The Look Interiors

We started out having Colleen and her team design our office. As everyone has said, she listens and quickly grasped our needs. She was open to feedback in allowing us to make it our own. Once she saw our current furniture, she even said we should use what we had and dismissed the potential sale of several pieces. She really went beyond our expectations. Beyond her amazing design ability is her extremely hard working team. Their work is top notch and worth every reasonable penny they cost. Colleen has the connections to service a client from top to bottom - designing, painting, custom furniture building, installation, computer experts, movers, cleaners, you name it. We loved her work so much that she is now doing our entire first floor. As we change and grow, we will look to her for our design needs.

Colleen is amazing! I also work in residential design, and have had the great pleasure of collaborating with her in the past; I look forward to our next opportunity. The first time I worked with her, I was immediately struck by how quickly she developed a grasp of the clients' wishes and then clearly articulated imaginative ways to meet them. This can be a tricky kind of purchase to make, since so often the consumer doesn't really have the opportunity to evaluate the finished product -- Colleen can't have them take the newly designed kitchen for a test drive -- so effective communication is really key to helping the clients reach a place where they can comfortably say "this looks great, let's get started!", and Colleen really excels at that. I was also struck with her originality, with the combinations of materials and textures I'd never have thought to try, and how well all the elements she brought together worked in the completed spaces. Highest recommendation.

We are very happy with the decorating project The Look Interiors did for us. Great partners. They listened to us and magically came back with a beautiful proposal. We love the several rooms they have helped with and intend on using them for the rest of the house.

We contracted The Look to do our new home in Portsmouth. It was a large project and when we spoke with the owner of The Look she was very engaging and had some good ideas. The first thing we probably should have noticed is that she never took any notes. We had to repeat ourselves over the course of several meetings. Perhaps we should have pulled out then, but we had hopes things would work out better. Things did not get better..... Once we started things only got worse, the timeline slipped by months and we found that we could get the exact same pieces that were specified by the designer for thousands less by doing a simple google search. These were not knockoffs, they were the exact same items. We decided to buy the items ourselves for a savings of well over $15,000.00 Before we go on I think it is important to clarify a few items. The designer and owner of The Look was very clear that her design services were a separate cost from her retail store and that if we did not want to buy from her retail store it would not affect the other services. She said that the retail store was competitive, she quoted "We also search the web to price match" Unfortunately that is not what happened, she was unwilling to match the full retail prices we were finding on the internet. So we decided to save ourselves thousands of dollars (and get the credit card miles) by buying ourselves. Surprisingly (or maybe not so) the designer became less interested in our project after that. She insisted that we had to manage all of the contractors by ourselves and didn't take any ownership of the errors that she made early in the process. For example, an entire floor of our house was neglected in her painting quote, a floor that we were extremely clear would need to be painted, but somehow she missed. To reiterate - I understand if a designer gets paid by taking a percentage of the retail items and that is why they would have higher prices. But the owner of The Look was very clear that that was not her practice. I caution anyone from buying directly from this establishment, A short google search could save you thousands. And even other designers in less than a 50 mile radius had the exact same pieces for less. Also, we wanted a specific wallpaper for one of our rooms, that she said had been discontinued. we were disappointed until we looked online and found that the wallpaper was available and The Look just could not locate it. We did buy several items from her retail store, and we were very disappointed by the service. I imagine that we were put at the "back of the line" after she lost interest in our project, but we paid over $7,000 for a bed and two hanging pendant lights. Our check for payment was delivered to The Look on June 30th. The bed was installed on September 21st, even with 2 months to make the bed that is a little long. But the real kicker is the two hanging lights. They were also paid for on June 30th, after 4 months on October 30th we finally cried "uncle" and just cancelled the order. There was still no delivery date and the story we heard is that they were back-ordered several times. Several times? How does that happen? Throughout these four months of waiting we had to always reach our to her for updates, she never emailed us with updates. She basically disappeared right after we sent her the check. After we cancelled the order she emailed us to say that she would send a check right out but "It takes a few days to get out". We took her at her word, until two more weeks passed and we still had not received any check. So, we had to drive to her office to manually pick up the check (on the 20th of November). Needless to say, working with The Look was quite the painful endeavor. Regarding the design services. She did produce good concepts. Except when she tried to convince us to put our hot tub on the front lawn - that was weird - I am sure our neighbors would have loved that! But I would warn everyone to get everything documented via email so that you can be clear on what is and is not included in your project. And you can refer back to the quotes when the bill comes. Also, double check your invoices - I was double billed for a $500 item that I had to catch.

