Ep. 2 How Do You Want to Live in Your Space? Lauren Li on Why Most of Us Renovate Backwards

Most people kick off a renovation in completely the wrong spot. They find a drafter or an architect, get some plans drawn, lodge them with council, lock in the windows, and only much later, somewhere around decision number four hundred thousand, do they stop and ask the question that should have come first.

How do we actually want to live in this house?

That one question runs right through this episode, and honestly, it might be the most important thing you take away from the whole series. Our guest this week is interior designer Lauren Li, and if you have ever felt overwhelmed, behind, or quietly terrified by the idea of renovating, this conversation is for you.

Meet Lauren Li

Lauren is the founder of Melbourne studio Sisällä Interior Design, and she wears more hats than almost anyone in the industry. She is the author of The New French Look, a long running interiors columnist for The Design Files, the host of The Design Anatomy Podcast, and the founder of The Design Society, a community where she mentors other designers through the business side of their work. She is also a wife and a mum to three kids, which means she knows the working parent juggle from the inside.

I have known Lauren for the best part of ten years, and the thing I have always admired most is her generosity. Our industry can be guarded and a little secretive. Lauren opened the door on that. She is a genuine champion of collaboration and community, and you feel it the moment she starts talking.

The big idea: you are probably doing it backwards

Here is the problem Lauren and I both see all the time. Interior designers are treated as the last piece of the puzzle. The drafter draws, the engineer engineers, council approves, the builder builds, and then, right at the end, someone thinks about how the home is actually going to function. By then the windows are locked in, the joinery is placed, and nobody has worked out where the television goes, how the house is heated and cooled, or where the school bags land at the end of the day.

"They have no idea that there are about four hundred and fifty thousand decisions to make, and they get halfway through it and go, what have I done."

The fix is not complicated, and it is not expensive compared to the cost of getting it wrong. It is simply starting in the right place, with the right people, before the plans are set in stone.

Five things worth stealing from this episode

1. Know your budget range, even if you will not say a number. Lauren's point here is gold. You do not have to declare an exact figure, but you do need to know your ceiling, because at some point you hit a wall you cannot spend past. As she put it, you are not going to remove a kidney halfway through the build to fund the island bench. Know the range. Tell your designer what is flexible and what is not.

2. Spending money upfront actually saves you money. We have built homes at epic scale in this country, chasing size over quality, and along the way the square metre rate dropped and people got scared of the cost. So they try to save by skipping the planning, patching it together, hoping the builder and the joiner will sort it out on the fly. Lauren is blunt about this. Spending properly on the right consultants at the start, relative to the size of your project, is what saves you money later.

3. There are no dumb questions, and confidence comes later. So many people think they need to feel confident before they start. Lauren flips that completely.

"Confidence is built by asking a question. Confidence is learnt by doing it and getting to the other side."

You are not meant to know everything before you begin. Find a designer you can ask the so called silly questions, because there are none.

4. Think about how you actually live. This is the heart of it. Where do you eat breakfast, at the island or the table? Where does the TV go? Where do the keys land, the school bags, the sports gear? What stage of life are you in? Nobody can assume your lifestyle for you, and a good designer will ask. Lauren shared a perfect example: a recessed pelmet roughed in too narrow to fit the curtain track the client actually wanted, because the detail was never properly drilled into. Small thing, big impact on a good night's sleep.

5. Renovating is like life. It never goes to plan. And that is okay. The thing everyone panics about on day one often turns out to be the best decision in the end. Trust the process, build a good team, and stay flexible.

On value, not hours

One part of this conversation that designers in particular will love is Lauren's take on pricing. She does not charge for her time.

"They are not buying my time, they are buying the outcome."

She works to a fixed fee for the design itself, the part she can control, and keeps the open ended client liaison separate. It is a value based model, and she is refreshingly honest that it took years of building trust and profile to get there. Her advice for emerging designers is the opposite, track every minute while you learn how long things really take. The deeper lesson is the one that applies to everyone: your model has to actually work for you.

The working parent tightrope

We also got real about the juggle. Lauren is a mum of three running multiple businesses, and she does not pretend it is tidy. Her house is messy. She has made peace with that. The big unlocks for her were choosing the right partner, her husband Phil handles a huge amount of the life admin and the business logistics, and learning to let the rest go.

"It does not matter what parts get done by who. It just matters that you acknowledge it, you pick what matters, and you let the rest go."

She talks beautifully about the tightrope of it. One week you have made every lunch, dinner is on the table, you got to yoga, nobody is sick, you nailed it. The next week your partner is in surgery, you are dog sitting, the cat is climbing the walls and you are thinking, I am out. The trick is not beating yourself up when the second week comes. You did your best today. Next week will be different.

What home actually means

Near the end I asked Lauren for her definition of home, and her answer landed somewhere very close to our heart at By R.A.

"Your home should be somewhere you can just be yourself, and where somebody else can come and be themselves too."

Not so precious you perch on the edge of the sofa. Not so trend driven you forget to ask whether you even want the home theatre. Homes are for living in. Lauren's mission, like ours, is giving people the confidence to stop following trends and start making their home truly theirs.

Which is why this line, when it came up naturally in the conversation, gave me a little thrill. Creating a home to be lived in and loved. That is the whole point.

How this connects to the By R.A. way

If this episode struck a chord, it is because it is everything we believe. Renovating backwards is exactly the trap our 7-Step Renovation Roadmap is built to help you avoid. Define your brief and assemble your team before you design, not after. Think about how you live before the windows are ordered. Spend wisely on the things you cannot easily change.

And remember, you do not have to hand over your entire house to work with a professional. Like Lauren says, find the right fit for you. That is exactly why we offer three ways in: do it yourself with our self guided products, do it with you where we guide and support your efforts, or do it for you where we handle the lot. Wherever you are starting from, there is a way to do this properly.

Listen to the full episode

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Listen now on [Spotify], [Apple Podcasts], and [YouTube], or search Conversations Under Construction wherever you get your podcasts.

If this one resonated, the best next step is our free 7-Step Renovation Roadmap. It is the simplest way to start your project in the right place, so you never end up at decision four hundred thousand wondering what happened. [LINK]

Show notes and links

• Lauren Li, Sisällä Interior Design: sisalla.com.au
• The Design Society: the-design-society.com.au
• The Design Anatomy Podcast: Apple Podcasts
• The New French Look by Lauren Li: Buy Here

Conversations Under Construction is the podcast from By R.A., where we talk to the designers, makers and renovators shaping how we live. Subscribe and follow along!