Kelley Designs Incorporated

Gregory Vaughan with Kelley Design Group is very easy going and listens to your wish list. He then works his magic and showcases his incredible design talents always keeping his clients in mind. Gregory is a natural with interior design and his vision, quality and integrity is the definition of what an interior design should be.

I have done business with Debbie Kelley for over 23 years with two different homes. She is extremely talented, professional and a joy to work with.

I worked with Debbie Kelley on two homes in Hilton Head and couldn't have been happier with the results. I can honestly say she is the best designer I have ever worked with. She was professional and completed the projects on time and within budget. I would highly recommend Kelley Designs.

After purchasing a home in 2007 in Hilton Head we hired Kelley Designs to furnish and decorate our home. They were reliable, knowlegable and very professional. Our work was completed on time and within our budget and were very pleased with the outcome. They are presently working with us on a new home we are having built and have been with us from the planning, design and interior stages. We enjoy working with Debbie and staff and would not hesitate to recommend them.

After purchasing a furnished home in Wexford Plantation ,Hilton Head I retained Kelley Designs to completely refurnish my home. They were most professional,creative,cost conscious and highly motivated to finish on time. It was such a qualitative experience I had them do my summer place in Muskoka Canada.Currently they are completing my new condo in John's Island Fl. I have no hesitation in recommending Debbie Kelley,owner of Kelley designs as a reference.They were referred to me by the person /realtor that sold me my house. Stan Meek

