Design Set Match

An excellent experience from start to finish. Alisa is an accomplished and experienced designer and an excellent communicator. She walked us through the process, listened to what we wanted, developed the design, took us shopping for fittings, answered all our questions promptly, and communicated well with our contractors. She clearly was respected by the vendors we visited, and our contractors were all impressed by her professionalism and attention to detail. We are thrilled with the result.

We've worked with Alisa on two projects, a complete kitchen remodel and the addition of a primary suit bathroom, both turned out beautifully. Our home is an old world Mediterranean style and Alisa truly helped us maintain the character and charm of the 1930's home, but with modern amenities. Shopping trips, drawings/schematics, and check-ins were all beneficial to the projects completion.

Alisa has a preternatural ability to both see your need as a home owner and to get it achieved with a minimum of stress. Our only regret about working with Alisa is not doing it sooner. She has made nearly every room in our house better.

I worked with the wonderfully creative Alisa Hofmann of Design Set Match on schematic designs for my kitchen and bathroom. Alisa quickly understood my needs and developed two alternative designs for each room - all terrific and on point. She has fantastic technical skills, a wealth of knowledge about products and materials, and referrals to great contractors. Equally important, she is a joy to work with. I highly recommend her!

We worked with Alisa for over a year on our primary suite project and plan to work with her again when we remodel our kitchen. Alisa completely transformed our odd primary bathroom into the bathroom of our dreams. Her detailed renderings helped us visualize a new home office with a coffee bar that we enjoy using almost every day! It's truly incredible how closely our completed projects resemble the renderings she did for us at the start of our project. Don't be scared off by her fees. Trust me when I say it's worth hiring her for the entire project, i.e., design, shopping assistance, and project management. You want her there when the counter fabricator comes to measure and install your counters and asks about edge treatments, seams/cuts, faucet holes, sink placement and the endless other questions they'll have for you on measurement day. Ditto for the shower glass fabricator, cabinet maker, and every other vendor who comes to your home. You want her to lay out your tile with her keen design eye before it's installed on your floor. You want her to tell your cabinet installer where to drill the holes for your pulls. While I know it's tempting to minimize Alisa's fees (I struggled with the same cost/benefit analysis myself), you want and need someone like Alisa to serve as your Subject Matter Expert. To be perfectly honest, we had our moments when we had our doubts... but once our project was in full swing we were SO glad we hired Alisa to serve as our advocate! As a consultant I have extremely high expectations of both myself and others. I'm a perfectionist with an uber type A personality, I'm super analytical, I research everything to the nth degree, and I have severe OCD tendencies. My husband affectionately refers to me as "Monk" (like the character from the TV show). That said Alisa met, and often exceeded, my expectations!

The following are descriptions of two projects done with Irma of Design Set Match. One project, completed November 2019 - Working with Irma on the tile design for my sunroom floor was a pleasure. The process was a very pleasant back-and-forth effort during which Irma listened very closely to what I wanted and then she came up with a great design. We tweaked it a few times till it worked in my space and the final design was creative and lovely, going beyond even what I had imagined it could be. On a separate project completed September 2021, Irma also helped me with an upgrade to my kitchen. She ran interference with the countertop contractor and helped me choose countertop material and kitchen fixtures. Irma gave me advice and recommendations but the final decisions were always mine. Unlike other designers, she never tried to make decisions for me or to get me to select anything that wasn't going to work for me. She also recommended a cabinetry contractor who built me a very versatile, custom broom closet that has room for expansion if my needs change.

When it comes to kitchen remodels there are so many options and scanning pictures on Houzz only gets you so far. We’ve done a lot of work on our old house but this is the first project we took on with help of a professional designer and we got the best in the biz! Alisa helped turn our dream kitchen into reality (and saved the marriage to boot). The kitchen is the one room in our house that there’s not a single thing I’d do differently - from big decisions to tiny details we’d never have thought of, we are so glad we had wise counsel to bring it all together.

Talked on the phone with the reps they were very helpfull with giving me allot of directions and stuff to think about even before we even met . will probably book with them just for the great consultation

The team from Design Set Match was extremely helpful and supportive throughout the process of our remodel. In particular, our project Manager, Irma Harris-Horne was very knowledgeable and helpful. Irma was a real pleasure with which to work. From the initial consultation, through the many steps - concept design, final design, materials selection, and project execution - Irma was on top of every detail. The design she prepared transformed our small condominium by reconfiguring the kitchen, upgrading the bathrooms and various other small enhancements throughout our unit. Her working drawings were so precise that they were given counter approval by the building department! She also recommended a fantastic contractor, James Enterprises, Inc. They were by far the best contractor with whom we have worked.

We hired Alisa as our designer for our kitchen and bathroom remodel. She worked with us from the fall of 2017 through summer 2018. We went shopping with Alisa to numerous suppliers and she usually knew as much or more than the sales people. She helped us winnow down the choices at the different stores. She bounded the range of options that would work, and then provided us flexibility and input for our final selections. She meticulously uploaded details on all our selections to a website so we could review and refer to them. Alisa and our contractor worked well together. She incorporated input from our contractor into the kitchen / bath design. We were very happy with Alisa’s design. It was well thought out, and she did a good job of assessing our space and melding her design with our space and our wishes. She prepared very detailed plans and materials specification lists. During the construction phase, she was accessible to the contractor if questions came up. Our project expanded to include a full house remodel. Alisa continued to make herself available to the contractor to provide input on some design aspects for the rest of the house, which was greatly appreciated. Overall Alisa is very knowledgeable, has extensive experience, and is easy to work with. We would use her again and we highly recommend her.

Alisa and Irma are the best. My husband and I had decided to downsize, but crowding our possessions into a smaller space had not been successful. Alisa and Irma to the rescue. Just by choosing the right colors for our walls, exchanging a too-large light fixture for one of the right scale, finding the perfect rug for our living room, and customizing bookcases to fit our space and accommodate our library, they pulled everything together. Efficient, creative, attentive to detail, careful about price, and lovely to work with, they produced a warm, inviting home. We are delighted.

Our family was living in another city while our house was being renovated and Alisa Hoffmann transformed what could have been a laborious process into an absolute breeze. She tuned into our wavelength immediately, and despite a busy practice was always engaged in the job. We knew what we wanted conceptually, and she had the resources to offer a range of interesting and relevant options for every decision. Over the course of the job our family encountered some unexpected challenges that at times caused us to be less focused than we would have liked to be, but Alisa never missed a beat. By email, text, phone, and suggestions posted on Houzz, we always had the sense that she was present and fully engaged. The finished job exceeded our expectations. Also, in this high end market, her prices were fair, and DSM billing always seemed scrupulous, which was reassuring since we were not on site most of the time. We moved in just two weeks ago, and we've already recommended Alisa to one of our new neighbors. A completely satisfying experience.