Amy Hunt was awakened to the idea of becoming an interior designer while studying a seemingly unrelated subject. “I’ve always understood that the space around you affects how you live,” she says, but while training as an occupational therapist (someone who helps people to overcome challenges in everyday activities), she learned the real impact a home can have on those who reside there.
“I could see how people are affected by the way their homes are designed,” she says. “It really spurred me on to think about how I could change the way people feel in their environment.”
This lightbulb moment galvanised Amy to enrol in a diploma in interior design at the prestigious KLC School of Design and, after completing her studies in 2019, she hasn’t looked back. Her career has grown rapidly from an early role as a design assistant to gaining her own clients and building a successful interior design business that’s continuing to expand.
Here, she shares tips on learning from clients, embracing the word 'yes', and setting up systems that play to your strengths.
Learn from your clients
Amy emphasises the importance of tailoring an interior scheme to meet the needs of a client, rather than imposing your own aesthetic upon them. “I don’t think I have a set style as an interior designer, as this is determined by my clients and what they like and what their life is about,” Amy says. “I have all different clients come to me and I’m continually learning through them and their design aesthetic.”
She draws on her occupational therapy training to ensure every element of a design is tailored towards the needs of the client. One of these takeaways is the use of a diagram of circles, with the inner circle being the client and the outer circles encompassing all of their roles in life, such as parenting, work, hobbies and anything else that could affect how they need to live in a space.
Amy is also mindful of how her clients feel during the design process and uses tools like the Houzz Clipper and Selections Boards to help them feel comfortable while staying fully in control of what she shares. With the Clipper, she can pull products from anywhere online into her private product library. From there, she builds Selections Boards to present only the items and the details she wants her clients to see. Internal info like pricing breakdowns, margins, or sourcing notes can stay private, while clients see a clean, curated view with images and key product details to help them make informed choices.
“The Clipper feature has benefited my business 100%, as the clients love seeing those Selections boards; they’re really clear and concise,” she says.
Embrace the word ‘yes’
It’s crucial to make the most of every opportunity that comes your way if you want to scale your business, Amy says. Since finishing her interior design diploma in 2019, Amy has rapidly grown her career and business by taking a ‘can do’ approach to everything. “When I qualified, I asked a designer I met in a showroom at Chelsea Harbour whether they were looking for an assistant,” she says.
The designer said yes, and that’s where it all began for Amy. “I got the chance to work on some amazing projects,” she says. “I then had opportunities to work on my own, and decided to have a mindset of never saying ‘no’. I said yes to whatever came my way and that’s how the business has grown.”
Amy now has more than 20 successful projects completed and photographed for her website, and plans to grow her team over the next couple of years. When a business is expanding, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by juggling multiple projects, so Amy relies on Houzz Pro’s Schedule tool to help her stay on top of everything, even when she’s not at work.
“I was on holiday in Greece recently and I remembered a job that needed to be done for a particular project,” she says. “I was able to log on to my Houzz app, assign a task using the Schedule feature, and share it with my assistant.”
Set up systems that play to your strengths
Amy emphasises the value of recognising your unique way of working and setting up your business to support this. For example, she says her particular neurodivergence has given her enhanced visual spatial skills, while at the same time presenting challenges with administration tasks.
“I’m dyslexic, which I think helps me to go into a room and instantly see what I need to do – the visualisation side of my brain is great,” she says. “The admin is trickier, though, as numbers and writing jump around the page.”
For this reason, Amy finds Houzz Pro’s interface really user-friendly. “The visual aspects of the software are much better for me,” she says.
“You should make sure you have a system that works for you,” she continues. “When you start off, you listen to other people who use different systems, but I need a simple system. I’m always fearful I’m going to forget something, so I put it on a task list on Houzz Pro and it’s there waiting for me when I need it.
“If you’re not organised and don’t have a good system, you’re spinning plates and it’s all going to drop from there,” she says.
Know when it’s time to delegate
In a relatively short six years of running her business, Amy has gone from working alone to hiring a junior designer and an admin assistant.
“I realised I was taking on too much and didn’t want to drop something,” she says. Before hiring staff, she established processes easily adoptable by her employees. Having used Houzz Pro software as a design assistant, Amy naturally adopted it for her own business. She finds these tools invaluable for team collaboration.
“It doesn't overcomplicate things and can be picked up easily by team members. You don't have to sit for hours doing training courses, or train them yourself,” she says. “With a [standard] spreadsheet, for example, if your assistant is on the other side of the world and needs to add something, things can get lost, because they might save it incorrectly, whereas when I upload products through the Clipper onto a Selections board, we can easily leave notes to each other.”
Remember to celebrate your wins
As Amy’s business grows, she makes sure she always reflects on where she started. “Be grateful for each job and remember to look back at where you wanted to be when you began,” she advises.
Last year, Amy was a finalist in both the British Institute of Interior Design (BIIID) Awards and the Society of British and International Interior Design (SBID) Awards, which were both hugely validating for her. “This type of thing gives you confidence that you’re doing the right thing,” she says. “I’d advise new designers to have confidence in themselves and not let imposter syndrome take over.”
She also highlights the importance of having the confidence to take time out occasionally. “While growing a business, I’ve learned that the job never stops, but the big lesson is that it’s OK to have a day off here and there,” she says. “And on a day-to-day basis, take 10 minutes to do something else, such as going into the garden or making a cup of tea. Giving yourself that space will actually help you relax your brain and it’s then that you might have a great idea. I call these ‘tidal wave ideas’.”
So what does the future hold for Amy Hunt? Well, she wants to move offices, continue to grow her business and her team, and take on bigger and bigger projects.
“I would also really love to be able to offer more accessible services,” she says. “Everyone has some fundamental need for good design, even if they don’t know it yet.”
