When Michael Memar moved to the United States to start his architectural career, he stumbled upon a problem. There seemed to be a disconnect between designers and contractors, one that he says costs clients lots of money.
“They cannot really address it, and they blame it on each other, and they charge a lot for fixing their issues,” Memar says.
Memar found that designers and contractors seemed to be speaking different languages and often didn’t understand each other’s needs. Eager to be a solution, he went back to school and studied interior design, combining that experience with what he’d learned in his past job as a project manager at a real estate firm and his degree in architecture. He bulked up his resume by working with interior designers in Dallas before opening his own business.
“Finally I decided to take off on my own and formed a company and started offering design-build service to my clients,” Memar says. “I learned to wear my designer hat and then also my contract hat pretty much from day one.”
By doing design and contracting himself, Memar is able to give an estimate to his clients from the beginning, starting with the design process and making each choice with the clients from start to finish.
After becoming comfortable with remodeling, Memar moved into new builds.
“When you do a remodel, you’re very limited in a small room and small areas, and generally you can’t change the whole house to the style you want,” Memar says. “Contemporary [design] is what I wanted, and Dallas was lacking that until the past five or 10 years.”
Rather than doing 10 or 20 projects a year, like he would in an interior design firm, Memar says he does one or two new-build homes per year.
“One of the reasons I formed my company and I offer this service to my clients is because I want my client to be involved in every step of the construction or remodeling of their project,” Memar says. “In the traditional method of construction, you have to go for minor changes they [the contractors] wanted to make just to make it look nicer than what the builders wanted because they always go for cheaper products. In my case, I allow my clients to be part of the design process.”
Memar Interiors opened in Plano in 2012 and has since won seven Houzz Awards, four Houzz Badges and was celebrated as Plano’s Innovative Design-Build Firm Best of Houzz 2018-2020 winner.
“When you design something, you put your heart and soul into it. When you sell it or when the project is finished, you look at it as one of your babies, so there’s a connection that every time you see that house you feel good about it.”
The Memar Interiors office is located at 1400 Preston Road and Memar can be reached at 972-665-9922.
