Nistenhaus is the perfect designer for someone with either no opinions or infinite money to spend. Otherwise, I would recommend caution in dealing with them.
I gave very firm and specific design guidelines which were ignored, and many design hours were wasted going down avenues that were wholely unsuitable. They certainly value their time and I take no issue with that, but at this price point you have to use your time efficiently.
To illustrate this further: I wrote up several long and thoroughly detailed emails going over my requirements.... only for much of what I wrote to have largely been ignored by the designer (i.e. I gave firm guidance on couch selection, and the couches they presented to me after spending design hours on the project didn't meet what I had written).
My last straw had to do with room dividers. This was one of the largest design conundrums. I had done my own research beforehand and was unable to find a solution that didn't require nailing into the ceiling or floor; it had to be a tension based solution. They presented me with a divider that was pretty much the FIRST GOOGLE RESULT on the topic... and required you to screw it in still (I had confirmed this with the vendor beforhand, they were the first option I looked at... only took one email to find that out). So of course, I get charged design hours on a half-baked, unvetted solution that would have failed (and this was AFTER I had already expressed this very specific concern to them).
I'm sure they have a good eye for design, but if you're going to hire them, either throw your opinions and design constraints out the door, or be prepared to shell out an absolutely absurd amount of cash on design hours.
Now, I'm sure they're going to respond to this and talk about the complexity of my requirements and how they warned me about design hours - which is all true, they did tell that design hours would be higher because they would have to spend more time searching, and I accepted that. That doesn't change the fact that they wasted many design hours going down avenues that didn't adhere to my basic requirements. read more