Interior Design — Every Material,
Every Detail, From the Beginning
The materials inside your home — the stone, the wood, the tile, the fixtures, the light — are what you will touch, see, and live with every day. At Ceci Bates, every one of those materials is selected before construction begins, guided by a designer who is present from the first meeting, and rendered in the actual rooms where they will appear.
The Designer Who
Starts in the Dirt
Heather studied art in college — studio art, painting, color theory — and then spent a decade working on construction sites in Austin. Not as a designer. As a worker. She stained cabinets, applied Venetian plasters, painted murals, and mixed custom finishes by hand. She learned how materials behave not from a sample board but from the inside of a house being built.
That foundation matters. When Heather guides a client through the selection of a cabinet stain, she knows that oak can shift pink depending on the tree, that a stain approved on a sample board can look different on an actual cabinet door, and that the only way to get it right is to be on the job site and adjust until the match is exact.
Her eye for color comes from her art training. Her understanding of how materials perform in the field comes from years of working alongside the trades who install them. She operates under her own brand, heather.living, because her work is a professional practice in its own right.
Present from
the Beginning
At most builders, the interior designer appears after the architectural plans are complete — sometimes after framing has begun. The client has already committed to a floor plan, a structure, and a budget before anyone asks what materials they want inside. Selections are then made against allowances that were set without the client’s input, and the result is often sticker shock: the things you actually want cost far more than what was budgeted because the budget was guessed, not guided.
At Ceci Bates, Heather is in the room from the first meeting. She meets with Roberth before she meets with the client to understand the design intent — the story behind the architecture, the material direction it implies. She then meets with the client to begin understanding their vision: the colors that draw them, the textures they respond to, the feeling they want their home to produce.
This early involvement means that by the time the budget is assembled, every material selection is real. The countertop is not “granite, allowance $X.” It is a specific slab, in a specific color, from a specific quarry, priced at a real cost per square foot multiplied by the exact square footage calculated from the 3D model.
“I love meeting with clients before they’re contracted. It’s helpful to get to know them. And I love to work with Roberth — I meet with him before I meet with the client so I can understand where he’s coming from on his design. There’s always a story. There’s a reason behind everything he draws.”
— Heather Shields
Textures, Tones, and
Everything You Will Touch
Heather begins every selection process with a conversation — not about products, but about feeling. What do you want your kitchen to feel like when you walk in? What draws your eye when you see a space you love? If someone has a strong opinion about their kitchen island, Heather starts there and builds the palette outward so every material flows with the anchor piece.
Her art background gives her an unusual advantage. She reads color at a level most people do not notice — the undertones in a neutral, the way a blue shifts warm or cool depending on the light, the difference between a stain that reads brown and one that reads gray-brown.
The scope of selections is comprehensive: flooring for every room, tile for every bathroom and backsplash, countertops, cabinetry style and finish, hardware and pulls, lighting fixtures, plumbing fixtures, fireplace materials, exterior stone, paint colors for every surface, and the smaller details that most builders leave for the client to figure out after move-in. At Ceci Bates, nothing is figured out later.
Heather arrives at every selection meeting prepared. Based on her conversations with the client and with Roberth, she pre-pulls materials before the client walks in.
"If I know you want twelve-by-twenty-four white tile with some gray veining, I can pull several options before you arrive. That way you are not staring at a wall of a thousand tiles trying to find a starting point." This preparation is not about limiting choices. It is about curating them — presenting a focused range that reflects the client's vision so the decision feels confident rather than paralyzing.
Seeing Every Selection
in Your Home
Every material Heather and the client select together is rendered in the 3D model — not as a generic approximation but as the actual product in the actual room where it will be installed. The countertop the client touched at the showroom appears on the island in her kitchen, under the pendant light she chose, beside the cabinet stain Heather custom-mixed to complement the stone.
This means no decision is made in isolation. When you select a backsplash, you see it not against a white board in a tile shop but in your kitchen — next to your cabinets, under your lighting, above your countertop. Clients consistently report that seeing materials in the 3D model eliminates the anxiety that normally accompanies finish selections. It will not look different in person than it did in the showroom. Because you already saw it in your home.
Beautiful and
Within Budget
Heather’s role is not only aesthetic. It is financial. Her job is to help clients achieve their vision while keeping the project within the budget that was established during pre-construction. If a client falls in love with a countertop that exceeds the allowance, Heather does not say no — she finds the path. She may identify a comparable product at a better price point, suggest concentrating the premium material on the island where it will be most visible, or show the client the exact cost difference so the decision is informed rather than impulsive.
Every selection flows through a verification process. Once a material is chosen, the vendor confirms the quantity and pricing against the estimate. The project manager issues a formal change order comparing the verified cost to the original allowance. The client approves digitally — from a phone or computer — before work proceeds. There are no hidden costs. There are no budget surprises at the end.
“Heather is our interior designer. Her goal — instead of hiring an interior designer and then blowing the budget on all the pieces — her job is to still keep them within the budget, even if they change their mind.”
— Scott Bates
Present Through
Every Detail
Heather's involvement does not end when the selections are made. During construction, she is on the job site — checking that stain colors match the approved samples, verifying that tile installations align with the patterns selected, and catching details that might have been missed. If a cabinet stain looks different on the actual wood than it did on the sample board, Heather adjusts the stain until it matches.
Many of the clients building with Ceci Bates are not local — they may live hours away and visit the job site only periodically. For those clients, Heather serves as their presence on-site, the person who ensures that the selections they made in the design center are being executed with the same care with which they were chosen.
The Moment
It Becomes Real
There is a moment near the end of every project when Heather walks the home with the client for the final time. The selections they made months ago — the countertop they touched at the showroom, the tile they agonized over, the stain she custom-mixed — are now real surfaces in real rooms. The flooring runs through the house in the species and color they chose. The pendant lights hang at the height they discussed. The paint catches the light the way she said it would.
Building a home is stressful. For anyone. But the walkthrough moment is when the stress dissolves and the result takes its place. The home is finished. The details are right. And the woman who imagined what this space would feel like can now stand inside it and feel it.
In Their Own Words
“We just went through the 3D model and… wow. It finally all makes sense. Seeing how everything connects — the layout, the light, the materials — it’s exactly what we were hoping for. We love the plan. I’m so excited to move forward.
Sarah M., Brookfield
The Details Begin
with a Conversation
If you have been imagining what the inside of your home will feel like — the surfaces, the light, the way the kitchen opens to the view — we would welcome the opportunity to hear about it. The first conversation is about what matters to you.
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