Persona: Charlotte Moreau, 45, Antwerp, Belgium — The Emotionally Motivated Prospect
Date: 30 May 2026
Interviewer: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today, Charlotte. I'm conducting research on behalf of a new interior design service, and I'd love to get your honest perspective. There are no right or wrong answers here — I'm genuinely interested in your reactions, even if they're negative or uncertain. The concept is still in development, so critical feedback is just as valuable as positive feedback. I'll start by asking you a few questions about your current living situation and how you think about your home. Then I'll share some information about this service and ask for your reactions. The whole conversation should take about twenty to twenty-five minutes. Does that sound all right?
Charlotte: Yes, of course. I should warn you — I can be quite talkative about this subject. It's... on my mind a lot lately.
Interviewer: That's exactly what I'm hoping for. Tell me a bit about your current living situation — your home, who you live with, and how you generally feel about the space you're in.
Charlotte: I moved into a new apartment about two months ago. It's in Zurenborg — do you know the neighbourhood? Beautiful area, these old turn-of-the-century buildings with high ceilings and tile floors. I chose it because it had light. That sounds like a strange thing to say, but after the divorce, light felt like the most important criterion. More important than square metres or a modern kitchen. I needed light.
Interviewer: That doesn't sound strange at all.
Charlotte: I have my two children every other week — Lea is fourteen, Hugo is eleven. So the apartment is sometimes full and sometimes very quiet. I kept some furniture from the house — the sofa, the dining table, a bookshelf. The children's rooms are set up. The rest is... boxes. Intention without execution. I have a spare room with no purpose. Walls with no art. It's a home in draft form.
Interviewer: "A home in draft form" — that's a vivid way to put it.
Charlotte: I'm a literature teacher. I can't help it. quiet laugh But it's accurate. A first draft that I keep rereading without revising.
Interviewer: When you walk through your front door at the end of the day, what's the first thing you notice?
Charlotte: pauses The hallway. There are still boxes along the wall that I haven't unpacked. Books, mostly. Every time I see them, I think: I should deal with those. And every time I don't, because unpacking them means deciding where they go, and deciding where they go means deciding what this apartment is. And I haven't decided that yet. So the boxes sit there, and I step around them, and I feel like I'm stepping around a decision about my own life.
Interviewer: That's a lot of weight for some boxes to carry.
Charlotte: Everything carries weight now. That's the problem. Before, a box was a box. Now a box is a question about who I am.
Interviewer: Is there anything else about the apartment that frustrates you?
Charlotte: The sofa. long pause We bought it together — my ex-husband and I. Years ago. It was a compromise. He wanted something practical, I wanted something with character, and we ended up with this beige thing that neither of us loved but both of us could tolerate. That was rather a metaphor for the marriage, actually. brief, dry laugh I kept it because the children are used to it and because buying a new sofa felt irresponsible. But every time I sit on it, I feel like I'm sitting on a decision I didn't make. Or a decision I made by not making one.
Interviewer: I notice you describe your furniture in terms of decisions — or the absence of them. How much time and energy do you spend thinking about how the apartment looks or feels?
Charlotte: Too much and not enough. I think about it constantly — I browse design accounts on Instagram before bed, I save images, I imagine what the living room could look like. But thinking is not doing. I have spent two months thinking and zero hours acting. The gap between what I want and what I do is the whole problem. It's not that I don't know what I like. It's that doing something about it feels... selfish. Or premature. Or frightening. Depending on the day.
Interviewer: Can you say more about the selfish part?
Charlotte: sighs My children need things. Lea is growing out of everything. Hugo needs a new bicycle. I'm on a single teacher's salary now, which is — well, it's fine, it's stable, but it's not what we had before. Every euro I spend on something that isn't strictly necessary, I hear a voice. My mother's voice, probably. Or the nuns from school. small laugh "Charlotte, is this really necessary?" And a cushion for the sofa is never necessary. A plant is never necessary. So I don't buy the cushion. I don't buy the plant. And the apartment stays in draft.
Interviewer: Have you ever considered getting help with your home — from a designer, a service, someone with good taste?
