the cityhammer blog

In a landmark state court decision in the state of Texas, last week the fifth circuit court decided that interior designers and decorators DO NOT need a license to refer to themselves as interior designers or decorators when advertising to the public.

We discussed this issue last year during a flap over the issue in Connecticut, see that post here: CT Interior Designers Wage Title Fight

The crux of the court's argument is that the language used by designers to explain what they do is not inherently misleading, as their trade name is exactly the service that they provide.

Below are the details of the decision (excerpt from the Volokh Conspiracy):

The State advances a circular argument that the speech inherently tends to mislead consumers. It runs: Texas created a licensing regime; therefore, unlicensed interior designers who refer to themselves as interior designers will confuse consumers who will expect them to be licensed. The descriptive terms “interior designer” and “interior design” are not, however, inherently misleading. They merely describe a person’s trade or business. The terms can be employed deceptively, for example if a person does not actually practice interior design, but the speech is neither actually nor inherently misleading. This argument also proves too much, as it would authorize legislatures to license speech and reduce its constitutional protection by means of the licensing alone.

The State next relies on two pieces of evidence to prove that unlicensed interior designers who use the title are engaged in misleading speech. The district court correctly rejected both proffers. The State offers a survey that asked irrelevant questions concerning the respondents’ general preferences for “licensed” professionals. The survey included five substantive questions and seventeen demographic questions. The only question even arguably relevant to whether the job title “interior designer” is misleading was, “if there were two professionals offering the same service, one with a license, and one without a license, do you think that it is deceptive or misleading or both that the licensed and unlicensed person can use the exact same professional title?” Unfortunately, because no definition of the qualifications of the “licensed” professional was included, no probative value can be attached to the responses. We are also unable to attribute probative value to a legislative report, prepared three years before the statutes here at issue were passed, finding that some people are confused about what type of services interior designers provide and marshalling comments for and against licensing these occupations. Significantly, the legislative committee that authored the report made no suggestions for legislation of any kind.

Both the survey and the legislative report expose the fallacy in the State’s effort to characterize certain interior designers’ professional practices as misleading. There is no fixed definition of the covered occupations. Interior designers may confine their work to harmonizing color schemes and selecting furnishings for private residences; or they may design the physical layout of commercial spaces, including aesthetic, functional and safety attributes; or they may furnish services on a wide spectrum between these alternatives. Where no fixed definition of the services exists, there can hardly be a claim that the public is being misled about particular individuals’ truthfully expressed level of expertise or services. The State has offered no evidence that the public has actually been misled about interior design services.

Source: The Volokh Conspriracy April 09 Archives

Labels: Connecticut Designers, CT Interior Designers

Living in the 'burbs certainly has its perks, one of which is gardening and growing your own veggies. Right around this time of year is when you want to start getting your seeds in the ground. There are few important things you'll need besides the seeds, one is good soil, another is water, but the third is something many people don't think about until its too late; you need a good fence.

Wildlife is everywhere on Long Island and if your garden is left unguarded, your plants will be consumed.

In today's New York Times, there is a great article on protecting your New York garden with fences that we thought we'd pass on to the horticulturally-inclined.

It’s a helpful corollary to the paramount 21st-century horticultural imperative: I garden, therefore I fence.

The story is filled with anecdotes from your friends and neighbors which highlight the necessities when building and protecting a garden.

Learning wildlife habits has since sharpened our defensive tactics. We now know that rodent types can push their flat skulls into improbably slim spots, so any new fencing is of finer-gauge chicken or rat wire, or dense plastic netting. White-tailed deer have landing and enclosure anxiety: they won’t leap even a three- or four-foot fence if there is an obstacle or another row of fencing a few feet before or beyond it. Thus some people dare to surround their veggie patches with handsome picket or willow fences, and then string two or three strands of low trip wire fences outside them.

If you're going to grow this year, get smart about fencing options and check this story out.

Click Here For Fence Installers in New York

Read The Art of Fencing (NYT)

Labels: Fence Installation NY, Gardening NY, Long island Fence Companies, New York Fences

A cityhammer.com member was profiled on The Business Insider the other day and the gist of the article was that Handyman Services are in more demand during these tough economic times, not less.

From TBI:
This afternoon we placed a call to Richard Shogun, the founder of Spotless Services, a Manhattan-area cleaning and handyman service to gauge the temperature of that business.

Not surprisingly, says Shogun, cleaning services are down. People have more time on their hands or they're saving money. But handyman services are "more than offsetting" that loss. He's even had to hire 2 or 3 extra handymen to make up for the endless volume of leads he's been able to generate through internet, lead-gen advertising. The handyman, he says, are "busy almost every day."

We were very pleased to hear this upbeat assessment from a New York handyman company. Spotless Services has been listed on cityhammer.com, New York's #1 Remodeling Directory, for over a year and currently offers all types of services to the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens areas.

For Spotless Services' full profile, click here: NYC Handyman

For the complete list of handyman companies in the area, click here: New York Handyman

Full Article: Recession Winner: The Handyman

Labels: Handyman Manhattan, Handyman Services, New York Handyman, NYC Handymen

Apartment Therapy's got a great house tour in a Clinton Hill, Brooklyn brownstone with nice bones. The furniture chosen to decorate the home is low and simple, giving the eye a chance to take in all of the features and curves of the building itself.


In New York Spaces magazine, designer Vicente Wolf shows off a transformational interior design project on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The pre-war apartment had some natural flaws, such as rooms that were small and dark and a complicated entryway. Wolf gave the the apartment a makeover and included an old-meets-news aesthetic with well-chosen colors and sculpture.


The New York Times goes shopping for tools and hardware with Canadian actress and do-it-yourself TV host Mag Ruffman. Ruffman also runs Toolgirl.com and is said to have a massive collection of hammers! Here, she picks a Komelon tape measure, a pair of Irwin Vise-Grip pliers and a Mintcraft 11-piece ratchet screwdriver set. Here's the interactive gallery to see her tool picks.

Labels: Interior Design Upper West Side, Manhattan Interior Design, NY General Contractors, Tools New York