Today we’d like to introduce you to Sonia Palmer.
Hi Sonia, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I am originally from Italy. I was raised around my family business, a quaint hotel and restaurant, where I grew up surrounded by heavenly food and beautiful green hills. I moved to the USA when I was 19 years old to follow my heart. I have always been very creative and enjoyed rearranging the furniture in my home over and over, driving my family crazy. Moving very often (think 15 times in 15 years!!!) certainly didn’t help my restless decorating tendencies, and soon I realized I was developing a passion for design and decor. I began helping my friends decorating their homes, going to furniture stores to peruse just for fun and spending all my money in home accessories. My husband is a Construction Engineer and Project Manager for beautiful luxury condominiums in West Hollywood and downtown San Diego. One day I visited his job site and got to see the amazing decor their stagers had done. That’s when it hit me: what was stopping me? Being from Italy, I was not familiar with the idea of a “professional home stager”, someone who gets to exclusively do what I loved most over and over, for different homes. The sense of novelty never ends and the thrill of transforming potential into reality just seemed too great to pass up. That’s what home staging is all about: showing buyers a home’s true potential and creating vignettes, or scenes, that will be evoking enough to make the buyers imagine themselves living there. It is the perfect blend of psychology and design, which happen to be my greatest passions.
I decided to become a Certified Interior Decorator (C.I.D.) and I registered with R.E.S.A. (Real Estate Staging Association) and for the H.S.R. course, to become a registered Home Stager.
I ate up the courses, I was so elated. I started a business from scratch, hoping someone would trust me with their homes. My husband and I united our loves of construction and design and that’s how Accent Home Designs was born. Why the name, you might wonder? Well, it has a double meaning. Accents are my favorite part of decorating, but also my distinguishing characteristic since even after 20 years, I still have a very thick Italian accent! I’ve always been a passionate writer and enjoy playing with words, so why not?
Accent Home Designs’ mission is to help everyone achieve the home of their dreams, no matter their financial status. We believe everyone should be able to enjoy a beautiful, cozy and pleasant home, where they can relax after a long day. So we offer budget-friendly home staging and home design services, as well as light construction work, painting and handyman services. We even offer a Concierge Package, which includes all the little touch ups you might need before putting a home on the market, including construction and staging. That way, our clients can just sit back and relax while we take care of it all.
We did not expect that we would love this business so much and that we would grow so quickly. We are so thankful to our clients and real estate agents that trust us with their homes. It is such an honor to be part of such an important personal process like selling or buying a home.
Visit us on www.accenthomedesigns.com or follow us on Instagram @accenthomedesigns to see our incredible before and after transformations!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Nothing worth doing is ever a smooth road, right? But as long as it is worth it, I don’t mind a challenge. In the design and staging business, the biggest obstacle is getting yourself known and creating your clientele from nothing. You need to be bold, talk to people, present yourself and explain what you have to offer with confidence and assertiveness. This isn’t always an easy task when you’re just starting and don’t have a lot to show for yourself.
I remember my first job especially. I was talking to this very kind man (who ended up hiring us actually) and was dreading the question: “Can I see your portfolio”? Because of course, I didn’t really have one, except for my own home pictures. But thankfully, he never asked that, and he hired us on the spot. We must have done a good job because his home sold in one day and, get this: the buyer asked to purchase the entire staging too! This success as a first job is what pushed us to continue, even though we knew it wouldn’t be easy. So, sometimes the hardest times can also become our biggest accomplishments.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We offer Home Staging and Home Designs services as well as light construction and handyman packages. We specialize in all current styles like boho, modern farmhouse, and midcentury modern. For our stages, we like to use a transitional neutral approach to make sure we appeal to the most amount of people while keeping it simple and clean. What sets us apart is that we are a family team that cares about our customers’ experience the most, above all. We aim to please and we genuinely take pride in our designs. We are so happy when a home we staged sells quickly and there’s no better feeling than to see a homeowner so happy they want to move back in. We can take care of your entire home selling process from small touch-ups to painting to staging, so you can relax and enjoy. We are your home selling one stop shop, and guess what? After your sale, we can help design your new home too, at competitive prices and with fun technology, like e-design mood boards. We make home styling fun and all about you.
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Joining local like-minded people who are in the same industry and even Facebook groups have been a tremendous help for me. Find your local chapter of your specific trade if there is one and become a member, even if there is a small fee to pay: it will be well worth it. Search Facebook groups and join in the conversation. It’s crazy how many things I learn every day just by simply scrolling my Facebook homepage and reading other people’s posts. Sometimes it also helps to reach out to someone in the industry whom you admire and has a lot of experience and offer to pay for their time to mentor you. A lot of times you will find they will be more than happy to help you out, and you will benefit greatly from that experience.
Pricing:
- Our packages start at $1500 for Staging
- Our design/decor fee is $60/hour
Contact Info:
- Email: info@accenthomedesigns.com
- Website: www.accenthomedesigns.com
- Instagram: @accenthomedesigns
- Facebook: @accenthomedesigns
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/accent-home-designs-san-diego?osq=accent+home+designs