Charlotte: I've looked at a few Belgian designers' websites. Browsed. The way you browse a travel website for holidays you won't book. The prices were — well, they confirmed what I already suspected. Interior design is for people who have already solved their other problems. It's a luxury that follows stability. And I don't feel stable yet.
Interviewer: When you hear the words "interior designer," what kind of person comes to mind?
Charlotte: Someone younger than me, impeccably dressed, who walks into a space and sees possibilities. Someone with confidence about aesthetics — an ease I don't have. Not that I have no taste. I teach Flaubert and Baudelaire; I understand beauty. But translating that to a physical space, to choosing between two shades of grey for a wall — that paralysis is specific. I can explain why a sentence is beautiful. I cannot explain why a room is.
Interviewer: That's a fascinating distinction. Do you feel that interior design services are available to someone in your situation?
Charlotte: In theory, yes. In practice... I think they're designed for people who are building something, not people who are recovering from something. The tone is always forward-looking, aspirational. "Create the home of your dreams." But I'm not dreaming. I'm trying to stop a home from being a wound. That's a different starting point, and I've never seen a designer acknowledge it.
Interviewer: Thank you, Charlotte. I'd like to tell you about a specific service now. It's called Everyday Living Interiors. It's run by a woman named Sara de Abreu, based in Amsterdam. Let me walk you through what you'd see if you visited her website.
The first thing you see is a large heading that says: "Your Home Should Support Your Life, Not Compete With It." Below that it says: "Beautiful, functional homes should be accessible, not intimidating, elitist, or expensive."
There's a photo of a warm, lived-in kitchen — wooden cabinets, a table with flowers and books, someone walking through the frame. It feels real rather than staged.
Scrolling down, you see a section called "Real People, Real Homes" with three project examples: a full apartment redesign for a family with children in Amsterdam, a virtual consultation done in under thirty minutes by video call, and a kitchen design for a couple who liked different styles.
Then there are four services. The Room Reset — a sixty-minute online session to help you move forward with clarity. The Thoughtful Edit — elevate your space with what you already have, no waste, no extra spending. The Design Roadmap — a full concept and design package with ideas, colours, layouts, and a shopping list. And The Clutter Edit — help when decluttering and organising feels overwhelming.
There are client testimonials from people in the Netherlands and Belgium. One says Sara helped them create cohesion with minimal effort and expense. Another praises how she found solutions that honoured both partners' different tastes.
In the About section, Sara shares that she trained at the National Design Academy but has been passionate about interiors since childhood. She says she's been helping friends redesign homes, stage spaces, and rethink layouts for years. She emphasises working with what you already own and avoiding unnecessary spending.
There is no pricing information visible anywhere on the website. To get started, you fill in a contact form with your name, email, and a message.
The website's mission statement says: "Good interior design isn't about trends or picture-perfect rooms. It's about creating spaces that feel comfortable, functional, and personal."
That's the overview. Take a moment to let that settle.
Long pause.
Charlotte: quietly "Your Home Should Support Your Life, Not Compete With It." That's — yes. That's exactly right.
Interviewer: I can hear that landed. Tell me more.
Charlotte: My home has been competing with my life for months. Perhaps years, if I'm honest. The house we shared — every room was a negotiation. And now this apartment is competing in a different way: it's demanding that I become someone, define myself through it, and I'm not ready. So the idea that a home could just... support. That it could be quiet and useful and kind. pauses I haven't felt that from a space in a very long time.
Interviewer: What else stood out to you — positively or negatively?
Charlotte: The kitchen photograph. Books on the table. That's a home where someone reads. That's specific and it matters to me more than I can rationally explain. Positively, the emphasis on working with what you have — that speaks directly to my situation, where buying new things is both financially difficult and emotionally complicated. Negatively... thinks The tone overall is warm, but it's a certain kind of warm. It's cheerful. And cheerful is not where I am right now. I don't want someone to make my home fun. I want someone to understand that my home is tangled up with grief and guilt and identity, and to be gentle with that.
Interviewer: You said the tone is cheerful. Can you point to what gives you that impression?
