Today we’d like to introduce you to Heidi Gammarano
Hi Heidi, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi, I’m Heidi! I provide interior design and staging services, primarily in North County SD, but I will happily travel as needed and I also offer virtual design options.
When I was a little kid and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was always “interior designer”. I guess I was manifesting that from a very early age, because here I am! I graduated from design school and went into Model Home Design and Staging. I am pretty hands-on and artsy, so after work and on the weekends I accidentally started my own small design business (this is before “side-hustles” were a thing!) doing small interior design jobs, painting murals and faux finishes, providing custom furniture pieces, unique projects.
There came a time in my career when I realized that I couldn’t see myself hanging off scaffolding and ladders as part of my full-time work, so I took a bit of a left turn and specialized in window treatments as it was a seemingly more stable side of the interior design industry. After the economic crisis in 2008, many people saw interior design as a “luxury item” and I had a massive drop in clientele. But, everyone has windows no matter where they live, so I was able to work in a niche market of the design industry, providing functional products that people would still need.
However, my roots in residential design and home staging have always pulled on me, and I made the decision to return to self-employment and kickstart my own design business again. Having started my first business when I was only 20 years old, I have plenty experience, and made tons of mistakes that I learned from back then. Coming back to this with more experience (in all aspects) has been wonderful. My goal is to make interior design accessible to all kinds of people. I do not view it as a “luxury item” and I strive to give my clients homes they love to live in, without going broke.
And for those that don’t want to love their home anymore, I love staging them for sale! Adding staging to the business was a tough decision, but it was the right one. I love the hustle and on-your-feet-thinking required by home staging. I really have to be organized ahead of time, but also be able to figure things out on the fly if something just isn’t looking quite right when I am at the staging installation. I have to really get creative and put on my “problem-solving hat” sometimes, and I love it.
In a nutshell, I love creating a vast array of interiors, reflective of the home and people in it. Every project is different and it’s amazing to get to be creative and do something distinct from one project to the next. I get to meet amazing people in the course of my work…homeowners, realtors, tradespeople, etc. Every Day is a new Design Adventure!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Looking back, I always wish I had majored in Business and minored in Interior Design. The myriad of mistakes I made in my 20’s, trying to start a business, and basically winging it, would have been avoided if I had a better understanding of the actual business. I learned a lot in design school, sure. But inherently, I have those skills already. Always did. I was staging my room when I was in high school. I was helping my parents friends with “interior design projects” as a teenager. And, this was in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. I did not have all the resources available at my fingertips that there are now. There was no “Googling” something for a quick answer. There was no Pinterest or Instagram, or a 15 minute instructional video on YouTube. Every design job came from my brain, I had no “inspirational” pics or posts to refer to (well there were magazines, but flipping thousands of pages is a lot more time consuming than typing in a keyword and getting thousands of relevant results).
Doing my taxes was a challenge, marketing was a challenge, bookkeeping in general was atrocious. A lot of creative types struggle in the business side of the work. Knowing it is not my area of expertise, I definitely use every program available to me to make sure that the “boring” (to me!) part of my business is in check.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I have two sides to my business. Interior Design, and Real Estate Staging. The two are very different and I am fortunate to have experience in both, so I have devised a way to be able to work in both arenas. Most in my fields choose to focus on one or the other. I choose to do both.
Interior design is functional at its core. Things need to work, fit, be comfortable, have longevity. In addition, of course you want it to look amazing, be unique, etc. You want to choose colors you love and will stand the test of time. You want the surfaces to be of a high quality and stand up to every day living. It needs to be able to look fantastic, while also be able to lived in, by real people.
Staging is a presentation. The photographs need to look amazing, the Open House needs to give a certain look and feel. That said, the furniture doesn’t necessarily need to be comfortable or quality, just needs to look cute. You might put a piece of furniture in an awkward spot just because it photographs better from that angle. The only people who should ever be sitting on any staging furniture, is the real estate agent if they’re waiting around for people to walk into their Open House. The staging installation is all for show. Not for reality.
I think all designers and stagers probably love what they do, sure there are tough days but overall it’s a rewarding and fun job. I’d say what sets me apart is that I really am a people-person and a people-pleaser and that shows through in my work. I want the homeowners to absolutely love everything we have chosen, and I take the time to get to know them so I can offer them the correct solutions. I want the agents and home sellers to get that house sold, so I take my time to understand what the house needs so that I can offer them the right staging design, and get them the result they’re after on the market.
I have worked with other stagers that literally said “ok, yeah it’s good enough, let’s get out of here”. I just don’t have that approach, I really put 100% in to every project, no matter how big or how small.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I know how to read a room! Literally and figuratively.
I have always had the knack for being able to hold a conversation with pretty much anyone in the room, and mirror their level of energy. Those conversational and perception skills are super important. No matter how great of a design I come up with, it doesn’t matter if I am unable to communicate effectively with the client. Being able to connect with my clients on many different levels is essential to my success.
Pricing:
- Design – Free Initial Consultation – 1 hour
- Staging – Free Initial Consultation – 30 min
- Design – pricing determined by scope of project
- Staging – pricing determined by condition of property, vacant or occupied, and square footage to be staged
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.southerncaliforniadesignandstaging.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socal_design_and_staging/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066743109563
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/southern-california-design-and-staging-oceanside
