Bumfuzzled Jane bumfuzzledjane.com
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About the practice

Jane Halloway, and why bumfuzzledjane.com exists

An independent interior design consultancy in Portland, Oregon, run by one person who reads every email. No showroom, no product line, no supplier commission, and a strong preference for telling you what to do over showing you more things you could do.

  • Portland, Oregon
  • Practicing since 2014
  • 240+ homes in 38 states
  • Remote nationwide
Book a Design Direction Call See what that includes
Jane Halloway, independent interior design consultant and founder of bumfuzzledjane.com, seated on a pale linen sofa with a striped throw in her Portland studio.
Jane Halloway, founder and principal consultant, Kearney Street studio, Portland

Independent since

2014

One consultant. No junior designer, no account manager, no queue.

Our story

Our Story: nine years of hotel corridors, then a change of client

Jane spent nine years specifying commercial interiors before any of this existed. Hotels mostly, with a run of workplace fit-outs in between. It is the kind of work where a single corridor carpet becomes a forty-page specification and nobody signs anything that has not been costed twice. Unglamorous training, and the best training there is.

What she kept noticing on the residential side was less flattering. Homeowners were being sold a lifestyle instead of a plan. They would leave a showroom with a mood board, a sofa on order and no answer to the only three questions that matter: what gets done first, what does it actually cost, and what happens to the rest of the house afterward.

So in 2014 she started this practice with one rule that has never moved. The client pays, so the client is the only interest served. bumfuzzledjane.com has no showroom floor to clear, no product line and no trade accounts to protect. What it sells is judgment, written down in a form your contractor can build from.

The name arrived in the first year, by accident. A client sent over eleven attachments, no actual question, and the subject line completely bumfuzzled. It described the problem better than anything Jane had written about her own work, so it went on the door and never came off. Bumfuzzled: thoroughly confused by something that was meant to be enjoyable.

Eleven years later the work looks much the same. Someone sends over a folder of 400 saved images and a quote with a line item called miscellaneous. Jane reads all of it before the call, works out what those images have in common, and hands back a much shorter list. Around two thirds of it now happens outside Oregon, on video, in rooms she will never stand in.

  • Nine years specifying hospitality and workplace interiors before going independent
  • Residential consulting practice since 2014, 240 homes and counting
  • Every inquiry read by Jane, every call run by Jane, no handover to anyone else
See the rooms this produced →

Who we are

Who We Are

Bumfuzzled Jane is an independent interior design consultancy in Portland, OR, operating as Halloway Design Consulting LLC. It is one consultant, Jane Halloway, working directly with homeowners and renters across 38 states. There is no studio roster, no sales team and no intake coordinator between you and the person who does the work.

Jane is an allied member of ASID and a member of the NKBA, and works to the EPA lead-safe renovation rules on any home built before 1978.

  • Founded 2014, independent from day one
  • 240+ homes advised, roughly two thirds outside Oregon
  • Zero suppliers, brands or contractors paying for placement

What we do

What We Do

We produce decisions. You arrive with a room, a house or a renovation you have stalled on, and you leave with a palette, a layout, a costed schedule and a sequence — in writing, in a form your contractor can actually build from. We do not sell furniture, hold stock or take a margin on anything we specify.

We also publish ten long articles covering the questions that come up most, free and ungated, under our editorial guidelines.

A trusted source

Why you can trust bumfuzzledjane.com

Trust in this industry is usually asserted. Here is what it actually rests on, all of it checkable: we are paid by clients and nobody else, every fee is published before you inquire, every article is written by the named consultant who does the work, and every cost figure comes from a real project rather than a press release.

If we get something wrong, we correct it and date the correction. If a recommendation does not suit your house, we would rather say so on the call than sell you the engagement.

  • No supplier commissionNo trade margin, affiliate income or kickback has ever been taken.
  • Published pricingEvery fee is on the services page before you contact us.
  • Named authorshipOne consultant writes and signs everything. See the author profile.
  • Corrections policyErrors are fixed and dated under our editorial guidelines.
  • Real clients on the recordTestimonials below are from named, contactable homeowners.

Where to find us

Halloway Design Consulting LLC
trading as Bumfuzzled Jane
1420 NW Kearney Street, Studio 3
Portland, OR 97209
United States
Studio hours
Mon–Fri, 9:00am – 5:00pm PT
Visits
By appointment only

Independence

Why bumfuzzledjane.com takes no commission

This is the least glamorous section on the site and the most important thing on it. How a designer gets paid decides what a designer recommends, every single time, including when nobody involved is being remotely dishonest.

How it usually works

Most design services get paid twice

You pay a fee. Then the things specified for you quietly earn a second income on top of it.

  • Trade discount, resold. The designer buys at trade, commonly 20 to 40 percent below retail, and invoices you at or near retail. The gap is theirs.
  • Affiliate margin. A shoppable list or an article full of product links typically returns 5 to 15 percent on anything bought through it.
  • Specification and showroom fees. Some manufacturers and dealers pay a referral when their product lands in your plan or their showroom takes your order.

None of this is illegal, and plenty of good designers work this way. But it answers three questions before you have asked them: keep it or replace it, this supplier or that one, and specify more or specify less. The incentive always points in the same direction.

How it works here

One flat fee, agreed up front, paid by you

Every engagement is quoted as a fixed number before it begins, from the $295 direction call to a whole-home concept. That number is the entire income from your project.

