Brooklyn-based interiors, architecture, and hospitality photographer Regan Wood joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to talk about the part of the design business that most designers pay for and least understand.

Regan came to photography as a second career, moving from womenswear design

to dog photography to interiors, which she has shot since 2013. She sees

photography as an opaque trade in the same way design is: people work alone

and learn by trial and error. The most common friction point is cost.

Because everyone has a camera in their pocket, professional rates surprise

people, and her advice is to bake photography into the project cost from

the beginning rather than scrambling for the money at the end. When Nile

asks about contacting a photographer at project kickoff to get a number for

the proposal, she says yes, with a buffer for rate increases over a long

build.

On permissions, Regan urges designers to put photography in the agreement

and to raise it with homeowners early, so a no does not arrive eighteen

months in. Nile describes handling it as a matter-of-fact step repeated

across the investment guide, welcome guide, and a separate permissions

sheet. On rights, Regan explains that a photographer can legally license an

image commercially, but a property release from the homeowner is required,

and retouching a designer's specified products out of a shot is bad form.

For designers chasing press, she offers a reality check. Magazines are

flooded with submissions, and who took the photos may get an email opened

faster but will not change the answer. Editors decide on the project, the

homeowner, the designer, the art, and the styling, and the most common

rejection notes are that a space does not feel lived in or needs better

art. She points designers toward regional and niche titles where serious

local homeowners are already looking.

The practical half covers DIY shots for designers who cannot hire yet

(natural light only, lights off, tight details and vignettes, skip the wide

shots), pre-production, shot list discipline at fifteen to twenty shots a

day, shooting opposite the light with a compass and an assistant, mixing in

verticals for social and editorial, and bringing five times more florals

than expected. She also shares her shared-shoot rules after one painful day

with an architect and designer both on set, and makes the case that

storytelling, not documentation, is what actually wins designers more work.

Marcy Sagel, CEO of MSA Interiors and Designer Bank in Baltimore, has spent 25-plus years building a commercial design practice focused on multifamily, affordable housing, senior living, and student housing, alongside a smaller, personal residential practice. Her conversation with Laurie Laizure centers on one idea: know your numbers before anyone else in the room does.

Sagel built Designer Bank, a course platform launching with 13 courses (35 within its first year and a half), after noticing that most design school graduates arrive without Revit training her large architectural partners already require. The courses run from Revit fundamentals through Enscape rendering, because visualization, she says, is what actually gets clients emotionally attached enough to say yes.

That same instinct for closing a gap shows up in her approach to commercial interiors. Rather than default to sterile, repetitive commercial finishes, she carves out lounges, cafes, and gaming areas that feel residential, an approach Laurie dubs "resommercial." The goal is not more spending. It is making sure people feel proud of the building regardless of price point.

On budgeting, Sagel pushes back hard on the idea that asking a client's budget upfront is manipulative. A budget range, she argues, is simply where two sides start communicating what they actually want, and it is not optional on large commercial jobs, where clients are funded years in advance with no room to ask for more later.

She is equally direct about specifying versus purchasing: her firm specifies more than ten million dollars a year in materials her clients never realize she is choosing, from decorative lighting to paint to flooring underlayment. Her signature story: scratching a client's wood floor sample with his own key to prove it was the wrong choice for a high-traffic event space, then sourcing a commercially rated floor for less money than he was already planning to spend.

On running the business, Sagel credits delegating to a VP of Operations she trained by bringing her to every client meeting, and credits her entrepreneurs' organization membership for the accountability a CEO does not otherwise get.

The episode closes on two points IDC's audience will recognize. Asked if new designers should market themselves before they have projects, Sagel's answer is yes: market who you are as a person. And Laurie names something rampant in the industry, imposter syndrome, pointing out that no contractor waits to get published in a magazine before calling himself a contractor.

Yvonne Christensen didn't plan to build a design partnership. She and her now business partner, Nicole (Nikki), ran separate solo practices for about ten years before an organic collaboration on a Parade of Homes project, taken on while Yvonne was expecting a baby, turned into a full merger three years later. Nearly six years in, Christensen walks through how they structured the partnership to last: merged furniture buying power and joint accounts from the start, separate billing for hours worked in the early years, and a operating agreement they revisit regularly as their roles shift.

A year ago they brought on a business coach who typically works with CEOs, meeting weekly for three hours. He's helped them build an organizational chart and forced overdue conversations about financials and communication. Christensen says the biggest surprise wasn't the partnership itself but how much back-end work employees created.

The conversation gets specific on pricing. The firm bills hourly for design work until plans go to engineering, then flat fee once square footage is set, reverting to hourly past 18 months. Christensen spends about ninety minutes consulting clients and calls their builder directly to clarify documentation expectations before quoting. Furniture requires full payment before ordering and a second retainer before staging, so clients rarely face a surprise bill at project close.

Consistent builder relationships are, in her words, key to staffing and profitability, since repeat work with the same builders cuts the learning curve on subcontractors and allowances. She also shares that furniture and design fees carry comparable profit margins percentage-wise, though furniture produces higher total dollars, and margins vary by builder based on how much oversight a project requires.

This year the firm opted out of Parade of Homes for the first time in ten years, taking a deliberate break after years of tight, high-pressure timelines, even though the parade has historically driven strong long-term referrals. Looking forward, Christensen and Nikki are pursuing product licensing, and Yvonne recently joined the Moen Design Council through an organic industry connection. The episode wraps with a few personal notes: her favorite spaces to design are libraries and additional sitting rooms, her belief that a house should always feel personal, and a favorite project on a ranch property in Kanab, Utah, where a client's handful of found rocks set the entire material palette.