Design Kit

A new room straight from a box

Imagine a do-it-yourself room redecorating project that comes with customized detailed instructions.

That’s the concept behind Room in a Box, one way that local interior designer Liz Carroll helps clients create their dream rooms.

Since the clients do the work of bringing Carroll’s designs to life, the approach is much more economical, running perhaps a third to half of the cost of full-service design. And the client’s action plan arrives in an elegantly wrapped gift box.

This concept isn’t original with Carroll. A recent Southern Living issue featured a foyer makeover in Arkansas created from a boxed custom design. And in Wilmington, Blue Hand Home, for example, provides both “box” and full-service design.

For Carroll, the Room in a Box process usually begins with a phone conversation, after which she sends the clients a questionnaire in which they provide information about their home – its style and age, goals for the revamped room, preferred colors, textures, and finishes for the room, and a description of any valued furnishings for the room. Carroll also shows them how to measure the space and make a rough sketch of the layout.

With the information in hand, Carroll and her clients proceed to the “inspiration” stage, in which she asks them to share with her the kind of looks they like.

“I tell people, ‘Even if it’s unrealistic, show me what your dream room is: the feeling, the furniture, the artwork.’”

Once she forms a sense of what the clients want and like and what the physical parameters are, Carroll starts pulling from the vast collection of samples she stores in a carefully organized studio that occupies a carriage house unit behind her Wilmington home. Drawers, cubbies, and cabinets hold most of her samples; fabric swatches hang from display rods.

She browses paint colors, fabrics, window hardware, blinds, furniture finishes, countertops, floor finishes – “anything I can get access to where I can let the client see and feel it,” she says.

Through a series of conversations, she narrows the universe of possible elements down to a unified, harmonious design for the room. Into the box go a floor plan and shopping list, along with swatches for everything the client plans to change within that room. Typically, a Room in a Box project takes four to six weeks to complete, Carroll says.

Carroll, who started her full-service design business five years ago after spending eight years as a human resources professional for Bank of America, says Room in a Box makes up about 20 percent of her business, but it continues to grow. 

To date, most of her Box clients have asked her to design bedrooms and living areas, although she’s done all kinds of rooms.

A recent request came from a couple planning their move to Wilmington. After buying their new home, they wanted to create a room for their young son, a “special place” that would make his transition easier. 

Another client couple wanted Carroll to provide a plan for all its downstairs rooms so they harmonize and flow.

“They are on a budget and not in a rush,” Carroll says. “They are great DIY people, but they wanted a plan and wanted someone to make decisions, which they will execute over time.”

Other clients – a new mother, a newly married couple buying their first home – got Carroll’s Room in a Box services as a gift.

“The great thing about Room in a Box is that I’m not limited geographically in my clientele,” Carroll says. “I’m working with clients in Raleigh right now and just got an inquiry from someone in Mexico.”

How much for a Room in a Box design? Here are Liz Carroll’s charges:

Powder room or hallway-$600

Foyer-$700

Bathroom-$900

Home office-$1,000

Bedroom or dining room-$1,100

Living room-$1,300

To view more of photographer T.J. Drechsel’s work, go to www.tjdrechselphotography.com.