My uneducated guess is that it has a lot to do with the lighting and the quality of the photography. Also, I would think that magazine photographers just have a better grasp of the best angles at which to photograph a room.

The designers whose work are shown in magazines are top of the bunch already. Also, the magazine shots often done w/ help of good photographers, better equipments, scores of stylists. I don't think local designers (especially from small towns) have the budget to do such shots.

I can say that with good styling and a good photographer, a bad room can look like a million bucks. And whatever lighting or styling cannot fix, there's always PHotoshop. :-)

Many of our local top designers are in some of the better magazines - Southern Accents, Veranda, Traditional Home, etc. and those pictures would most likely be on their websites. I've seen other designers in local home magazines and their work is just a nice.

The larger and more wealthy your area/city, the better your interior designers would be.

I suspect a lot (if not all) of the local designers are doing their photos themselves; while the magazine layouts are done by experienced professional photographers, as meg and bellaflora have said. Also, as a decorator, here is what I encounter. My business has turned out to be more of a consulting thing rather than full-service interior design. So, someone will call on me for help with new paint colors, a new sofa, and maybe some lighting. In a situation like that, I end up having a lot of influence on the space, but not 100% influence. So the end result is better than it was, but it doesn't exactly show what I would have done if I had a "blank slate" to work with. Do you know what I mean? So when I come back to take "after" photos, many times I don't actually use the photos in my portfolio because, darn it, the client still has that hideous chest in the corner that she is so attached to, or (and this happens often, too) the room is covered in kids' toys. What I often end up doing is showing just the portion of the room that really illustrates what I did (what problem or "decorating dilemma" was solved), which doesn't look as impressive as the magazine shots, to say the least.

Sueb20 - great observation! I don't do full service design, just drapery design and bedding. But I work with designers and they will say the same thing. Sometimes they get to do the entire room as a clean slate, but often they are working with existing items and they get a different look than an entire redo would have given.

As far as professional photography - that makes a huge difference. Professional shots of a room can cost alot of money, so small design firms don't tend to do that unless they have a reason. (like entering a contest, or submitting to a trade magazine, etc.) One designer I worked with - had a few rooms shot for a contest and I believe the professional photography was over $2,000 per room. One of those rooms was featured on a trade magazine cover (and an article inside) and a small segment went into a coffee table book.

I would imagine most small design firms use their own photography rather than a professional.

We speak a great deal about not wanting to be "match-match" on here, and that's precisely what so many of the local decorators( designers?_) feature in their ads...in wealthy areas, too. We have the LARGE sofa, LARGE chairs,LARGE and ornate case goods and so much fabric...all so very coordinated; The print picks up the tones of the tapestry, the checks and stripes which blend with the tweed and on...... Which makes me want to hijack this to ask again...why all the huge furniture, and patio furniture as well? All the while properties are getting smaller as builders maximize their investment. And I don't believe it's due to all the high-ceiling great rooms. Ooops. Now I AM getting away from OP.Suffice to say, benice, I DO see the same thing in our local designer ads.

I don't know how accurate this observation is overall since I've only seen a few local designers' portfolios, but I do think there might be a difference in the caliber of decorators used in top magazines and what you find locally. The former, for instance, often have a huge budget to work with and are dealing with a sophisticated clientele that already owns major art works and pricey antiques. Their expectations are going to be incredibly high in regard to an interior decorator. Local designers are dealing with more average people and have to adjust their design to what their clients want and expect. There is not as much impetus to upgrade their skills because cutting edge design is not what is wanted or affordable for their middle class and upper-middle class clients. They have to stay in a "safer" range of design in order to make a living. As has been stated, photography also makes a huge difference. Fritz von der Schulenburg could make the contents of an outbuilding look interesting and eclectic. Still, on this forum I've seen shots taken by talented amateur designers of their homes that are marvelous because they have taste and style. Not every decorator whose work I've seen necessarily falls into that category. I still believe they often are not allowed to express themselves and show the best they're capable of because of the limitations (whether it be budget or style sense or both) of the people who are hiring them. I also suspect that local styles are a few years behind what is considered cutting edge. It takes a while for new ideas and trends in decoration to trickle down to the average customer.

And whatever lighting or styling cannot fix, there's always Photoshop. :-)

That's what I think to myself whenever I decide to eat a decadent dessert.

