KILLARA HOUSE - RESIDENTIAL INTERIOR DESIGN AND DECORATION
Anyone searching for an interior designer in Sydney is met with the same wall: directory listings, a top-fifteen list written by nobody in particular, and a hundred portfolios that all look well lit. None of it answers the question that actually matters, which is what you get for the fee and whether the studio can carry a serious project all the way through a build.
This page sets that out plainly. It explains what a full-service engagement should include, how fees work and what they reveal about a studio, why documentation matters more than styling, and how Kaiko Design works on the renovations and new builds it takes on. Read it as a way of judging any studio on your shortlist, including this one.
The scale of project this applies to
Kaiko Design is a Sydney interior design studio built for substantial work: full renovations of terraces and freestanding homes, new builds, and apartment projects that rework kitchens, bathrooms and joinery. Most of our projects start as a conversation about one part of the house, usually the kitchen or the main living space, and grow to take in most of it once the brief is properly understood. A single room or a standalone bathroom is the one scope that is not a fit, and we say so early rather than waste anyone's time.
The reason the scale matters is that a full renovation gives you no second chances. Joinery is built once. The floor plan, once approved, fixes the plumbing and electrical runs that are expensive to move later. Decisions made in the first six weeks shape a build that may run for a year. That is where the right studio earns its fee, and where the wrong one costs you far more than the fee.
What a full-service engagement includes
Full service is used loosely across the industry. At Kaiko Design it means one studio carries the project from the first conversation to the day the furniture arrives, in four defined stages.
Concept and ideas establishes the brief, the budget and the design direction: spatial planning, the overall concept and the colour strategy that will structure the whole home. Design development resolves that direction across every room in scope, with plans, elevations, proposed materials and preliminary fixture schedules. Detailed documentation turns the design into a full drawing set and schedules of every material, fixture, fitting and supplier, so that builders and joiners can price and build from paper rather than from guesswork. Tender and construction covers the questions that come from site, shop drawing reviews and regular inspections, and this is also when decoration and furnishing are brought in, so the house is finished on handover rather than furnished in stages afterwards. Our interior design process article walks through each stage in more detail.
When a studio describes its service, ask which of those four stages it actually delivers. Many stop at concept and selections, and leave documentation to the builder. That is the point at which a design starts to drift.
How fees work, and what they tell you about a studio
Sydney studios price in three ways: by the hour, as a percentage of construction cost, or as a fixed fee. The first two can be perfectly honest, but both leave you guessing at the total until the project is well underway, and both reward a project that runs long or costs more.
Kaiko Design works to fixed-fee pricing. The fee is scoped to your project and agreed before any design work begins, then staged across the four phases so you pay as each stage is delivered. For a whole-home project the design fee is typically a five-figure commitment. There are no hourly rates and no invoices that arrive mid-renovation as a surprise.
The fixed fee matters beyond budget certainty. A studio that can commit to a number up front has done the work of understanding your project before billing for it. A studio that defaults to open-ended hourly rates is usually signalling the opposite: that the scope, and therefore the cost, will be worked out as they go. If you want to see how the three models compare in real figures, our Sydney interior design cost guide sets them out, along with the total project budgets the studio usually works at.
Documentation is where the budget is protected
Clients rarely see the documentation a studio produces. Builders see nothing else. It is the clearest signal of whether a studio understands construction or only decoration, and it is the practical test worth applying to anyone you are considering.
Thin documentation produces variations on site: questions from the builder, decisions made under pressure, and costs that creep because something was not drawn clearly the first time. A builder pricing from a thin set covers the unknowns with provisional sums, which are quietly where renovation budgets blow out. Properly documented, a provisional sum becomes a fixed price.
Meticulous documentation is the part of our work the studio is known for among builders and joiners. Every kitchen, bathroom, joinery item, light fitting and finish is drawn and scheduled in full before tender. Decisions made on paper cost less than decisions made on site, and the documentation stage is what protects the figure you agreed at the start.
Portfolio consistency matters more than portfolio range
Every studio shows variety. What is harder to find, and worth looking for, is a recognisable point of view that holds whether the house is a Victorian terrace, a 1920s North Shore home or a new build on a tight block. At Kaiko Design we call that discipline dynamic eclecticism: colour-led interiors, personalised to each client and each building, resolved through the same underlying method every time rather than from a repeatable template.
Killara House, a heritage renovation on the North Shore, and Chippendale Terrace House, a Victorian terrace restoration, look nothing alike. Both were resolved the same way: a colour and material strategy set early and carried through the whole house, joinery drawn to the proportions of the rooms, and a final layer of furniture and art that reads as personal rather than staged. Woollahra House, featured in Vogue Living in 2026, took the same approach into a larger family home. Consistency across very different briefs is difficult to fake. One beautiful project shot in good light is not.
Who you actually work with
Ask any studio who will design your project and who will document it. At larger firms the answer is often a junior you have not met. At Kaiko Design every project is designed personally by Nicholas Kaiko and documented in house. Nicholas's background spans luxury hotel, bespoke retail and high-end residential design, with years on construction sites before the studio existed, which is why the drawings read the way builders need them to and why the finished interiors are designed to be lived in rather than photographed and left.
That also sets the tone of the relationship. You talk and we listen, and nothing is designed in the first meeting. The consultation is for understanding how you actually live, not just what you think you want.
Where the studio works
Most of our residential interior design work is in Sydney's inner west, Eastern Suburbs and Lower North Shore, much of it in heritage homes where council overlays and original fabric shape what is possible. We have written separately about what briefs typically involve in the Eastern Suburbs and on the Lower North Shore. The studio also takes on new build interior design, where the work starts from the architect's plans, and apartment renovations, where strata approvals and services change the brief. Clients can work with us in person or remotely, and we regularly work with owners outside Sydney and across regional Australia.
The questions that separate studios
Whoever you are considering, five questions will tell you most of what you need to know. Which stages of the project does the fee cover, and where does the studio's involvement stop. How is the fee calculated, and what happens to it if the build runs long. Who draws the documentation, and can you see a sample drawing set from a finished project. Who will you actually be dealing with once the project starts. And what does the studio decline to take on, because a studio that takes everything has not decided what it is good at.
Our answers are on this page and on the pricing page, including example presentations from each stage so you can see what the documentation looks like before you commit to anything.
Starting a project with Kaiko Design
The first step is a short discovery call. It is where we work out, honestly, whether your project suits a full-service engagement and whether the way we work suits you: timeline, fee structure, how decisions get made in your household. Mismatches show up here, early, before either side has committed time or money. If it is a fit, the next step is a consultation at your property and a fixed-fee proposal scoped to the project.
If you are planning a full renovation or a new build and want a studio that will carry it from the first drawing to the last cushion, book a discovery call and we will give you a straight answer on whether we are the right fit.