Frequently Asked Questions

Karen loves meeting with clients, however due to prior commitments with current clients, Cityline, Summer Home, and other media events she is not always available. You can contact our office to schedule your consultation appointment and Karen will do her best to make time available. When she is not free, another member of our talented design team will be able to meet with you.

Our studio is based in the east end of Toronto, near the Beaches area. We’re currently looking for new space so we’ll be posting our new address soon! In the meantime please contact us by phone (416) 694-8588 or send us an email at info@sealydesigninc.com.

When your location is over 100km from the GTA we charge our usual hourly rate for the travel time to/from your location, in addition to the usual consultation fee. An alternative option is to come to our studio for a consultation (and soon you’ll be able to use our new E-Design services... check back soon!).
As another great option, if you have a neighbour also interested in having a consultation we could schedule them on the same day and you can share the travel expense.

Every home and every situation is different, but Karen and our design team love the opportunity to come to your home. Each consultation is different but you’ll receive tonnes of great advice and ideas for your space. In many cases the designer can give you simple sketches, discuss ball-park pricing, help prioritize work and give you a plan of action. The consultation is the best way to either kick start a project with Sealy Design or answer your design questions to allow you to move forward on your own.

Every client meeting is different but typically an In-Home consultation will last 2-3 hours, and an In-Studio consultation will last 1-2 hours. When one of our designers visit your home they will usually tour the whole home, even if you only expect to renovate one room at a time. This allows the designer to understand your style, your needs, provide advice on you whole home and prioritize work in your home. (For example if you are renovating your basement, you may want to consider electrical or plumbing requirements for a future kitchen renovation). A consultation in our studio is often more focused on direct design questions, usually working with existing floor plans.

As projects vary greatly, we have found over the years that the best way to help a client manage their budget process is to keep work focused on manageable 'action items' for each phase of the project. We define a set of “Next Steps” that is unique to that client and the work required. These “Next Steps” are action items that are approved by the client before we proceed with any work. We work on an hourly rate schedule and each set of action items will have an estimated range of hours associated with it.

We rarely define flat rates for projects, usually because we find we can keep costs down for our clients by focusing on the specific work required at each phase of a project. If we are to determine a flat rate we do have to include a buffer to allow for contingencies, and this may inflate the cost of the actual work to be done.