Your Favorite Room By Cathy Zaeske

I’ve hired Cathy numerous times between 2013 and 2019 for various projects. The most recent time was helping me design the first floor of my new home after I moved to Charleston, SC. I wanted to incorporate some beachy accents into my decor now that I was living near the ocean. I’m always impressed with Cathy’s creativity. I also appreciate how she’s willing to incorporate pieces I already own into her designs. She truly is a designer for “real people” and is always mindful of my budget. I really can’t say enough good things about her and her business.

Cathy of Your Favorite Room designed my basement several years ago. After many years, it is a room we still enjoy! When it was time to update my kitchen, I was so happy that Cathy could help me once again! Since we are not in the same town, I take advantage of Cathy's e-design services. After a consult by FaceTime, and sharing photos, Cathy provides a very thorough explanation of her choices, including recommended sources which can easily be linked by clicking on the image. Cathy truly has a talent for e-design! After having a short conversation with Cathy, she understood what I was looking for in the room as well as my budget. Everything she recommended for our kitchen worked perfectly! To add to this, when the project has started, she is delivers the e-design in a very timely manner and is open to follow up questions. I would highly recommend Cathy for any of your e-design needs!

I highly recommend Cathy with Your Favorite Room for ALL of your design needs. My husband and I designed and built a house and we were so fortunate to have worked with Cathy during our initial planning phase before she relocated to England. Building a house can be overwhelming and because Cathy is so organized, resourceful and responsive, she is able to make the experience more efficient and enjoyable. Cathy gave us excellent feedback on our architectural designs and advice for our electrical layouts. We also explored the Merchandise Mart in Chicago together, where she pointed out the latest trends as well as classic fixtures that would be helpful in my decision making. Cathy is very talented and had the feel of the finished home in mind when advising on all of the details. She also is very reliable, and works very hard to help her clients. Cathy is a joy to work with and we are grateful for all of her advice.

Cathy is pure genius. I loved her creative enthusiasm and eye for colour. She was really helpful with furniture selection and fabrics too. Cathy was always kind but honest. I like a clean and classic style with a twist and she really helped me to keep that focus. Timeless design and taste in all the things beautiful shows she's a top designer!

We worked with Cathy Zaeske on the interior design of our home in the United Kingdom. She was with us every step of the way from the initial rip out in December 2018 to the completion of our complete renovation in the Autumn of 2019. During this time, she advised on a myriad of topics and helped us to avoid some very costly mistakes. With Cathy’s assistance, our home has become a modern and contemporary space that is still warm, inviting and reflects our individual style. She listed carefully to what we were trying to accomplish, asked great questions to help guide and refine our vision, and brought her own (amazing) original thoughts to the table. We couldn’t be happier. In terms of working remotely with Cathy it was a dream. She encouraged us to create Pinterest Boards to reflect what we were looking to achieve in certain areas of the house. We shared these boards with her and she added her comments and included inspirations of her own (which we more often than not preferred to our own ideas). For each area we would discuss, I would email her photos, plans, ideas, etc. We would SKYPE to discuss the area in person and she would provide her recommendations and provide additional follow up following our call. With her extensive interior design knowledge, Cathy was able to not only help us to create some beautiful spaces but also (and perhaps more importantly) helped us avert a number of potentially disastrous design decisions. Our initial kitchen design, while contemporary and functionally exactly what we wanted, left us feeling flat. Cathy quickly solved the problem by suggesting we bring in some warmer walnut accents to counterbalance the very modern cement-effect cabinetry. It worked wonders! Similarly, when we shared our master ensuite design, Cathy took a quick look, paused and then suggested we tape out the dimensions of the design elements on the floor to make sure we were happy with the layout. While we loved the 3D design visuals provided by the bathroom company, the moment we taped the dimensions on the floor we knew it would have to be reworked as the walkway through the bathroom was tight and the design clearly didn’t best complement the space we had to work with. She discussed different alternatives with us, gave us a list of questions to pose to the bathroom designer and, in the end, we have a master ensuite that we absolutely love. Cathy also helped us to ensure that we had considered various layers of lighting in each of our rooms at the beginning of the project when the electrical work was completed and continues to assist us with design decisions throughout the house (paint, wallpaper, soft furnishings, accent pieces). I don’t know what we would have done without Cathy and highly recommend her services to anyone for any size project. -Daniela Matson

What a great experience! We hired Cathy for two hours of in-home consultation to help us develop a design vision and plan for our two-bedroom condo in Chicago. Cathy was responsive, professional, and provided exactly what we needed for our unit. In advance of our meeting, Cathy worked out some ideas with us over e-mail and also developed schemes for each room in our home using photos and descriptions we had provided. During our in-home visit, she shared what she had developed, walked through each room in our space building a vision using our thoughts and preferences as a guide, and helped us get specific around measurements for each piece, providing the framework we had been missing in building our design. Ultimately, Cathy was exactly what we needed: a down-to-earth, completely accessible, and knowledgeable designer who helped us make our condo a home. Highly recommended!

Cathy was great. She did her research before she met with me. She had great ideas but really tried to create the space that I envisioned. She was very flexible and I thought her pricing was very fair. It was difficult to find a designer who I could consult with who did not want to take over and Cathy was willing to do just that. I felt like she was a friend who has great taste. She was willing to tell me if something qa a bad idea. I also liked that she thought about the little things. We remodeled our entire master bath and I did not even thing of many things that she brought up. Fantastic experience!

My husband and I feel very fortunate that Cathy was recommend to us. She was prompt, prepared, focused, creative and helpful with our projects. Cathy made designing a room seem easy and affordable. She came in understanding our needs, and was able to give us the direction we needed to get started. After our consultation, instead of feeling overwhelmed I was excited to begin. If you are looking for someone that will listen to your ideas, work within your budget and help you to create a room that you will love, Cathy is your person.

Cathy is great! She was so energetic and full of amazing ideas for our basement redecorating project. She was punctual, efficient with her time and gave us really creative and useful ideas. She set parameters for our expectations on the scope of her work so we were all aligned and we knew what our costs would be, and that those costs were in our control. She made herself available for follow up as needed. We feel lucky that we found her... I would highly recommend her and we would use her again.

We found meeting with Cathy so helpful. She had so many wonderful ideas and suggestions. She was much more helpful than our architect and wish we would have met with her sooner.

Cathy is such a pleasure to work with. She is great at visualizing and creating ideas for any space. I am glad that she is helping us make our new house into a warm home.

Cathy was amazing. She quickly found out my likes and dislikes and what I desired to change. Then she skillfully put together a fantastic plan to make the changes that I needed to update my home while respecting the pieces I wanted to keep. Cathy was respectful and efficient while remaining warm and friendly. Her design was beautiful. I highly recommend!