EP 024 | How Interior Designers Handle Mistakes Professionally with Kimberley Seldon

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Mistakes happen. The question is not whether you’ll make one—it’s how you’ll respond when you do.

In this episode, Kimberley Seldon tackles a reality every interior designer faces: errors, omissions, delays, and unexpected challenges. In a profession that involves managing countless details, trades, vendors, and client expectations, mistakes are inevitable. What separates successful professionals is how they manage those situations when they arise.

For interior designers looking to protect client relationships, maintain profitability, and navigate difficult situations with confidence, this episode offers practical guidance on handling mistakes professionally.

In this episode, we learn:
• Why mistakes are a normal part of managing complex design projects
• How the nature of interior design makes occasional errors unavoidable
• Why even the most organized professionals cannot prevent every mistake
• How effective communication can minimize the impact of project challenges
• Which mistakes are a cost of doing business and which can be billed appropriately
• Why professionalism is measured by how you handle mistakes—not by avoiding them entirely

Take Aways

Mistakes are inevitable. It’s how we manage these errors and missteps that matters most to clients. Here are some questions to consider.

• Do we look for a remedy that best serves the client?
• If the mistake is ours, can we accept responsibility and be honest about it?
• Can we honestly say that someone else’s mistake was 100% out of our control? Or did we have a part in that error too?
• When we are at fault, in any way, is there a system we could introduce that would prevent us from ever making the same mistake—or one like it, again?