-Lena

Did anyone see the comparison on the Cote de Texas blog when Joni compared the photoshoot of her room for Houston House and Home to a later shoot for a national magazine?

The editor and art director wanted a new window seat cushion (made out of the Bennison fabric, no less!) The zebra rug HAD to go - apparently their readers object to zebra rugs, the suzani on the chair also had to go (suzanis are too bright) and the neon orange pillows must also go to be replaced by other pillows (like what other pillows, I wondered?)...

When they all arrived. the scout and the photography crew seemed happy with the new changes. It was a much different shoot than the one done last year. This time, each photograph took over an hour to complete - the attention to detail was that time consuming. The crew was uber professional and fun at the same time. They overtook my small house like an army at headquarters. It was an interesting learning experience and I am anxious to see the finished product... As for the changes the editor asked for - I'm happy with most of them and plan to keep them. In the end, the editor and art director, the scout and the photographer all knew better that me, I guess.

Hi Bnice.

Everybody's right about the issue of a professional photographer. They have all the lights, all the lenses, all the assistants and--more important--all the photography experience that your local decorator with his pocket digital camera likely doesn't have. Besides, those decorators whose work ends up featured in national magazines are incredibly talented, something that a local designer may or may not be, and for good reason. There's usually not much need for brilliantly talented people in places like the town where I grew up, so local talent (in our case, Helen Morgan, Bobby Short, Donald O'Connor, Dick & Jerry van Dyke & Gene Hackman) tends to hit the road early on. That's why, if you look into the background of a lot of big-name designers over the years, you'll find more who grew up in tumble-down hovels in the middle of nowhere--like little Bobby Bray--than you will find kids who grew up in comfy middle-class homes, like Mario Buatta with his society-bandleader father. And even if they didn't grow up in poverty, there's a reason people like Mark Hampton & Billy Baldwin & Cole Porter didn't stay back home in Indiana. It's too bad, but that's the way it is.

But it's not just the matter of the designers themselves, there's also the matter of the actual furnishings, as Lenam points out. In most shelter magazines, not only are all the contents of a room gleamingly new--unless, that is, they're priceless antiques--but often they don't even belong to the client, but are merely trucked in by the decorator for the day of the shoot. Some items may belong to the decorator (I've seen the identical antique chair featured in several rooms done by well-published but second-tier designer) or they may be rented from a prop house, or they may be on loan from a fancy-schmancy dealer for the publicity value of a listing in the Where-to-Find-it pages in the back of the magazine, or, if the items are not too valuable, they may be outright gifts to the homeowner. After all, an effiecient workroom can whip up a throw pillow out of a foam insert & a yard of a discontinued fabric in about 2O minutes. So the pictures you see may not reflect anything that has ever existed in the real world. Not, anyway for longer than 24 hours. Meaning that if you went back to that same beautiful house that you saw in the big deal magazine a few weeks after the photo shoot, chances are that many of those those unique pieces would be nowhere in sight. That's why your local stable of designers' rooms aren't quite up to the glossy perfect rooms you see in the sheleter rags.

Of course, skeptic that I am, I always suspected that that was truew, but, like Joni at Cote de Texas, I finally got to find out for myself when, last spring, a magazine crew showed up to photograph my apartment. Except that I was the rare householder whose place didn't get messed around with, they used everything just as it really is in real life, so people reading the fall issue of O at Home saw pretty much what I see every single day, except, of course, for the perpetual mountain of shoes by my door this time of year. Oh, sure the OaH crew brought a few fresh flowers & they replaced the dead tree branches in my dining room--debris that I picked up in the street after a freak ice storm last spring--with some branches that had green leaves, but they didn't drag in any uppity limited-edition accessories or borrowed oriental rugs, and they didn't gussy up my sofa with a bunch of unnecessary throw pillows. Basically, it was Magnaverde Unplugged.

Even so, having a wonderful photographer like Roland Bello behind the camera--instead of me--made all the difference.

But all is not lost, no matter where you live. If you've got a big enough budget, don't think that you're restricted to fishing for small fry in your local talent pool. The big fish are out there, and if the bait's good enough, they're willing to travel.

Regards,

Magnaverde.

Here is a link that might be useful: rolandbello.com