Decorating By Donna

Donna arrived on Wednesday the 5th of August and had my results to me by Saturday the 8th of August! I showed her a few of my colors that I Love from paintings and pictures and she was able to put it all together in less than an hour. She gave me advice about how to keep the color samples on the wall for several days so I could see how the light hits it and whether I Like it or not as the day progresses from AM to PM! Great idea! She took photos of all the rooms that are to be painted and numbered them. So it's easy for me show the painters. All I have to do now is go to the paint store, or rather my painters will and they will get what is on the list. She made it so easy! I am from St. Simons Island, Georgia and I miss home so much she was able to help me bring in some of my colors from home. She has true Vision and being good with Color is something you are born with, so glad I was able to find her! Great job!

I hired Decorating by Donna to help me with an online paint color consultation for my whole house. I sent her pictures as she requested. She then sent me pictures of colors she thought I should paint. She does not discuss things with you nor give you options to see what you like, what works with the light in the room, what you thought after testing it, etc. She does not ask for your opinion nor whether you liked it or not.. She suggests a color and if you don't like it then she defaults to gray, and then tells you that her consultation services are over! For example, she suggested a bright yellow for my master bedroom, and an orange for the bathroom. When I told her I didn't like these bright colors (who does??? I have nothing orange in my house!), she defaulted to gray and then told me it was over. Similar things happened with suggestions in the rest of the house. My kitchen is very dark, with dark wood cabinets and black countertops. Her suggestion was to paint it grey. Really? For a kitchen that's already dark? When I didn't agree, she then suggested a gray blue. Gray and beige are two colors I did not want. The color she suggested for my living room was ok but then I realized that one wall in the living room is also part of the stairs/hallway and that I couldn't paint one continuous wall with two different colors. She ignored my question and never responded. And she never finished the project because I never received color suggestions for trim nor ceilings. Basically, I wasted money and am back to square one! I do not recommend her at all!

She was very responsive, reasonably priced and made a quick recommendation which was spot on. I would highly recommend her to others.

Donna was very efficient. She was very responsive in our communications leading up to the visit. She walked the home with us and selected colors for our open floor plan in roughly 90 minutes. The home is just under 3000 sq ft. We had her help us with the Master Bedroom which includes a tray ceiling, our family room, living room, dining room, kitchen and foyer. She visited our home on a Monday. She had Fox Brothers Painting call us the next day. They visited our home on Friday and provided estimate, then our color portfolio arrived in the mail from Donna on Saturday.

She is okay. She helped me and got some colors because we were changing the whole interior. She did a lot of help and ideas. I thought she was a bit pushy. We hired her for an hour and got her bid and she went 5 minutes over. She was in a hurry, get things done, and maybe we should have hired her for 2 hours. It was just being like she was on mission. I went with the most different colors. A couple of the rooms, she insisted on colors. The price is reasonable. She was very responsive. She came and showed up.

Excellent. She is highly responsive, arrived on time and we chose the colors in about an hour. Our house was professionally painted yesterday using her recommendations and it turned out beautiful. I would definitely recommend Donna and her services! She was also flexible in working with our tight deadline.

Great! She was very friendly and willing to help in anyway! She got back to me right away and answered all my questions! She was very knowledgeable and I trusted her. I look forward to working with her again!