  • No trade markup. Where a supplier offers a trade price, it is passed to you at cost with the invoice attached. We do not sell you furniture.
  • No affiliate links. Not on the service pages, not in the journal, not in the schedules you are sent. A link is there because it is the right product at the right price.
  • No referral fees. Nothing from brands, nothing from showrooms, and nothing from any contractor we suggest you call for a bid.

Which is what makes the unprofitable advice possible. Keep the sofa. Skip the island. Hire nobody. Do the $300 fix instead of the $12,000 one, and wait until spring for the rest.

It also changes the shape of a plan. A commissioned plan tends to grow, because every line added to it earns something. Ours tends to shrink. The average client arrives with more than 400 saved images and leaves with nine, and the room is better for it. Every price bumfuzzledjane.com charges is published on the services page, and the more awkward questions get answered plainly in the FAQ.

How Jane works

Five principles that decide everything else

These are not values painted on a wall. They are the reasons a plan from this practice looks the way it does, and the things a client can hold us to when it does not.

  1. 01

    Subtract before you add

    You already have a style. It is sitting in your saved folder waiting to be named. The first job is to remove everything that contradicts it, which is why clients leave a call with a shorter list than they arrived with. Rooms are usually fixed by three fewer decisions, not thirty more.

  2. 02

    Nothing is specified until it is priced

    Every schedule carries a real price and a real lead time, checked in the week it goes out. A plan you cannot afford is not a plan, it is a mood board with a footnote. If something on your wish list will not survive the budget, you hear that in week one rather than week nine.

  3. 03

    Structural first, soft later

    Decisions get ranked by how expensive they are to undo. Walls, windows, waste pipes and electrical runs are settled before anyone opens a fabric book. Paint is the cheapest thing in the house to change, which is exactly why it should not be the first thing you agonize over.

  4. 04

    It goes in writing or it did not happen

    Calls are useful. Memory is not. Everything ends as a document: a palette with paint codes, a schedule with live links, a sequence with dates. You should be able to hand it to a contractor eighteen months later and have it still make sense without a phone call.

  5. 05

    Say the unprofitable thing

    Sometimes the honest answer is that one call is enough, that you should wait a year, or that your contractor is right and you are not. That answer costs us a larger engagement, and it is the reason clients come back with the next house. Independence is only worth something if it gets used.

Background and credentials

The letters after the name, and what they are worth

Interior design is not a licensed profession in most of the United States, which is worth knowing before you hire anybody at all. The title itself is unprotected. Memberships and certifications are no guarantee of taste, but they do tell you the person advising you is accountable to a body other than themselves and has read the rules that govern the work.

  • Allied Member, ASID

    The American Society of Interior Designers maintains a code of ethics that requires disclosure of any compensation received from suppliers. That clause is the one that matters here, and it is a simple one to comply with when the answer is always none.

  • Member, NKBA

    The National Kitchen and Bath Association sets the planning standards most kitchen and bath work is measured against, from clearances to ventilation. Kitchens are where the money and the plumbing both live, and where renovation advisory earns its fee.

  • EPA Lead-Safe literate

    Portland has a great deal of pre-1978 housing stock. We raise the Renovation, Repair and Painting rule before demolition is scheduled rather than after, and we expect your contractor to be certified for it. Ask that question at bid stage, not on site.

  • Nine years in commercial practice

    Hospitality and workplace interiors from 2005 to 2014, including four hotel projects and a long education in specification writing, procurement schedules and being argued with by cost consultants. Residential clients get the benefit of that without the paperwork.

None of it decides whether your living room works. It decides whether the person advising you has read the regulation, understands what a contractor is actually quoting for, and has to disclose it when money changes hands somewhere else. If you would rather test all of that in ninety minutes than read about it, send Jane a note and book a Design Direction Call.

Contemporary kitchen and living space with warm walnut wall paneling, pale sectional sofa and integrated cabinetry, from a Sellwood renovation advisory project.

Where the studio is

1420 NW Kearney Street, Studio 3

Portland, OR 97209

Studio hours

Mon–Fri, 9:00am – 5:00pm PT

Consultations run remotely across the country, with in-person visits inside the Portland metro.

Eleven years of bumfuzzledjane.com, counted honestly. Every number below is work Jane did herself, on projects she can name.

Practicing since
2014
Homes advised
240+
States served
38
Supplier commission
None

In their words

What it is like on the other side of the call

Clients are the only people qualified to say whether any of the above holds up in practice.

See the projects behind these

I had 480 saved images and no idea what any of them had in common. Jane found the thread in about twenty minutes and then told me which four things to buy. The rest I already owned.

Portrait of Marisa Ledbetter Marisa LedbetterHomeowner, Alberta Street Bungalow

The bid review paid for itself on the first page. Two of our three contractors had left out the electrical, which is exactly why one of them looked so cheap.

Portrait of Devon Arriaga Devon ArriagaHomeowner, Sellwood Family Kitchen

What I actually needed was permission to stop looking. The whole-home concept gave us a sequence, so we stopped relitigating the bathroom every six weeks.

Portrait of Omar Sedillo Omar SedilloHomeowner, Laurelhurst

Begin here

Hire the judgment, not the shopping list.

Send over the room, the house or the quote that has you stuck. Jane reads every message herself and replies within one working day, with an honest answer about whether we can help and what it would cost.

Book a Design Direction Call Compare all services
Telephone
+1 (503) 555-0148
Studio hours
Mon–Fri, 9:00am – 5:00pm PT
Typical reply
Within one working day