Charlotte: It's the overall energy. "Real People, Real Homes" — that's enthusiastic, accessible. "Move forward with clarity" — that's optimistic. None of it is wrong. But it assumes you're ready to move forward. What about people who are still standing still? What about someone who is sitting on a beige sofa that represents a failed marriage and can't even decide whether to keep it? The website doesn't seem to know that person exists.
Interviewer: Based on what you've heard, who do you think this service is designed for?
Charlotte: Someone with a home they basically like that needs improving. A family settling into a new flat. A couple who can't agree on colours. People with manageable problems and the emotional bandwidth to solve them. The website projects a kind of domestic optimism that is lovely but assumes a certain psychological starting point. You need to already feel okay to engage with it.
Interviewer: Do you see yourself as that person?
Charlotte: Not yet. I want to be her. I think that's part of what draws me to design content at night — it's a rehearsal for a version of myself who feels settled enough to care about cushion colours. But right now I'm still in the chapter before that one. And the website skips that chapter.
Interviewer: If you had to guess the price range, what would you assume?
Charlotte: Two hundred euros for a session, perhaps? More for the full package. I'm basing this on what I've seen from Belgian designers, which is typically several hundred for a consultation. The "accessible" messaging makes me hope it's less, but websites always say they're accessible.
Interviewer: The tagline — "Your Home Should Support Your Life, Not Compete With It" — you reacted strongly to that. Does it resonate enough to make you want to learn more?
Charlotte: It resonates emotionally, absolutely. But resonance and action are different things for me right now. The tagline makes me feel understood for a moment. Then I think: but does she really understand? Or is this a tagline that works for everyone — the couple redecorating, the family moving in — and I'm reading my own situation into it? I'd need more before I believed she actually gets what I'm going through.
Interviewer: What would "more" look like?
Charlotte: A single sentence on the website that acknowledges loss. Not dramatically — not "divorce recovery through design." Just... an acknowledgement that sometimes people come to design not because they're excited but because they're rebuilding. That the objects in their home carry emotional weight. That a sofa is not always just a sofa. If I read that, I would stop scrolling and pay attention.
Interviewer: Let me ask about the four services. Can you tell me in your own words what each one involves?
Charlotte: The Room Reset — an hour of conversation about your space, a kind of reset of perspective, perhaps. The Thoughtful Edit — rethinking what you already own, rearranging, reimagining without purchasing new things. The Design Roadmap — a comprehensive plan, something you receive as a document with colours and suggestions and a shopping list. The Clutter Edit — help with organising, reducing, sorting through things.
Interviewer: Which would be most relevant to your situation?
Charlotte: long pause Logically, The Thoughtful Edit. Because I have furniture I'm not replacing, and the idea of making something dignified from what remains appeals to me. "Elevate your space with what you already have" — that could mean: take the life you kept from the marriage and make it worth living in. But the service name... "Thoughtful Edit." It's practical. It's about objects. And my problem is not that my objects are in the wrong places. My problem is that my objects are saturated with a past I'm trying to move beyond. I don't know if a service that edits objects can edit the feelings attached to them.
Interviewer: I noticed you paused before answering. What were you weighing?
Charlotte: Whether to say what I just said or something safer. I could have just said "The Thoughtful Edit, because it's budget-friendly." But you asked me to be honest, and the honest answer is that I need something between therapy and design, and I don't think that service exists on any website.
Interviewer: What would you expect to receive after a session — what's the deliverable?
Charlotte: I genuinely don't know. A list of suggestions? Permission to throw away the sofa? small, sad laugh I think I would want someone to look at my apartment and tell me it's okay. That it has potential. That the fact that it's unfinished doesn't mean I'm unfinished. That's not a deliverable. But it's what I need.
Interviewer: The Thoughtful Edit says "no waste, no extra spending." How does that land?
Charlotte: It makes me trust the service more. It removes the guilt of spending money I don't have on things I can't justify. But it also makes me slightly uneasy. If there's no spending, what's changing? Is she just going to move my bookshelf to a different wall? I can do that myself. The value would need to be in the seeing — in someone looking at my space with fresh eyes and showing me possibilities I'm too close to see. That's worth something. But the description doesn't quite promise that.
Interviewer: There's no pricing on the website. How does that affect your experience?