This is true and real. Be careful with the contract you sign with Debbie Kelley. It allows her to get you to sign off on furniture and become obligated for items where you only see a basic drawing of a layout and fabric swatches. You have no real idea what the quality will be and you are absolutely at her mercy. More than half of the furniture she got for us was of very poor quality and will not last even a few years. Four pieces were delivered damaged and she said that is par for the course. She says it is yours and you have to accept it because she bought it specifically for you. She does not listen at all to what you tell her you want (ie., furniture which is suitable for a family where children and animals will be constantly). She does not listen to what you want to use that you already have and says she "forgot." She said that we told her to use her best judgment and that is what she did. Well, clearly we wanted appropriate furniture for the various rooms. She did not even put a dresser in our bedroom, but rather a four-times damaged and repaired media center. We told her not to purchase artwork, that we first wanted to bring what we already owned. She insisted on buying three pieces without our approval or having us sign off on and we are stuck. One example: we asked her to decorate one room with a certain motif. Absolutely nothing was done to accommodate this. Another room was clearly where we watch television and the television is all the way to the right of the furniture. You have to cock your head over to the right to watch from one sofa and, if you want to watch from the other, you are forced to lie down on it. The furniture is too bulky for the area as well and is very inferior. It is obvious it will not last more than a few years. Her contractors are very unreliable and she expects you to supervise them. There was only one subcontractor who ever showed up when he said he would (the paper hanger). Two different subcontractors complained and told me they have never had to work without the decorators present but she was too busy. Almost double the amount of very expensive wallpaper was purchased because the wallpaper hanger told me she had stated she wanted other areas papered and apparently changed her mind. Boxes of wallpaper are in my closets. And we had to pay for it, along with her substantial markup. Granite had to be recut and surely paid for by us because she had the paper hanger install the paper prior to granite installation. Rather than rehang wallpaper which had a six-foot repeating pattern, she had more granite cut to accommodate the area left. The paper hanger told me this was clearly her error and that he only hung the paper because she told him to, that it should have been installed after the paper was hung. He also told me his fees for hanging paper and she charged us an excessive amount, far more than what he billed her. She quit our job before it was completed. After quitting our job and never delivering main pieces of furniture for which peripheral pieces had been delivered and cannot be used without these items (one example, an expensive mirror for a vanity table never delivered which has been sitting on the floor in one of my rooms for months, in the way of my getting that room together), she delivered some very ugly items which she said she had decided to sell to us instead of what had been originally agreed upon. And she is charging us for restocking fees on items which she canceled when she resigned working for us. After five months of waiting, we never got any beds, period. One such item she delivered is a very ugly flower arrangement which she said we could put on a pedestal in our family room. There is no pedestal nor room for one nor one ever intended. She billed is over $4000 for two twin bed spreads and pillows. These were not even custom made but came in a bag from some place she purchased them. All the throw pillows she has provided are very cheap and look like what you could find at Home Goods. Four pieces of furniture were delivered clearly damaged. She does not replace them. She has two men come to your home and color in the woodwork and try to cover up the damage. It is unclear as to why all theses damages. First her office told us in an email that this had never happened before and, when the second piece was delivered damaged that it was highly unusual. She tried to infer it was our fault. Then, in front of my best friend, she told me that basically all furniture is damaged when delivered from a manufacturer and she has repairmen on call to fix these items. Her delivery people deliver in a U-haul truck in tee shirts and flip flops and put the furniture down on the bare ground before "installing" them in your home. The rates for this is unbelievable. For a chaise lounge, one bench and one flower arrangement which could have been delivered to our house at any time, she charged us $1100 for warehouse storage and "installation" in our home. There was no need to warehouse these items. She knew our house has many empty rooms and we needed to furniture here. We had to practically beg her finally deliver these almost one month after she told us she had them "in her warehouse". There were charges just under $10,000 for our furniture we purchased through her "warehoused" at this same facility. She happened to come by the house on her approximately six visits during a two-month time period when the delivery people were carrying a sofa up the stairs and banging against the wall. I mentioned that they might damage the walls and she said not to worry, she could get the painter to return to fix any damage. She was also privy to damage of two additional items of furniture which were deliverer that particular day. She "inspected them" and saw nothing but, while we were standing there, my husband looked over them and found two places that were damaged. Certainly, we would have been told later that we damaged them as she would have insisted she had done a thorough inspection. The delivery people do not look over the items. Rugs are not made to lie flat and curtains and bed linens are places on the beds/windows with wrinkles. Still are that way until, I suppose, I bring my own steamer here. Very, very sloppy work standards. Another odd thing is, when she finally produced invoices, they were all dated the same day. When we first asked for them, she told us she had a Quick Books spreadsheet which was updated daily as anything was ordered or spent on our job. She had made it sound as though there was almost a daily accounting but almost all entries were made after we asked for these invoices. If this is true, then, according to our contract with her, we did not need to pay her any money until September. She told us in May that certain pieces were ordered and she needed a check for "x" which we gave to her. To this day, we do not have half of these items and discovered that if she ever did, indeed, order them, the ones which had been done so were not ordered until late July although we had paid her for them. Her contact states we were to be billed 1/2 upon ordering and pay the other 1/2 after installation. She billed us 100 percent in advance. We were supposed to be traveling at the beginning of the job (thank goodness we did not as the work would never have been done and the damaged furniture would have not been repaired) and we asked to be sent the layouts and so forth via email and we would communicate that way until our return to the US. We did that for the first rooms and then we returned from our home In Pennsylvania. Amazing, most of the items on these layouts were never ordered and we do not have them. So the job began with us requesting to give her a retainer for the work she would do while we were traveling. We did this and she cashed this check. Not a problem. We canceled the trip and decided to return to begin moving personal items into our new home. She knew this and we expected now to only pay her when we received an invoice. Rather the next time, it was very urgent that she immediately get another large sum and we gave her this. We sure wanted our furniture ordered and the house to be completed as quickly as possible. However, even after receiving another large sum of money, she never produced invoices for her work and we grew concerned and asked her for invoices. Her reply was, "You told me you love everything." She refused to provide invoices. We did not get what she purports to be proper invoices until last week and they are all dated then. We told her we would not give her another check until we got the invoices. For what we had received, the amount of money she was requesting clearly seemed excessive. She then told us there was not enough money in the budget for the outdoor kitchen we had requested. When she questioned us wanting invoices and telling us she thought we loved everything, we said that had nothing to do with wanting invoices and we were concerned that she had no properly budgeted the money and we wanted I review her with her, and the reason was because now she could not install the kitchen. Then she said that was not true, that I had misunderstood and she sent a list which showed the kitchen listed and now said she did not want to be bothered with that and would back it out of the total and we could make our own arrangements to so this. Then yet another subcontractor did not show up which would have been the fourth time we had been inconvenienced for the same project by the same guy. I told her we needed the invoices and budget by the end of the next week and that we needed to have a discussion if this guy did not show up yet again. She Immediately became "too stressed" to work for us any longer, leaving the job almost 1/2 incomplete with our budget more than 66 percent exhausted. And she is charging us for restocking fees on items which she canceled when she resigned working for us. She actually told me that asking her for these invoices and a budget was being nasty. Just beware if you hire her that you had best get everything in writing. Anything states, make certain it is written in black and white and initialed. Get invoices from first day. There were so, so many issues and problems with her and her contractors that it would be impossible to outline all of them. She does have one designer who actually seemed to be knowledgeable and caring and he tried to help me when she was not able to be reached but as he stated in texts and emails to me, his time was allocated to other clients and he was unable to help out in the many, many instances where she could not reached. Be prepared to handle a large amount of the work yourself and be prepared to accept what she has decided you will get, contrary to what you asked for. Half of the items she delivered are beautiful and we love them but the other half is of very low quality and it is difficult to believe she thought she was getting us what we wanted. Oh, she even tried to pawn off what appeared to be a used clock. It was broken, never worked, did not have a pendulum, was brought in as though just taken off the wall somewhere else and had damaged advertising on the back. I has to find nails/screws to hang it on my wall. Luckily it never worked and I had to remove it. That is when I could see it was obviously used She was recommended by our realtor who it turns out is a very close friend of hers. Someone gave me some good advice: Vet people that you hire. Do not take recommendations of realtors. We sure have not been pleased by the ones he gave us.