Update (9/6/2013) We have now lived in the house for three weeks since the house was painted. After living with the colors, Donna's error with the trim and refusal to help us correct this error has forced us to repaint several rooms in the house, at significant time and cost. Consequently, we have lowered our grade of her services from a and quot;Cand quot; to and quot;Dand quot;. Because Donna incorrectly advised us that her selected brighter-white trim color would cover in one coat and did not help us correct this error when she learned of it, there is very little contrast between the walls and the trim in a number of rooms, which makes the rooms looked washed out. Although it is possibly understandable that Donna errantly believed her brighter white would cover our trim in one coat, it is indefensible that she would not work to correct her mistake once her error had been uncovered. Given her experience with colors, she no doubt knew that having a less bright white on the trim would require greater contrast with the walls. But Donna refused to provide us with any advice in the face of this problem, and let us go ahead painting our house in a way that she likely knew would not look good. Even if the mistake had been ours but not hers (though the mistake clearly was hers), we would have expected that she would have tried to help us make the house look as nice as possible. Although her original and quot;visionand quot; could not be achieved because of certain constraints, we feel it was still incumbent on her to provide recommendations and assistance within our--her customers'--restraints. But when we needed such help she explicitly refused to provide us with any advice regarding how to alter her original color scheme to correct the error she had made. One would expect that when a professional is responsible for making a mistake, they would do all in their power to correct that mistake, but Donna did precisely the opposite. Indeed, to the present Donna continues to blame this problem on our painter (Queen City Painters - which is highly reviewed on Angie's List and spent significant time working with us to try to correct Donna's error), yet we made the one coat trim color restriction clear during our visit with her and her painter confirmed to her after we again brought the error to her attention that our painter was correct in saying that the brighter white would not cover our trim in a single coat. This continued effort to shift the blame for her mistake is highly unprofessional. Original review: My overall experience with Donna was mixed. Positives: Donna was very responsive to email and phone inquiries both before and after our service appointment. She has a lot of experience with colors (including the Sherwin Williams colors, which we were using) and was able to quickly make reasonable recommendations for most of the rooms. She also helped us think about details like how colors would flow between rooms. Donna was also willing to modify her usual process to meet our very short time frame (we had only one weekend to pick colors, since we were having the entire house painted after we closed on the purchase but before we moved in). I was particularly happy with her recommendations for colors for our living room accent wall and for my daughter's bedroom. As a side note, overall I was happiest with the rooms in which we had some general idea of the color we wanted before meeting with Donna or had some existing decor to use as a guide. Negatives: There were a few areas of disappointment with Donna's services that left a bad taste about the overall experience. The biggest disappointment had to do with the trim color. At the time of Donna's visit, we told her that we planned only one coat of paint on the trim and the painter expected to use the same existing color (an off-white) for the trim. Donna felt that using pure white paint for the trim would look better and would not be a problem to cover in one coat. When the painter later determined one coat of pure white would not cover the existing off-white paint in one coat, and therefore the trim would match the off-white color Donna had helped us select for some of the walls, I had hoped Donna could apply her long experience and work with us to come up with a viable solution, perhaps a different white in the same color family for the hallway to still maintain some contrast with the trim. However, Donna declared this was not possible without redoing all of her recommendations, and left us to resolve the situation on our own (either have the trim match the walls or pick a new off-white wall color essentially at random). Donna's response was also frustratingly inconsistent -- first to insist that the existing trim color could be covered with pure white in one coat and to question the professionalism of the painter if he could not do it in one coat (including to question whether he was really using Sherwin Williams paint), then to suggest using a paint combined with a primer, then to suggest that my husband and I do the second coat ourselves, and finally to suggest we should have spent the extra money for a second coat and say that it is unprofessional for the painter to use only one coat. We were clear at the time of Donna's visit that we planned only one coat on the trim and she did not express any concerns at that time about making her recommendations within those parameters. I was particularly turned off by Donna's repeated blame of the painter - questioning his skills and professionalism even though a call she made to her own painter confirmed one coat would not have been possible. Additionally, there were a few areas of wall transition in the house (places where walls crossed between rooms and it was unclear which room's color to use) that Donna had not made suggestions about during the appointment and were not reflected in the photographs/pdf Donna prepared for us. She was responsive to email questions after the fact but my strong preference would have been for these questions to be noticed and discussed during the visit so we could have made the best decision at the time, especially as making decisions about shared walls and open floor plans is supposed one of Donna's specialties. To explain grade for punctuality -- Donna was 30 minutes late for our appointment, due to a malfunctioning GPS system. To explain N/A grade for price -- Donna was the only service provider for which I received a quote and the first time I have used services like this so I didn't feel comfortable grading her price. She charges in a tired system based on square footage of the home and in our case there was an additional $50 and quot;rush chargeand quot; on top of her normal price due to the short timeframe.

Donna communicated via email on a day and time for her to come to my home. On the agreed day, she was there punctually and ready to go. I showed her the areas I needed help with and she asked me a few questions regarding what things in my home that I wanted her to work with color-wise. We discussed a color scheme (no beige) and she set about picking out colors that complement each other yet define each area. My home is very open floor plan and I called Donna because I didn't want to just pick one color and paint almost two-thirds of my home that color. She understood perfectly what I wanted and chose colors that I love. About a week later, Donna sent large color chips for me to put on the walls and also a picture map of what color goes where. Both of those are extremely helpful. She also suggested the paint team that she regularly uses and I chose to have them paint. So Donna's services took care of my entire interior painting needs.