Colleen did an exceptional job designing our master bath and seeing the project through to completion. She provided options and was completely flexible as we made adjustments during the renovation. Colleen worked well coordinating the efforts of multiple contractors and the final results were outstanding.

Colleen and The Look ladies are tremendously talented, timely, creative thinkers, and unbounded energy is the motto for this group. Pleasure to work together, upbeat personalities and good communicators. After moving furniture around in various bedrooms and updating the look with what we had, we got down to business in fabric, rugs and furniture in our living room challenge, dining area and powder room and ordered away. In The Look we trusted, as we went away for some time, returning to the transformed and finished public living spaces-Thrilled and Dazzled! Yeah The Look.....

Excellent customer service and design services. My baby nursery is beautiful. All the colors that Ashley recommended were exactly what I was looking for. She has a natural eye for color and design.

Colleen Lake of The Look Interiors has fulfilled my dreams for the past 17 years. Her strong leadership, organizational skills, architectural knowledge and decorating abilities have transformed our house into a home and our newly constructed office into a comfortable envied place to work. Colleen carefully listens to my ideas, while meticulously sketching her inspirations and gets the "ball rolling" by creating a master color board and architectural drawing including all of your and her suggestions, regardless of their complexity. This visualization helps to understand the design, color and function of each project. She is hands-on, saving me valuable time by researching everything from; colors, light fixtures, flooring fencing, furniture and accent pieces... Colleen graves your ideas and presents three or four options, thus saving me from "shopping" on my own and getting completely overwhelmed! She is contagiously, enthusiastic, practical, artistic and keeps informed of all of the latest trends, building material advances and the best subcontractors. She was my advocate facilitating the scheduling of the subcontractors- thus there was no compromising of my designs. She has mastered the coordination and the "flow" from one room to the next, as well as going from indoors to my outside spaces; decks, patios, porches and pool area. She continues to handle all of our projects with the greatest of integrity and loyalty- Thank you for all your hard work! Erin Kelley

Colleen of The Look Interiors did wonderful job designing interior and exterior of our new home in February-September of 2012 . She had fantastic ideas from size of the windows,trims,floors, baseboards,every detail of construction to landscaping design. We felt very confident and comfortable with her choices and appreciated her taking time to listen to our ideas and sense of style. Colleen brings a great energy and knows how to speak to agents, builders, plumbers and electricians. She knows their lingo, which saved us a lot of stress and money. Now that the house is done, we are so happy with all the choices she helped us make. It was truly pleasure to work with you Colleen. Thank you for your guidance, creativity, talent, patients and professionalism.

Colleen Lake, of The Look Interiors is a true professional. She will work with you to transform your project into a space worthy of being showcased on the pages of your favorite design/ inspiration magazine! Her experience and creativity are exceptional and the details she will consider and suggest are only one reason she exceeds others in the field. She recently worked with me to update a tired split entry with 70's details and finishes but with a beautiful ocean view and sunrises, "morph" into a coastal charmer that I love coming home to!

We bought a 16 year old home on Kiawah Island S.C. for it's panoramic views of the Kiawah River. The interior floor plan and finishes were less than desirable causing us to contemplate tear down and rebuild. The cost, however, was prohibitive. We consulted Colleen for both architectural design and interior fit up. Her vision for the space and ability to make us see the possibilities made it easy to decide to renovate and remodel. She was professional, timely and took time to understand our needs. She represented us through every phase of a complex project with ease. The result was a true, perhaps an even better representation of our expectations. The space invites the incredible natural beauty in and rather than compete with it, compliments it. The design, the furnishings and the decor have a clean simple, elegance, that all serve to relax us. We don't spend as much time as we would like there, but just thinking about the space that Colleen created for us makes us feel good.

Colleen Lake of The Look Interiors allows you as the client to give your design ideas to Colleen, in which Colleen will see a vision for you and help design an end product of exactly what vision you had seen all along. The Look Interiors truly looks out for the client and always has the clients best interest in mind when working on any type of project; small or large. I came to Colleen with a project for my interior side entrance way in my home with an attached bathroom. I had a vision to make this entrance that is used often to really make a glamorous statement. Rather than the average entrance way and bathroom it was. Colleen guided me with my vision and help collect my thoughts to an end product of a glamorous painted, with beautiful wall paper on two walls, updated bathroom fixtures, rugs and lights. Now when guests walk through my new side entrance hallway and bathroom they say "this is gorgeous". I am so proud, and fortunate to have worked with Colleen Lake of The Look Interiors