How Pros Approach Home Design and Material Choices

In a conversation with Cambria Style, designers Jen Ziemer and Andrea Dixon of Fiddlehead Design Group answered questions about their personal thoughts on design and choosing Cambria for projects.

What is one piece of advice you think every homeowner should hear before they begin a design project?
Assemble your full team before you begin. People usually don’t know where to start. But you should pull everyone together and talk to everyone together at the outset. Of course, you might have to start with one pro to find the rest—a designer can direct you to an architect and a builder, or vice versa. But once you have those referrals (and sometimes you’ll need a landscape designer, too) include everyone in the initial conversation.

What is your favorite way to add personality to a space?
One important thing is that we don’t want to add our personality—we want the home to reflect the client, their personality. It can be tricky in a kitchen because it’s all hard materials and appliances, but we’ll incorporate artwork and wallpaper to bring in that personal touch. Clients hire us because we do that very well, the layers, adding the things you might not think to add. Andrea is certified in kitchen design; Jen is a master with fabric—we come together on a project like this. We can play off each other to add personality.

What is the first thing you notice when you walk into a space?
Balance and proportion—whether they’re there or not. Any good designer can walk into a space and know why it’s “off” and how to fix it. We’re taking all the other elements into account—color, pattern, line—but if something isn’t balanced, even if the client’s taste is not ours, it’s our job to make it feel right.

What’s your favorite way to structure your design process—from moodboards to floor plans?
We do moodboards for all our clients. They’re really helpful to get the vision across. We use online tools like Houzz and Pinterest to start, then we develop the floor plan, and finally layer in a color palette and materials. If it’s just one room or just furnishings, Jen will pull together a couple of palettes and we’ll go from there.

How do you communicate the benefits of quartz surfaces to clients, especially in terms of durability and maintenance?
In the Midwest, we’re so practical. If you have kids and you’re hard on things, it’s very important to pick materials that will last. If you’re going to be afraid to use the kitchen you just spent a lot of money on, that’s not great. So it’s pretty simple to get the value of a durable stone across.

In this project, what made Cambria the perfect material for that design?
Because this client loves to cook and was concerned about durability, it was the natural choice. Also, we could do a continuous return from the counters up the walls on the backsplash and even into the windows, for a very clean look. It’s much easier to work with Cambria than a slab of marble or another stone that you have to pick out individually in a stone yard and figure out how to combine the slabs and handle variations. With Cambria, we knew exactly what we were going to get—and the colors worked perfectly with the color palette of this house. We also like that they’re local, and our clients appreciate it too. 

How do you approach selecting the color and pattern of quartz surfaces to suit different design aesthetics?
The choice of quartz is not our first decision, because we know Cambria has so many options and it’s so consistent. So we start with the palette and then layer in the Cambria. We usually go for patterns that look like marble or have warm tones.