Teresa Zilinsky Interior Designs

Teresa promptly contacted me, and we arranged a time to meet. I have never used an interior designer before, but I am so glad I took advantage of her special offer. She was friendly and very knowledgeable. She listened to what I wanted to do and offered great suggestions as to how to achieve my goals. She did not try to dictate what I should do. Instead, she quickly understood what I wanted, and she worked with my budget. She helped me find the perfect solution to some space problems and appliance selection. I highly recommend her and will contact her again if I need additional help.

It went great both rooms exceeded our expectations, Teresa is a pleasure to work with.

I worked with Teresa Zilinsky for a full year redecorating our home. (The delay was my issue, not hers. She was exceedingly patient with me.) I got to know Teresa well and wish to publicize my appreciation and respect. Teresa has great taste. She helped me with a bedroom, a living room, a dining room, and a family room. She helped me with drapes, sitting areas, rugs, and wall sconces. Her taste was uniformly exquisite. The very first project Teresa accomplished for us was choosing draperies for our master bedroom. I had decided to try my hand at this first. After several weeks of investigation, I chose a print that I was excited about one evening, ordered the next day, started doubting that evening, and downright disliked a few days later. I sheepishly asked Teresa to try to cancel my order and choose whichever fabric she liked most of all. Homerun! The gorgeous fabric she chose hangs floor-to-ceiling throughout our bedroom. It has been many months since these drapes were hung on the unusual and gorgeous rods Teresa also chose, and both my husband and I (and he’s not known for caring about such things) notice and appreciate the stunning difference these window treatments have made. The privacy is wonderful, and the color, pattern, drape, and texture of these draperies swaddle us in cozy elegance. Teresa knows how to work within a budget. She has a working knowledge of the high-end manufacturers and fabrics as well as those down the ladder that cost less than their luxurious counterparts. Teresa tells you honestly when spending more is worth it and when a less expensive piece will suit perfectly. I have worked with designers who are always pushing you to spend more, despite your polite insistence that you are trying to manage your costs. Some even try to shame you into spending more. Not Teresa. She understood that her challenge was to make our budget work. I especially love the way Teresa blends what is classic with some unique pop of color, shape, or texture. How I enjoy her use of texture. She created sofa pillows in warm, rich fabrics covered in ridges and channels that I find myself running my hands across, back and forth. When to add fringe and when to leave it at cording; incorporating a gorgeous mix of colors in those tufts of fringe ... all of this comes so naturally to Teresa. And, she creates atmosphere well! I cannot stress enough the words elegance and warmth. These are sofas and lounge chairs you want to sink into, dining room and kitchen table chairs you can linger in comfortably beyond dessert, and colors that buoy and brighten you as you arrive home even months after the furniture arrived. Teresa pays attention to the details. I had some difficult areas that required careful measuring as well as creative design. Teresa persuaded me to pass on some furniture I liked because she thought it was one inch too long. She was right. That piece was lovely, but the extra inch would have interfered with a comfortable flow. It is such a relief to know that someone is anticipating these kinds of problems and trying to get it right rather than just trying to sell furniture quickly. It was Teresa who came up with the perfect idea of wall sconces to fill the dead space created when an addition we built left us with dry wall where there had been a sunny living room window. Teresa was right on target: we didn’t need another rectangular piece on that wall where the windows had been. On the top, shelf-like surface of these sconces I can place a small pot of dried flowers, a candle, or a sculpture. Teresa turned a dead space into an asset. She searched hard for me until she found just the right solution. Teresa is patient. For a variety of unrelated reasons, it was a long time before Teresa actually earned any significant money working with me. But she never once made me feel that I was imposing on her. If I was slow to decide, fine. If I changed my mind, fine. If I wanted to see a lot of samples, fine. If I wanted to investigate a new supplier, fine. Teresa was dedicated to maximizing our satisfaction, not her hourly return. Teresa is not temperamental. I have worked with designers who get prickly when you do not accept one hundred percent of their recommendations. They might even pout and get huffy. Not Teresa. If I did not love an idea, she moved on immediately and without strain. She saw her job as trying to guide me, not bulldoze me. Teresa works hard. Really hard! I like to work by email. One would have to see the superabundance of emails and options sent to me over the course of twelve months to fully appreciate just how enduring, creative, patient, and warm Teresa Zilinsky is. I would send Teresa a request for specific information and she would respond by email promptly and in just the sort of detail I wanted. She covered so much ground, writing to me in such an organized, thorough fashion that was easy, even fun, to follow. As a visual person, I appreciated the many photos of fabrics and furniture pieces she’d drop into these emails. If Teresa was ever not able to get back quickly, she would let me know and would follow-up exactly when she said she would. She visited my house many times (and I am not convenient). She would arrive with a hundred pounds of fabric sample books and leave eight to ten feathery swatches arranged strategically on the furniture for me to live with for a few days. I could look wide and far and not come up with another designer as kind, talented, and service-oriented as Teresa Zilinsky. Teresa accommodates a host of eccentricities in clients in order to provide them the fullness of her offerings, and she does this in the warmest way, never letting on that she’s even aware of those oddities, let alone inconvenienced or frustrated by them. In addition to all of this professionalism and creativity, Teresa is elegant, humble, and honest. I wholeheartedly recommend her and I am certain that I will be asking her again to help us design more spaces.