Charlotte: It stops me. Completely. If there are no prices, I assume they're high. And even if they're not, the act of filling in a contact form — writing a message, explaining my situation to a stranger — is a significant emotional barrier. I would need to know the price before I could decide whether the vulnerability of reaching out is worth it. Without prices, I close the tab. Not because I don't want the service, but because I can't afford to want something and then discover it's out of reach. I've had enough of that.
Interviewer: If I told you the sixty-minute session costs approximately fifty euros, how would that change your perception?
Charlotte: silence Fifty euros. That's... that's the price of the yoga class I just signed up for. A month of yoga. pauses That changes everything and nothing. Everything because it's genuinely affordable — I could do that, even on my budget, without guilt. Well, with less guilt. Nothing because the barrier was never only financial. It's emotional. It's: can I allow myself this? Is this an indulgence or an investment? At fifty euros, the financial argument dissolves, and I'm left with the real question, which is whether I deserve to spend money making my life more beautiful when Lea needs new shoes.
Interviewer: You said "whether I deserve it." Can you stay with that for a moment?
Charlotte: long pause I was raised to believe that spending on yourself was suspect. Not explicitly — my parents were not severe. But there was an atmosphere. Catholic schools, modest living, the idea that wanting things for yourself was a minor vanity. And now, after the divorce, that voice is louder. I left the marriage. I chose this. So I should bear the consequences without complaining and certainly without decorating. brief, bitter laugh It's absurd when I say it aloud. I know it's absurd. But knowing something is irrational and stopping yourself from feeling it are very different skills.
Interviewer: I appreciate you sharing that. Let me shift to Sara herself. She shares that she grew up making beautiful spaces even with very little money — that she made her childhood room beautiful with whatever she had. She's been helping friends for years before making it a profession. How do you respond to that story?
Charlotte: quietly That's the part that would make me stay on the website. Not the services, not the tagline — the person. Someone who understands that beauty is not about money. Someone who started by making a childhood room — a small, constrained space — into something she loved. I did that too, actually. When I was twelve, I rearranged my bedroom and hung postcards on the wall. My mother thought it was silly. But I remember how it felt to walk into my own room and feel that it was mine. pauses I haven't felt that in twenty years.
Interviewer: Does knowing Sara's background make you more likely to trust her?
Charlotte: Yes, but with a caveat. I trust that she understands resourcefulness. I trust that she respects constraint. What I don't know is whether she understands what it's like when the constraint isn't just financial — when it's emotional, psychological, existential. When the sofa isn't just a bad sofa but a symbol of something you're mourning. Her story is about creativity under limitation. Mine is about paralysis under grief. They're adjacent but not the same.
Interviewer: Would you want to see more of Sara's personality on the website?
Charlotte: Yes. More of her story, more of her philosophy, more of what she believes about the relationship between people and their homes. The services and the testimonials are functional. They tell me what she does. I need to know who she is. Because I would be inviting her into the most vulnerable space in my life right now, and I need to know she'll be careful with it.
Interviewer: The testimonials mention that the process felt collaborative — that Sara listened. How important is that?
Charlotte: Essential. But I'd go further — I don't just need someone who listens to my aesthetic preferences. I need someone who listens to what I can't say. If I tell Sara "I don't know what to do with the sofa," I need her to hear that I'm not asking about upholstery. I'm asking whether it's okay to let go of a piece of my marriage. That's a lot to ask of a designer. I know that. But it's where I am.
Interviewer: Let me ask directly. Imagine you've just finished looking at this website. What do you do next?
Charlotte: thinks I save it. I bookmark it. I come back to it three or four times over the next two weeks. I show it to my friend Nathalie, who will tell me I should do it. I will agree and still not fill in the form. I will eventually fill in the form on a Sunday night during an empty week without the children, after a glass of wine and a wave of longing for the apartment to feel different. And I will write something too personal in the message box and consider deleting it. And then I will send it before I can change my mind.
Interviewer: That's very specific. What's the single biggest thing holding you back?
Charlotte: Permission. Not from anyone else — from myself. I need to believe that making my home beautiful is not a betrayal of my responsibilities as a mother on a reduced income. That it's not frivolous. That it's actually necessary. The website nearly gets there. The tagline nearly gives me permission. But "nearly" is not enough when you're fighting an internal voice that has been telling you for forty-five years that your needs come last.
