Based on the positive experiences of my friends , I hired & worked with Studio McGee from around March 2024 until October 2024. In that time I spent tens of thousands of dollars in billing alone. In addition to that, my project was pushed out months which added more cost. None of the work I did with Studio McGee was usable, when I switched to a designer I had worked with in the past, who worked very quickly and thankfully saw a beautiful vision for the space.
I had initially hired Studio McGee to work on my home in Park city because I live out of the state & I thought having boots on the ground where they could check on the project would be essential to such a big undertaking. Because of Studio McGee‘s reputation, I was confident that the team would go in with a vision for my home that would create a more usable space and highlight the beautiful structure of the existing home.
The 7 months I worked with them were excruciating because it felt like a money hemorrhage, they work like an assembly line meaning that there’s specialized team or person for every job, so the turnaround times are so incredibly slow and frustrating. There’s not one person for every job, for the designers there’s a senior designer and a junior designer, so you are paying a double rate every hour, and they always work in tandem, even for a phone call. In addition to that, sometimes there’s another designer, Shae McGee, which I will mention in more detail later. They bill like attorneys, so if you look at a bill, it will say “looked at Wallpaper 7 minutes” “answered email 15 minutes”. I think they’re so busy billing that there’s no time for creativity. In addition to that when Shae would look over and approve the project her junior designers were working on, and it was an astronomical fee. This is the 8th project I’ve done whether it’s a remodel or a ground up, and it was the most chaotic, the most overbilled and by far the most disappointing in terms of what came through for design.
Had the design been amazing and impeccable, I would have overlooked the cost because you know going in that they are top-tier in terms of price, but you also expect that in SERVICE and design outcome. However, in my case I had to completely start over which lost me, as I said, tens of thousands of dollars in addition to months of time that I was out of my home, storage fees etc. The only thing I’m grateful for is because of the pace of the team, the only thing that was ordered was the stove so I didn’t have to pay astronomical restocking fees on selections I would have not liked. I am posting this review because I know how personal and emotional it is to go through a remodel or a build. I hope that my experience can help others to get a clear level expectation, or at least open up a conversation with these designers for any project they are considering.
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