One of the best decisions we've made so far as homeowners. We attempted to choose paint colours on our own. Who knew there could possibly be so many shades of white. Donna helped us select a palette of colours that work together, creating a cohesive look. She makes it so easy once you've decided to proceed with the actual painting project - and quot;colour by numbersand quot; is what she calls it - and that's literally what it is. She provides a portfolio with photos of your rooms and numbers which colours go on each wall. We're extremely pleased with the finished product and enjoy our new colourful home.

Donna is a highly gifted color specialist who turned my builder beige house - with some huge mistakes I made in selecting colors for some rooms from paint chips like cornflower blue instead of grey blue and my love of green gone wrong - into what is now our dream home. Her attention to detail and excellent eye for pulling a home together is second to none...she got creative but stayed within the boundaries of my love for french country and love of history and created a house where everything works in harmony - some rooms are eclectic Charleston meets Paris, some rooms are quiet and soft, some rooms are energetic, some let you know all boys live here but me but are still elegant and, amazingly, all the colors flow seamlessly from one room to the next. I think it is the best money and investment you can make before you embark on costly painting and decorating...to get the canvas in order, pick the rigt fabric colors around it, and then work with that to accessorize can avoid costly paint and labor mistakes and misery for years to come... Donna is also a top notch professional who worked with me during a frenzy of trying to get everything done before my heavy work schedule picked up again - she was patient with my 'I need to do this now' calls and extremely accomodating with her schedule. Her portfolio of my before and after should've been taped for HGTV! I will be a lifelong fan of Donna and have incredible respect for her talent and work ethic. I say to Donna, again, Thank You! I love living in my home...you made a family all the more happy to call this our home :)

I am pretty good with selecting colors myself, but I'm so glad that I asked for Donna's help when we decided to repaint the entire house that we recently purchased. The house was empty when Donna came and she had unbelievable imagination. She paid great attention to details on the floor color, cabinet color, granite colors and our future furniture colors and styles. My husband and I didn't always agree on the same colors, but Donna was able to find something that we both liked. She is very open minded and creative, and we love the colors that she helped us choose. Aside from being talented in colors, Donna is extremely professional. She responded to our phone calls and emails very promptly. A few days after her consultation, she sent us a complete list of 13 colors, bigger color samples and pictures on where each color should go. It was fantastic! Donna has a real passion for her job! When I changed my mind on the entire house's trim, crown molding and base board colors, Donna voluntarily came to our house to double check all the colors against the new trim color and made sure everything is coordinated perfectly. We can't be happier with her service, and it 's worth every penny that we paid for! Thank you, Donna!

I think Donna is amazing. I would not start any painting project without her recommendations. She had recommended beautiful colors for my interior walls last year so I called her when I was pondering a change to the exterior. She came and opened my eyes to a whole new perspective. She selected a fabulous front door color (I had not thought about a purple door but love it!) and then she went subtle on the shutters to match the grout in the bricks which ties in with the new roof as well. I love all my colors and have Donna to thank for the inspiration and the improved curb appeal.

We contacted Donna to help us select colors for rooms and carpeting, as we plan to replace all carpeting in the house and paint all rooms in our 20+ year old house. She was excellent in responding immediately, booking an appointment the following day (despite the holidays), and working with us in selecting colors that not only suit a designer's eye but which we also found to be very much to our tastes. She helped us pick colors for the carpeting and all rooms, decide on eliminating wallpaper and in one room chair rails, and we intend to have her back to assist with furniture and accessory selection and placement. She also recommended a painter whose services we have retained. She was an absolute pleasure to work with, and we would recommend her to anyone needing help with colors.

The process was exactly what I needed for maximum efficiency and for cost control. Donna specializes in open floor plans which I have and a mistake could be quite costly. I also do not have the talent to visualize how colors tie together from room to room or even the ability to visualize that little sample with an appealing name on a huge wall. Donna has this gift and she shares it in her work. She quickly determined my style and went to work to pull it all together. I now have a plan of beautiful wall colors tailored just for my house that will help me break down this huge job into workable pieces to tackle in time. I had a great time working with Donna and cannot wait to see all the beautiful colors on my walls. The folder is a great finished product that can be taken shopping for any extra accessories. The cost is a great investment that I believe is a critical first step to designing color for your home.