Interviewer: Is there anything about your life that this website doesn't acknowledge — something that, if it did, would make you feel more seen?
Charlotte: Transition. Loss. The fact that some people come to design not to make something pretty but to make something survivable. I'm not redecorating. I'm trying to build a life inside four walls that don't have a history yet. And the furniture I brought from the old life is not neutral — it's loaded. Every object is a question: do I keep this because I chose it, or because we chose it? The website treats objects as aesthetic problems. For me, they're emotional ones. If there were one case study — one story — of someone who came to Sara after a divorce, after a loss, after a rupture, and Sara helped them not just rearrange their furniture but reclaim their space... I would book immediately. I wouldn't need the wine or the Sunday night. I would just book.
Interviewer: If Sara could add one thing to her website tomorrow that would make the difference for you, what would it be?
Charlotte: A single paragraph — maybe even a single sentence — that says: "I know that sometimes the hardest thing about your home is not how it looks but what it means. If your space carries the weight of a chapter you're closing, I can help you begin the next one." Something that acknowledges that design can be an act of emotional reconstruction, not just aesthetic improvement. That's all. Just acknowledgement. I don't need a therapy disclaimer. I need someone who sees that a home is never just a home.
Interviewer: If a friend asked you, "What is Everyday Living Interiors?", how would you describe it?
Charlotte: An interior design service for people who don't have thousands to spend. A woman in Amsterdam who helps you work with what you have. Practical, warm, affordable. I'd describe it well, I think. But I'd add: "I'm not sure it's quite for me, but it might be for you."
Interviewer: On a scale of one to ten, how likely would you be to recommend this website to someone you know who is struggling with their home?
Charlotte: Seven. Maybe eight. I can think of several colleagues and friends who would benefit from it. For myself... a five. Because the service is probably good, but the website hasn't yet told me it understands what I'm bringing to it.
Interviewer: What would move your personal number up?
Charlotte: Evidence that Sara has sat across from someone — even virtually — who was not just redesigning a room but redesigning a life. That she handled it with intelligence and care. One real story. That's all it would take. The rest of the website is already good enough. It's the emotional entry point that's missing.
Interviewer: Is there anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to add?
Charlotte: long pause I want to say something about the browsing. The late-night browsing. I know it looks like procrastination, or idle scrolling. But for me, looking at beautiful rooms at eleven o'clock at night is a form of hope. It's me saying: this is possible. My life could contain this. My apartment could look like that. The gap between browsing and acting is where all my guilt and fear and self-doubt live. And if this service — if Sara — could build a bridge across that gap, not by making it transactional but by making it emotional... I think she could reach a lot of women like me. Women who know exactly what they want, who have taste and intelligence and longing, but who cannot give themselves permission to act on it. We are not paralysed by ignorance. We are paralysed by guilt. And that's a different problem entirely.
Interviewer: Thank you so much for your time and your honesty, Charlotte. Your feedback is genuinely valuable and will help shape how this service evolves. I really appreciate you sharing your perspective.
Charlotte: Thank you. This was... actually rather clarifying. Sometimes saying things aloud is the first step toward doing them. Perhaps I'll fill in that form sooner than I predicted.
Post-interview notes
The belonging verdict: Charlotte hovers at the threshold. She recognises the service's quality and relevance, but does not feel the website speaks to her specific emotional situation. She described herself as being in "the chapter before" the one the website addresses — a state of emotional reconstruction where design choices are entangled with identity, grief, and guilt. The website's warm, optimistic tone is not wrong, but it assumes a psychological readiness that Charlotte has not yet reached. Her belonging is conditional: she could feel included, but only if the website acknowledged that some visitors arrive from a place of loss rather than aspiration.
The pricing reaction: Charlotte assumed approximately two hundred euros, consistent with the Belgian market. When told fifty euros, the financial barrier dissolved almost instantly — she compared it to her yoga membership and recognised it as affordable. But the reveal exposed something more significant: with cost neutralised, the remaining barrier was entirely psychological. "Whether I deserve it" became the explicit question. The fifty-euro price point is a powerful enabler for Charlotte, but it cannot do the emotional work alone. The website needs to grant permission alongside affordability.
