A client of mine spent five months choosing a sofa. Three returns, one that barely fit through the stairwell. When she finally called a designer, the fix took forty minutes — wrong depth for the room, wrong tone against the flooring. Nothing to do with taste. It rarely is. Most homeowners wait too long to bring in an interior designer, often assuming it's only worthwhile for unlimited budgets or empty houses. In practice, hiring one early usually keeps costs down, since the e