What a Sensory Interview Reveals That Pinterest Never Will
There is a moment in every project, and I have lived this moment hundreds of times over nearly thirty years, when a client looks at me and says: I do not know how to explain what I want.
And I always tell them the same thing. You do not have to explain it. You just have to feel it.
That is where the Sensory Interview begins. Not with a style quiz. Not with a Pinterest board. Not with a catalog full of pre-selected options. It begins with a conversation. A real one. The kind that takes time. The kind that sometimes makes people cry because nobody has ever asked them these questions about their own home before.
Where This Method Came From
I developed this approach over the course of my career, but if I am being honest, it started long before I ever designed a room for anyone. It started in Bogota, watching my mother, Anita Torres, work with her fashion clients.
My mother was a fashion designer in Colombia, a woman of extraordinary talent and even more extraordinary intuition. She never asked a client what style they wanted. She asked how they wanted to feel. That question changed everything for me. It changed the way I see design, and it changed the way I listen.
The Questions Nobody Else Asks
I do have a questionnaire. Every professional designer does. But the questionnaire is not the process. It is the warm-up. The real work happens in conversation, in the questions that no form could ever capture.
I always start by asking: where have you traveled that made you feel at home?
Not where you had the best vacation. Not where the hotel was the most expensive. Where did you feel, in your body, in your breath, that you belonged? What textures do you reach for without thinking? When you close your eyes and imagine comfort, what sounds do you hear? What is the most beautiful room you have ever walked into, and what made it beautiful?
These questions seem simple. They are anything but. When I ask someone about a texture they reach for, I am asking about their childhood. When I ask about a room that moved them, I am asking about who they want to become. When I ask what sounds mean comfort, I am learning whether their home needs to be a sanctuary of silence or a place filled with music and voices and the sound of family.
A Story About What Listening Can Find
Let me tell you about a couple I worked with. I will call them James and Sofia. They came to me completely stuck. They had been arguing about their home for months. He wanted clean lines, something modern, something calm. She wanted warmth, color, texture, life. They had already fired one designer because the mood boards felt like they were designed for someone else entirely.
I did not ask them about style. I asked them about travel.
And something extraordinary happened. James, who had barely spoken, suddenly lit up. He started talking about a small restaurant in Barcelona, a place they had found on a side street during their honeymoon. The walls were rough plaster, pale and warm. The light came through wooden shutters and fell in patterns across the table. The chairs were mismatched but somehow perfect. The whole place felt, he kept reaching for the word, honest.
Sofia was staring at him. She had never heard him describe anything this way. And then she said: that is exactly what I want. I just did not know how to say it.
That restaurant in Barcelona became the starting point for their entire home. Not because we recreated a Barcelona restaurant in Sacramento. That would be imitation, not design. But because the feeling of that place, the rough plaster, the filtered light, the warmth without pretension, became the emotional compass for every choice we made.
They stopped arguing about their home the day we found that common thread. Because it was never about modern versus traditional. It was about a feeling they both shared but had never named.
The Sensory Profile
The output of the Sensory Interview is what I call a Sensory Profile, a document unique to each client that maps their emotional and sensory landscape. Not their style preferences. Not their color choices. Their feelings. Their memories. The way they experience the world through touch, through light, through sound.
This document becomes the foundation for every design decision that follows. When we are choosing between two fabrics three months later, when we are debating whether the kitchen island should be marble or reclaimed wood, the Sensory Profile is what settles the question. Not trend. Not what the catalog recommends. Not what other homes in your neighborhood have done. What feels right for you.
That is what the Sensory Interview does. It finds the feeling. And once you have the feeling, the design becomes the natural next step.
If you are curious about what a Sensory Interview would reveal about your home, I would love to start that conversation. Tell me about your space, and let us find the feeling together.