone tells you the room needs a designer. You look at what that costs, put the phone straight back down, and go back to shifting the sofa a few inches and hoping for the best. That’s usually about the time the word eDesign turns up.
So what actually is it?
eDesign is interior design done from a distance. You photograph your room, measure it roughly, answer a few questions about how you actually live in it, and send the lot over to a designer. I design the room and send it back to you. Nobody sets foot in your house.
The word itself is American, short for electronic design, and it came over here with the studios that made it popular. In plain English it’s just online design. If you’ve seen it written eDesign, e-design or virtual design, they’re all the same thing.
What actually lands in your inbox
A design, not a build.
You get a concept board first, showing where the room’s heading before any of the detail is nailed down. Then the final design board, once you’ve had your say. A layout drawn to scale, so you know the sofa fits before it turns up, not after. And a clickable shopping list, kept inside the budget you gave me, of things you can genuinely go and buy.
Then you order what you like, when you like, and put the room together at your own pace. A weekend, or eighteen months. Nobody’s tapping their watch.
The concept board is the bit that protects you. Nothing’s been drawn in detail yet and nothing’s been bought, so it’s your moment to tell me you hate the green, or that you’d never sit in that corner, or that the whole direction’s wrong. Saying so costs you nothing at that stage, which is the entire reason it comes first.
Why it costs less
eDesign isn’t a lesser design. It’s the same work with a lot less around it.
Designing in person carries real costs, and those costs have to land somewhere. Driving to you. The hours a site visit eats up, which is proper work. Often a showroom, premises and a team on top. It’s all genuine, and it’s all fairly baked into the price.
Online, most of that simply isn’t there. No travel to bill, no premises to keep the lights on in. You’re paying for the design and very little else, which is why a colour scheme for a room is £295 here, and a whole room £495.
How it runs
Three steps, all of them in writing.
You show me the space. Photos from your phone, or a slow video walk-through if you’d rather, some rough measurements, and a few questions about how you live. About twenty minutes, whenever suits you.
You look over the concept. A board lands in The Sunday Desk, my own portal, and you tell me what to keep and what to change, in your own time. There’s no clock running on your reply.
You get your design. The board, the layout, the list. The Colour Direction comes back within five working days. The Room Ambience or the Garden Sanctuary takes two to three weeks.
No calls to join and no meetings to arrange, which is a good part of why the price is what it is.
What if you don’t like it?
The whole thing is built expecting exactly that.
Three rounds of changes are included every time, because a first idea is a starting point, not the answer. It isn’t finished until it feels like yours, not mine.
And because everything here is bought at a distance, UK consumer law gives you fourteen days from agreeing to go ahead to change your mind completely and get your money back. If you’d rather keep all fourteen before anything starts, just say, and I’ll begin on day fifteen. Nobody’s going to push you.
What eDesign isn’t
Four things it isn’t, so nobody’s disappointed later.
It isn’t project management. I’m not booking your builder or chasing your delivery. It isn’t a shopping service either: the list is clickable and budgeted, but every purchase stays yours, which does mean you can spread the cost over as long as you like. It isn’t structural, because moving a wall needs someone standing in the room. And it isn’t a machine. Every enquiry, concept and design here is made by me, personally, and nothing’s churned out for you by software.
Who it suits, and who it doesn’t
It suits you if you’re renting and can’t change anything structural but want the room to work anyway. If your room’s small, or an awkward shape, or you’ve painted it three times and it’s still not right. If you’ve got a budget and want to know exactly where it’s going before you spend it. If you live nowhere near a designer whose work you actually like. Or if, honestly, you’d rather not have a stranger wandering round your house at all.
It suits you less well if you want someone on site making calls in real time, or if the job’s really a build rather than a room. Those are good reasons to hire someone local, and better to know now.
If you’re on the first list
Then send me some photos. A room, a garden, a balcony, or the corner that’s been bugging you since you moved in. I read every enquiry myself and get back to you within a working day, and it’s really just a chance to see if we’re a good fit to work together. It costs you nothing, and commits you to nothing at all.