Introducing the Cedar House Design Discovery Collection + AI Client Profile Toolkit
If there's one thing I've learned from eight years of building and running Cedar House Design Collective, it's that great design doesn't start with selecting furniture, choosing finishes, or creating beautiful presentations.
It starts with asking the right questions.
When we first started Cedar House, like many designers, we were building our processes as we went. Every new project taught us something. Every client conversation revealed another question we should have asked earlier. And every unexpected challenge became an opportunity to improve how we worked.
Over time, those lessons became the systems and tools that helped our team manage projects, understand our clients, and create more personalized design experiences.
Now, I'm excited to share some of those resources with fellow interior designers.
The Questions Behind Great Design
As designers, we're trained to think about aesthetics, scale, proportion, materials, and functionality. But before we can make thoughtful design decisions, we need to understand the people we're designing for.
How do they actually live in their homes? What does a typical morning look like? Do they entertain regularly? What furniture do they love? What frustrates them about their current spaces?
And sometimes, it's the seemingly small questions that reveal the most.
At Cedar House, our Client Discovery Questionnaire asks about everything from pets and hobbies to favorite travel destinations and personal interests. These aren't necessarily questions you'd expect from an interior designer, but they help us understand who our clients are beyond their Pinterest boards.
That understanding shapes the entire design experience.
Five Questionnaires. One Thoughtful Discovery Process.
Throughout the years, our team developed and refined five questionnaires that became part of our client discovery process.
Today, those resources are available as The Complete Design Discovery Collection.
1. Client Discovery
Get to know the people behind the project—their lifestyles, families, pets, interests, routines, and personal preferences.
2. Furnishings Discovery
Understand how clients want to use their spaces, including seating preferences, comfort, functionality, storage, existing furnishings, and room-by-room needs.
3. Fixtures & Finishes Discovery
One comprehensive questionnaire organized into 12 customizable modules covering architectural details, flooring, lighting, kitchens, bathrooms, and other important design elements.
The beauty of this questionnaire is its flexibility. Working on a kitchen renovation? Customize it to include only the relevant sections. Designing an entire home? Use the full questionnaire.
4. Landscape Architecture Discovery
Explore how clients envision their outdoor spaces, from entertaining and relaxation to landscape preferences and maintenance considerations.
5. HVAC & Mechanicals Discovery
Identify client comfort preferences and mechanical priorities early, helping facilitate better conversations with architects, builders, and trade professionals.
All five questionnaires are customizable Google Forms, allowing designers to adapt them to their own businesses and project types.
But Gathering Information Is Only Half the Process
Here's something else I learned while running a busy design studio: collecting client information is one thing. Organizing it into something your team can actually use is another.
Clients share an incredible amount of information during discovery.
Some of it relates to the overall vision. Some of it is specific to a room. Some details are must-haves, while others are simply preferences.
And that information can quickly become scattered across questionnaires, meeting notes, emails, and project documents.
We needed a better way to bring everything together.
That's where the AI Client Profile Toolkit comes in.
From Client Discovery to Design Direction—with AI
I believe AI can be incredibly valuable for interior designers, especially when it helps reduce administrative work without replacing the creativity and expertise that make our work meaningful.
The AI Client Profile Toolkit was developed to help designers take completed questionnaire responses and organize them into a structured, room-by-room design brief.
It includes:
- AI Master Prompt Guide: Prompts and guidance for using ChatGPT or Claude to organize client responses.
- Editable Client Profile Template: A structured document that brings together project information, lifestyle considerations, design preferences, and room-specific requirements.
- Completed Sample Client Profile: An example demonstrating how questionnaire responses can become an actionable design brief.
- Instructions & Process Guide: A step-by-step approach to using the resources together.
Instead of starting with a blank document and manually sorting through every response, designers have a repeatable framework for organizing the information.
The result is a clearer starting point for design development and a more useful reference for the entire team.
Of course, AI-generated content still needs a designer's review. The goal isn't to automate design decisions. It's to spend less time organizing information so we have more time to make those decisions thoughtfully.
Client confidentiality matters, too. Always follow your firm's privacy practices and obtain appropriate permission before sharing identifiable client information with third-party AI tools.
Built From Experience. Designed to Be Shared.
These aren't resources I created simply to sell digital products.
They're based on the questions, templates, and processes my team and I developed while working through real residential design projects.
And while every design business operates differently, I know firsthand how much time it takes to build systems from scratch.
My hope is that these tools give other designers a head start.
Whether you're a solo designer establishing your processes or a growing studio looking for greater consistency, having a thoughtful discovery system can make a meaningful difference.
Because the more organized we are behind the scenes, the more energy we can devote to the creative work our clients hire us to do.
Explore the Cedar House Design Discovery Tools
I've made these resources available in three ways so you can choose what works best for your business.
Individual Questionnaires — Starting at $15
Purchase only the questionnaires relevant to your projects.
The Complete Design Discovery Collection — $99
All five customizable Google Forms, including the Fixtures & Finishes questionnaire with 12 adaptable modules.
The Complete Design Discovery + AI Client Profile Toolkit — $129
Everything in the questionnaire collection, plus the AI Master Prompt Guide, editable Client Profile Template, completed sample, and step-by-step process instructions.
We've spent years refining the questions we ask our clients. Now we're sharing those resources to help you spend less time building systems and more time doing what you love—designing beautiful, functional spaces.