On correspondence
The studio does not take consultation calls. We take letters.
This is the first thing new clients ask us to reconsider. Everyone else offers a discovery call, a fifteen-minute Zoom, a coffee at a café in the Pearl. The studio takes letters instead — a short note, sent through the Begin a Project page, arriving in the studio inbox where we read it once in the morning, and once again in the afternoon before writing back.
There are three reasons we do this, and none of them are about efficiency.
The letter is a first sketch of the project
When a client writes a letter, they are already thinking about the house. The room they are describing is a room they have been walking through mentally for months, sometimes years. The letter is that room translated into language — where it is, when it wants to begin, what it is asking for. Reading the letter tells us more about the project than an hour of conversation would, because the letter has been written slowly, with time to think, from a quiet room.
A phone call is different. A phone call is a first impression on both sides — the client trying to sound like the kind of person who hires a studio, the studio trying to sound like the kind of studio worth hiring. The letter removes both performances. What arrives is the project.
The letter filters for the fit
The clients who write letters are the clients we work well with. They are patient. They think in language. They do not need a same-day reply, and they do not confuse speed with quality. They understand that a house is not a purchase and that a design studio is not a service that sells hours.
The clients who do not write letters — who call the studio number and leave a voicemail asking for a quote, who send a one-line email that reads "I'm looking to redo my kitchen, what do you charge?" — are almost always looking for a different kind of studio. That is fine. We wish them well. We are simply not it.
The letter is a soft filter, and it works in both directions. If writing a two-paragraph letter feels like an unreasonable ask, the studio's process — which involves many more small acts of patience — will feel like an unreasonable ask too.
The letter honors the work
We reply to every letter within a week. Not within twenty-four hours. Not the same afternoon. Within a week — usually by Thursday, when the studio sets aside a morning for correspondence.
The delay is intentional. It signals that the studio does not treat inquiries as transactions to be processed. It also gives us time to sit with what the client has written, to think about whether the project is a fit, and to write back with more than a form response.
Every reply we send is written by hand. Not by an assistant. Not by a template. By the studio's principal, at the desk shown in the photograph above.
What a good first letter looks like
If you are considering writing to the studio, the letter can be short. Two paragraphs is enough. What we look for is a sense of the room, a sense of the timeline, and a sense of what the house is asking for.
Here is what we hope to learn:
Where the project is — the city, the neighborhood, the type of house, the year built if you know it
When you would like to begin — a season is enough, an exact month is a bonus
What the house is asking for — the room, the scope, the shape of the problem
What has already been decided — the pieces you already own that need to stay, the materials you already know you want
You do not need to send a Pinterest board. You do not need to send a floor plan. You do not need to know your budget to the dollar. Those come later, in the second and third letters, once the studio has decided the project is a fit and you have decided the studio is a fit.
The first letter is not a proposal. It is an introduction.
The reply
Every letter arrives at studio at maisondethu dot com. The studio reads it, thinks about it, and writes back within the week. The reply is either a note explaining how the studio would approach the project, a Discovery agreement if the project is a clear fit, or a polite decline if it is not.
If you would like to begin, the door is at the bottom of the homepage. It is marked Send a Letter.
— The Studio
Maison de Thu