Text me and tell me what you think of this ep.
You can smell it the second you walk into some budget stores. Then we bring the occasional chair home, pop it in the corner and call it styled.
Susie from Casa Flair Interiors has run her design studio in Sydney's Hills District for six years. Before that, she taught creative arts. Now she's niched into low-tox consultations, which means looking at a space through what's actually in it. Off-gassing floors. Fire retardants in fabric. The glue holding your sofa together. The flickering downlight nobody notices until the headaches start.
We've worked together for about six months, so we get honest about how scary niching felt and what changed when "I'm not techy" became "not techy yet". Spoiler: she set up her own automation in 20 minutes while I sat on Zoom and mostly watched.
Then I got on my soapbox about AI ethics. Barbie boxes, sticker packs, wallpaper with octopuses riding tricycles. I'm judging you a little.
What we get into
- What low tox actually means in a home, and why fast furniture is basically landfill you paid for
- How designers can bring in a low-tox consultant to review an FF&E schedule without touching the design
- Creating spaces where neurodivergent kids can decompress and self-regulate after school
- Why niching feels uncomfortable before it feels right (nobody was born in a blazer and heels)
- Preliminary procurement: describing the chubby walnut console in your head and letting AI go find it
- Keeping your processes mapped outside the tools, so you can switch platforms, or walk away, if your ethics say so
Find Susie
If you've been calling yourself not techy, add the word yet. Then come and find me. Studio CEO details are at rhiannon-lee.com.
Thanks for listening to this episode of "Designing Success: From Study to Studio"! Connect with me on social media for more business tips, and a real look behind the scenes of my own practicing design business.
Grab more insights and updates:
Follow me on Instagram: https://instagram.com/the_rhiannonlee
For more FREE resources, templates, guides and information, visit the Designer Resource Hub on my website ; https://www.rhiannon-lee.com/
Get your interior design studio running on AI in 6 weeks.
admin, client follow-ups, content, and operations handled.
Six live build sessions.
You leave with a working system, not more mess.
Studio BUILD ( now open)
Remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps me continue providing valuable content to aspiring interior designers. Stay tuned for more episodes filled with actionable insights and inspiring conversations.
Thank you for your support!
