ALISON WATT INTERIORS

My rooms came out great.  I really love how my room feels, looks and functions.  The minor rearranging of my furniture made a huge impact on the functionality of my room...and we never would have come up with the solutions ourselves.  Ali is really an out of the box thinker.  I am also pleased with all of the color and décor choices.  Ali can work with many styles and tastes, and she really made an effort to understand what I like and she was spot on with all the selections she brought to me.
Additionally, she was very responsive when we had a tile installation issue.  She came over as soon as she could to help solve the problem with my tile installer.
One of the most important things about Alison Watt Interiors is that she can work with high end furniture and décor, but she also works wonders with much more modestly priced items.  I am a regular person and cannot spend a fortune on decorator items.  Ali was very respectful of my budget and my room turned out great!  In the past, I have been very intimidated by decorators who only seemed to know the most expensive brands.  I was never intimidated by Ali.  She is very professional, friendly and easy to work with. I will definitely be using her again.

I can highly recommend Alison Watt! I loved her combination of professionalism and reality. She understood that I had a budget and she helped guide me as to where I needed to spend money and where I didn't ! She was so knowledgeable on paint colors. I wanted the paint colors to flow from room to room, to be different in various rooms but also to feel unified throughout the house. I think we have come up with a great palate and am really excited about seeing it on the walls.  My kitchen has been a real challenge. I have old 50's tile on the walls and did not want to rip it off but instead incorporate it into a new kitchen design. She came up with a wall paper that was fabulous. She also came up with a design for the furniture placement in the den area (and convinced my husband to go with it)!

 It also has been so helpful to know what the new trends are going to be,for example what are the design fads that are coming 'in' and 'going out'. This made it easier for me to make certain purchases.

I am not the kind of person who would usually spend money on an interior designer. However, from the beginning of this project my thought was that in the end I would save money by making the right choices from the beginning. This has proved the case. I have saved money on appliance purchases, on tile, on paint and most of all on getting things right the first time. Along with all of that it has been a real joy to work with Alison. She has made my project fun instead of stressful!

I am totally uncreative and have no sense of style, so after we moved into the house where we plan to stay until we retire, I hired Alison (Ali) to decorate our living room/dining room.  By the time she finished the living room, I was so happy I was so happy that I asked her to rearrange the master bedroom, modernize a very ugly 1970s bathroom, and design a new kitchen.

By observing the furniture I had and the things I liked when we went window shopping, and by asking a lot of questions, Ali determined what my style was (I had no idea) and built on that. The result was a well pulled-together, nicely coordinated living room that gets compliments from everyone who visits. 

 Ali gave me a great education. She didn?t just tell me what she recommended; she always explained the reasoning behind every one of her suggestions. She was very patient, especially when I questioned some of her suggestions.  In one case, she found a piece of wall art in Home Goods that she thought would be perfect for the living room, and she proceeded to give me at least 3 reasons why it would work perfectly with other features in the living room. I thought it was horrible, and told her so, but she suggested I buy the piece and return it if I didn?t like it once it was on the wall.  It turned out to be perfect. She really knows what she?s doing. I eventually went from being very insecure about decorating (and running every little thing by Ali) to feeling quite confident in my own ability to determine what does and doesn?t work.

One of the many things I liked about Ali is that she loves a bargain. Her favorite store is Home Goods, she easily worked within my budget, and she often suggested that we keep looking for a better, less expensive alternative to some accessory that was okay-but-not-great and fairly pricey.

We needed to redo our 1950s (1930s?) kitchen, but I was overwhelmed by the idea and had no idea where to start. Long story short, Ali designed a beautiful new kitchen with at least double the storage space that had been in our old kitchen.  She moved the refrigerator from a nook off of the kitchen and suggested we build a new closet where the refrigerator had been. That was a *brilliant* idea for an 80-year-old house with very little closet space. She also did a great job rearranging our bedroom and revamping our ancient bathroom, and I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  We are thrilled with the work that Ali did.  

Alison Watt was really nice and definitely seemed to know what she was doing. She only came by to do an initial consultation and layout design. She gave me the schematics of our rooms and told us where to put furniture and what size furniture to put where. She was fairly responsive, friendly, personable and nice. Her ideas were certainly workable with what we had in mind. She was worth the money and she put a lot of work into it and she gave us two options for each of the two rooms.

After working with Alison Watt for the past six months, I would like to recommend her services in the strongest possible terms. I am a new homeowner who had never hired an interior decorator before. Originally I just wanted to hire someone to help me select a few pieces of furniture, paint colors, and some accessories. During our consultation meeting, Alison showed a genuine interest in my lifestyle, my tastes, and of course my new house: she took pictures and measurements of the rooms involved, she toured it entirely to understand how it was built and how it was being used, and she later produced a set of drawings that conveyed her vision. Although I only intended to focus on two or three rooms, she made the case that the house needed a cohesive look, so we expanded the program to include the rooms that I had partially decorated myself. I knew that I was in good hands when she accepted the challenge to work in a more contemporary style than she had done before to fit my taste; she never tried to persuade me to take a more conventional or traditional approach. Furthermore, her enthusiasm for my house showed a personal and professional commitment to a job well done. Among her outstanding set of skills, I would like to highlight the following: -budget consciousness: Ali kept the project within the budget that we had agreed upon during her consultation visit, and went out of her way to find items and services that I could afford. She is very comfortable working with high-end designers, but more importantly, she is an expert bargain hunter and is equally comfortable shopping at more inexpensive outlets. -availability and timeliness: she always kept me up-to-date on the project progress and called or emailed every time she wanted my feedback or my approval on any purchase. She kept the project moving forward by managing the schedule and making sure that all the jobs were completed in the right sequence. -professional network: she is very well connected to other design professionals that she can pull into her projects when needed: architects, carpenters/builders, painters, seamstresses, artists, lightning consultants, etc. -patience and empathy: although the project could not have gone more smoothly, she actively listened every time I expressed a concern about the direction we were taking with an aspect of the project and was willing to incorporate my feedback. -attention to detail: immediately after every furniture delivery she stopped by my house to check that the items were in good condition and that they were what we wanted; after any work was done on the house, she would stop to make sure that the work satisfied her high quality standards. -professionalism: her knowledge of design principles came through as we were going through catalogues and magazines together. She has got a strong sensibility for harmonic color and shape combinations, and a keen eye that allows her to determine what pieces work in a room and how to arrange them.

Alison was extremely responsive, and from the first phone call I could tell I would be comfortable with her. She listens very well, and works to understand what your personal style and parameters are. She works within that but also offers her own take on things to give you something new to consider. We had one visit where she got the feel of the room, our preferences, then drew up two options for us. This all happened in under one week. Mission accomplished...we are unstuck, and actively shopping for furniture. I would engage Alison again, without reservation and would refer her to others.

The experience was great. I had trouble committing to a color of paint and Ali really helped me narrow down the choice and make a great one. Finding material and the additional pieces to pull everything together was so much fun. I went shopping with her but I know she will also do the shopping on her own. I live on the North Shore of Boston and did all the shopping up here.