The emotional gap: This is the most significant finding from the interview. Charlotte's relationship with her home is not aesthetic but existential. The beige sofa is not an ugly sofa — it is a relic of a marriage. The unpacked boxes are not clutter — they are deferred decisions about identity. The website treats domestic space as a design problem; Charlotte experiences it as an emotional one. The gap between these frames is the central barrier. Her request was precise: one paragraph, or even one sentence, that acknowledges people come to design from loss, not just from aspiration. The absence of this acknowledgement is the single factor that separates a bookmark from a booking.
The clarity test: Charlotte understood the four services accurately and with nuance — her literary training gives her strong interpretive skills. She identified The Thoughtful Edit as the most relevant but articulated a sophisticated concern: the service addresses objects in space, while her problem is the emotional charge those objects carry. She coined the distinction between editing objects and editing the feelings attached to them. This suggests the service description, while clear, may be too functional for emotionally complex clients. A single line about working with the meaning of possessions, not just their placement, could transform how Charlotte reads the offering.
The trust assessment: Sara's personal story was the most powerful element of the website for Charlotte — specifically the childhood room detail, which mirrored her own memory. The backstory created genuine emotional resonance, not performative warmth. However, Charlotte distinguished between trusting Sara's resourcefulness and trusting her emotional intelligence. She needs evidence that Sara can handle the psychological dimension of design — not as a therapist, but as someone who recognises that objects carry meaning. The testimonials partially address this, but a case study involving transition or loss would be transformative for Charlotte's trust.
The action barrier: Permission. Not financial permission — existential permission. Charlotte's barrier is an internalised belief, rooted in her Belgian-Catholic upbringing and intensified by divorce guilt, that spending money on her own comfort is selfish when her children have needs. This barrier operates below the level of pricing or service clarity. It can only be addressed by messaging that reframes domestic beauty as a legitimate need rather than an indulgence — as something that supports her capacity to care for others, not something that competes with it. Charlotte described her likely conversion path with remarkable specificity: bookmarking, returning, showing a friend, waiting for an empty Sunday night, writing too much in the form. This is a slow-conversion persona who needs multiple touchpoints and emotional reassurance at each stage.
The referral test: Seven to eight for others; five for herself. This gap reveals that Charlotte recognises the service's quality but does not yet see herself reflected in it. She would recommend it competently and warmly to friends while continuing to hesitate for herself. Closing this gap requires no change to the service — only a change to the emotional register of the website's messaging.
The browsing as hope: Charlotte's most unprompted and perhaps most valuable insight was her reframing of late-night design browsing. What might look like idle scrolling is, for her, an act of hope — a private rehearsal for a life she wants but cannot yet give herself permission to pursue. This insight has implications beyond Charlotte: there may be a significant segment of ELI's potential audience who engage with design content not as consumers but as dreamers stuck between longing and action. The bridge from browsing to booking is not informational but emotional. These visitors do not need more details about the service. They need someone to say: you are allowed to want this.
The sofa as symbol: The beige sofa emerged as the central metaphor of the interview. It is not ugly, not broken, not worn out. It is a compromise from a marriage built on compromises, kept not out of affection but out of guilt about waste and an inability to decide what replacing it would mean. Charlotte's relationship with this sofa mirrors her relationship with her entire post-divorce life: she knows it does not represent her, but letting go of it feels like erasing something. A designer who could help her either reclaim the sofa (recontextualise it within her new life) or release it (give her permission to start fresh) would be addressing the real work, not the surface work. If ELI could communicate this kind of understanding — that sometimes the most important design decision is an emotional one — Charlotte would not just book. She would feel seen.
The language gap: Charlotte is highly literate and perceptive about language. She noticed that the website's vocabulary — "elevate," "move forward with clarity," "reset" — assumes forward momentum. For someone who is standing still, processing, grieving, this language creates a subtle mismatch. She does not need to move forward. She needs to understand where she is. The site's action-oriented framing, while effective for other personas, may inadvertently signal to emotionally complex visitors that they are not yet ready for this service — when in fact they may be the ones who need it most.