Savage Designs

We hired Savage designs to help us choose paint colours and ended up hiring her to manage a larger project of redoing electrical, taking out valences, installing new lighting and painting. Since we could not live in the space while our ceilings were being taken down we trusted Savage to manage the project and trades in our absence. We should not have. Once the lights were partly in, I noted that there were bright spots all over our floor. I was told that this was normal, but it could be changed. I said I wanted it changed. Savage spoke to the electricians who had purchased the lighting, who were under contract to Savage, and then completely changed her tune and said that in her entire career she had never seen something like this and it was the fault of our floors, not the lights. I went to the retailer where we had been told the lights had been purchased and they informed us that though they had quoted the pricing to us and Savage, Savage did not in fact purchase the lights from them. They would have helped us if they had. We confronted Savage about the lights and after some pushing found out the electricians had purchased them directly from the supplier. We now had no one to turn to. They refused to return them and we were met with a brick wall of unhelpfulness. I went to the supplier (Juno) and was told initially that their lights don't do that and they couldn't be their lights. They finally relented and sent out a regional representative who said he hadn't seen that before and would try to help us. We never did get help because he quit a few weeks later. Our calls to the local rep went unanswered. Savage came by with flooring samples to 'prove' to us that it was our floors, not the lights, which she couldn't do because the 'spots' showed up on everything, even carpet and fuzzy sweaters. Basically, she was trying to show us that it was our fault. However, if she knew anything about lighting, and if indeed it was the floors (it isn't), she should not have recommended those lights in the first place if she thought there would be spots. The floors have been there for 50 years, we didn't change them during construction. That's poor design planning on her part. We also found, when we pushed our bed into place, that our wall sconces were way way too far away to be usable. I asked the electrician if there was reason for them to be that far away and he said it was because he was told we had swing arm lamps. We never had ever considered swing arm lamps. I asked the designer why she had not caught that and her response was 'it was in the book I left for them'. She was supposed to be managing the work, not letting trades look something up in a book she left. She would not fix the work. In the end, no one would help us with the lights, we still have spots, we still have sconces we can't reach, and we had to call the painter back to fix deficiencies. Overall a very poor experience. The only thing I think was done well was I like the paint colours. Should have stuck to that and hired someone else to do the rest. Also, never use Juno pot lights.