We worked with Gregory Vaughan of Kelley Designs to decorate our home in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He was helpful in looking at furniture we already owned and then making choices to compliment those pieces with additional pieces of furniture for the house. He also helped in selecting wall colors, rugs and accessory pieces. There was never pressure to purchase more than what was actually needed and he kept our budget in mind throughout the entire process. We were delighted with the individual attention and help we received and will continue to use Gregory and Kelley Design for any future projects. We are looking at condensing two households into one and at that time we will use Gregory's help to decide what we will keep and what we will pass on to family or to a charity of our choice. We give an excellent recommendation to Gregory Vaughan and Kelly Designs, Inc. Dr. Bill & Sylvia Richards

Kelley Designs is a wonderful company to work with. They are very talented and tasteful. Their abilities range from Old World Elegance to Country Rustic and all levels in between. They know their clients needs and desires as well as how to follow a budget. They are very established in our community and I've enjoyed working with them over the last 30 years.

My experiences with Kelley Designs have always been extremely professional and satisfying. Gregory Vaughn is very knowledgeable about style and design is able to define each clients' tastes perfectly. He is very conscientious regarding budgets and meeting the construction schedule. This is very important in being able to deliver a quality custom home. It is a joy to know he is a part of any project. He brings with him a great attitude and a wealth of experience.

I have been privileged to work with Kelley Designs on several projects. I have found them to be highly professional, creative and thorough. The highest complement I can pay is that my clients love working with them and though working with Kelley Designs have a home that reflects how they want to live.

It was a pleasure working with Kelley Designs team, Debbie, Gregory and Erin. Having to commute for 6 months to Hilton Head Island for 3-4 days at a time to work on furnishing and decorating an empty house, I needed a decorating team to help see me through this project. They were wonderful in every respect. They had great ideas and worked in a timely and efficient manner.

Kelley designs was a very professional company to work with. We had approximately one year to plan my project and the deadline was easily met. They were a lot of fun to work with and very creative. All the planning was very detailed and extremely well organized. There was never any question about what decisions we had made. it was so fulfilling to see my house turn out exactly as we had planned. It has received rave reviews and I could not be any prouder! The only part that is sad is that I cannot work with Debbie and Gregory every month anymore! Maybe I can come up with another project!