Mr Call is the first credentialed interior designer to publicly grade retail furniture. For twenty-five years he specified it for Fortune 500 executives, venture capital and private equity partners, and Academy Award winners. Now he grades the sofas everyone else can buy.
Mr Call Designs is a private interior design practice made public. Mr Call earned a BFA in interior design from Cornish College of the Arts, trained at Diamond Baratta Design under Bill Diamond and Tony Baratta, then at Shawn Henderson, and opened his own practice in 2010. Across fifteen years the practice ran about one hundred projects and specified just over forty-one million dollars of furniture. House Beautiful named the work Next Wave.
The training was not only the top of the market. From 2008 to 2010, Mr Call was Creative Producer on HGTV’s The High-Low Project—twenty-three episodes on translating designer rooms into budgets viewers could actually spend. From 2013, the practice moved into student housing—more than thirteen thousand seven hundred beds across thirteen states. The top end teaches what a room should feel like when nothing is spared. The bottom end teaches what retail furniture does after four years of twenty-year-olds. Both ends sit behind every review.
At Diamond Baratta, as a junior on the architecture team, Mr Call designed the bathroom, living room, library, and kitchen millwork for a Manhattan townhouse later used as a filming location for The Devil Wears Prada.
Mr Call Designs publishes independent furniture reviews. Each one grades a retail sofa against The Call Standard™—ten categories, each scored one to ten, summed to one hundred. Ninety or above earns the mark, MR CALL APPROVED. About fifteen percent qualify. Everything else publishes as a regular review, score included.
The money comes from affiliate commissions. The brands pay; the shopper pays nothing. The grade is set before any brand is contacted, and no brand can pay to change it. A brand that earns the mark can license it, renewed yearly and re-reviewed each time. A brand can also commission a pre-market assessment of an unreleased product; it publishes as a review when the product ships.
Interior designers know what lasts and what only photographs well. That knowledge has always been private—billed by the hour, kept for the wealthy. Mr Call Designs makes it public, for free.
The Strategist has journalists. Wirecutter has lab testers. No publication in the furniture review space has had a credentialed interior designer. Mr Call is the first.
A designer with twenty-five years of private practice and over forty-one million dollars of specified product closed the retainer side of his firm and now publishes the advice for free. Affiliate commissions replace the hourly fee. The brands pay. The shopper pays nothing.
From Academy Award winners’ homes on Gramercy Park to more than thirteen thousand student housing beds across thirteen states. The top end teaches the ceiling. The bottom end teaches how frames hold up under four years of twenty-year-olds. The range is rare in one career.
Fifteen years ago, Mr Call was Creative Producer of The High-Low Project on HGTV. The show took designer looks and rebuilt them on a retail budget. Twenty-three episodes. Mr Call Designs is the same thesis, at scale.
Every reviewed sofa publishes. Scores of ninety or above earn MR CALL APPROVED. About fifteen percent qualify. The rest publish as regular reviews with their scores.
Interior designers know what lasts and what only photographs well. That knowledge was always private, billed by the hour. I make it public.
On what a designer doesI am the first credentialed interior designer to publicly grade retail furniture. Other reviews come from journalists and lab testers. Mine come from twenty-five years inside the practice.
On the positioningBrands pay to display a mark they already earned. No brand pays for the mark itself. That line does not move.
On the businessA six-hundred-dollar IKEA piece and a twelve-thousand-dollar sectional are graded against the same standard, calibrated to their prices. An affordable sofa can earn the mark. An expensive one can fail.
On The Call Standard™The practice did not change its standards when it went public. It changed who pays the fee.
On the shift to retailAvailable for interviews, podcasts, on-the-record quotes, and photo requests.