Virtual designers offer services halfway across the world

Debra Albert, owner of a New York-based consulting firm, recently hired an interior designer to decorate the living room of her Manhattan condo. That designer, Christine Martin, happened to live in Laos.

Alena Capra, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based interior designer, was this year commissioned by a Hong Kong resident she had never met to furnish a flat in Florida her client had bought sight unseen, and would not see until after it was decorated.

Dawn Butler, who owns a handbag and accessories firm, is re-doing her home just outside Los Angeles, using Eleni Psyllaki, a designer based in Crete, Greece, who has yet to set foot on the property. And Matthew Goodman, a New York-based designer, completed a lavish interior landscape for a mall in Abu Dhabi without getting on a plane.

Welcome to the world of virtual or e-design, where designers are no longer limited to projects within their geographical domain. In what is a burgeoning trend in home and even retail design, designers need only the right software, a Skype address and good intuition to be able to oversee a project from halfway across the world.

Martin, founder of the e-design site Somebody's Home, was living in South Korea when she undertook the design of a home in Shanghai. Her clients, teachers at the Shanghai American School, consulted her via e-mail, sending photos of the space they wanted to decorate: a large living room that needed to incorporate a play area for their toddler.

Martin sent along designs concepts and sourced furniture and accessories.