With e-design, homeowners seek virtual decorating help

Japhet, an adjunct psychology professor, also didn't want to spend thousands of dollars to work with an interior designer. Through email and questionnaires, you tell the designer about your style, share pictures of rooms you like, take photos and measurements of your space and set a budget. Even high-profile and celebrity designers such as Betsy Burnham and Windsor Smith offer long-distance design; actress Gwyneth Paltrow used Smith's "Room in a Box" service to redesign her living room, then sang its praises on her lifestyle blog Goop. Long-distance decorating has emerged as a way to make interior design accessible to the masses. A few weeks later, Hansen had created a site designed to give users an affordable way to solve their decorating challenges - most of them small-scale projects like her pink chair predicament. [...] most women - and men - have to be their own interior designers. In San Antonio, Japhet loved the clean, polished look of her new living room, so in December she took advantage of a special offer and enlisted a Decorist designer's help for three more rooms, including her personal office. Dezignable's clients tend to be women in their mid-20s to late 30s; they're accustomed to acquiring what they want through technology, from food-delivery apps to Netflix, and consulting with a professional virtually feels natural to them. Using client photos and information, they create three custom designs for a room; the client chooses one, then gets a shopping list and instructions for putting it together. With anything more complicated - a job that requires contractors and construction, for instance - the flaws of long-distance design become apparent. Houston designer Jamie House started offering "Room in a Box" services about six years ago, but it's just a tiny portion of her business. [...] she said, virtual design takes away the benefits of a designer shopping for a client personally - finding