interior designer

Doing it yourself, as we did, is not for the faint hearted, unless of course you employ an interior designer. This can be fun. Your designer will know where to source everything locally and country wide and will do all the running around for you. They will supply you with brochures, photographs, fabric swatches etc. and all you’ll have to do, depending on how much you want to be involved, is choose the fabric for your upholstery and curtains. Sounds easy, but there is more to it than that.

Finding a good interior designer is just the beginning. Ask around and again, do your research. You might find, as we did on Koh Samui, that there are interior design shops selling furniture and pretty much everything you will need to furnish your villa. These shops are a good place to start and most will have interior designers working for them who can advise. If you are buying a villa on Koh Samui we recommend Suzy Nina Design and Oriental Living both in Maenam ( see FLM Guide Contact Sheet for contact details ).

Before you set out to furnish your villa you really need to know how much you want to spend, otherwise, it might spiral out of control. You can spend as much or as little as you like, it all depends on your priorities and plans for the future. Ask yourself the following questions:

Is your villa going to be rented out most of the time?

Do you intend to live in the villa when you retire?

Are you going to sell your villa in the near future?

Answering these questions will help you decide on how much you want to spend on your furniture.

For example, if you plan to rent out your villa or sell it at a later date, then spending a lot of money on top quality furniture is not going to be cost effective.

However, you will need furniture strong enough to last a fair amount of time.
What you don’t want to be doing is having to constantly renew broken or worn furniture.

For those of you who plan to live in your villa when you retire, it might make sense to buy good quality furniture now that will last a very long time.
It will cost you more, but you will save money in the long run as you won’t have to buy new furniture once you retire.
This works only if you plan to retire in a few years time and not ten or more years ahead.

When the time comes to live in your villa you can freshen up your furniture by having it either re-upholstered or new covers made.

curtains & fabrics

These are very important because they set the whole tone of the villa and they are the most fun selecting.
You will have already been through this process in your own home and know that there are unlimited designs to choose from.

When we were furnishing our villa in Koh Samui, there was not much choice and not many shops were specifically selling curtains and fabrics, so we chose everything in Hong Kong from Veranda.

Today, Koh Samui has more shops selling curtains and fabrics and it is easier to find what you want. This has come about because of the increase in the number of property developers building homes on the island.

If you choose a local supplier for curtains or cushion covers make sure they have someone who can take the proper measurements and make up the curtains or cushion covers correctly.
In Koh Samui, we can recommend Dragon Blind ( see FLM Guide Contact Sheet for contact details ) for this and they can handle any job, big or small and get what you want if they don’t have it in stock.