An interior designer from Crate and Barrel gave my living room a virtual $21,000 makeover. Photos show the dramatic difference.

Crate & Barrel's 23,000-square-foot flagship store in New York City opened in November. Crate & Barrel CEO Janet Hayes credited the store's team of 30 designers, as well as Design Desk workstations on both floors, with the new location's success.

Hayes told Business of Home in February that the flagship store books three times more design appointments and does 20% more business than the old SoHo location, which was 40% larger.

I recently moved into a new apartment with more space than my old one. I chose to have the interior designer help me with my foyer and living room since I've found them the most puzzling to furnish.

While I have basic pieces of living-room furniture — an entryway table, sectional couch, dining table, and bookshelves — parts of the room still feel blank. I hoped that an interior designer could advise me on how to lay out the floor plan, enhance the room with more decor, and perhaps add some more pieces of furniture.

The form consisted of seven questions and only took a few minutes to fill out.

It also provided a space to share inspiration photos or link to a Pinterest board of images to help the designer get a sense of my taste.

Once a form is submitted, a Design Desk team interior designer reaches out to coordinate further.

The entryway of my apartment features a console table, a bench that functions as a shoe rack, and a colorful rug that has seen better days.

I've seen some people with similar layouts use the foyer as a dining room, but that always seemed a bit too cramped for the dinner parties I like to host. I was eager for Walker's professional opinion about how best to use the long space.

I have a gallery wall of artwork from friends and family on the right side of the room, but the rest of the walls feel empty. With beige walls, a beige rug, and a beige couch, the room needs some more color, too.

I sent her a floor plan of my apartment that included the sizes of the foyer and living room, and measured out the placement of windows and doors on the walls so that she could create the 3D model.

For me, this was the most time-consuming part of the process — it took around two hours to put it all together. Measuring every corner of my apartment required balancing on a stepladder, wrangling a tape measure across large distances, and a good amount of math. I'd recommend having an extra set of hands to help you with this if you can.

She asked me to describe my design style and share more about how I use the space.

"I think it's really important to view design not just as checking off things that you think you need within your space, but tuning in to how the client lives," she said.

I told her that I like minimalistic designs with pops of color and quirky details, and that I wanted to optimize my entryway-living room combination for hosting to make it feel cozy and inviting.

She also asked about my favorite colors and if there were any colors I definitely didn't want to see in the room. I'm not too picky about that — I actually prefer multicolored accent pieces instead of just picking one color to sprinkle throughout.

Walker kept my current sectional couch and TV, but replaced everything else with items from Crate & Barrel. She added a new wool and viscose area rug that retails for $5,299 and replaced my dark wood TV stand with a lighter burl wood media console that retails for $1,999.

She also added a Henning leather accent chair for $1,599 for more color and seating options, as well as new coffee tables, a faux fig leaf tree, multicolored throw pillows, curtains, and additional art on the walls to fill the empty space I'd highlighted to her.

"Moving your bookcases will create a separate living area space that is elevated and balanced," she wrote in her Design Desk notes. "It will also open up the whole room to have the table pulled out when needed."

She also recommended adding floating shelves near the table and a small gallery wall to the left of the TV. The shelves retail for $150 each, and the set of four picture frames for the gallery wall costs $239.80.

At $399 each, the white Petrie dining chairs she chose looked much nicer than my current ones, which I got for free from a neighborhood Facebook group.

I'd been unsure about whether to use the foyer for dining or simply as an entryway. Walker helped settle the debate by saying I shouldn't crowd the area too much.

"Keeping the entryway open and minimal will make it feel inviting," she wrote.

The Batten brown oak storage bench and panel set, which offered hidden storage to conceal clutter, costs $1,711 from Crate & Barrel.

Walker's choice of a dark-blue rug for the high-traffic foyer area seemed more practical than my current one, which has turned gray over the years. The rug she included in the 3D floor plan retails for $1,599.

I'm not able to spend that much on redecorating my apartment at the moment, but I appreciated learning some of the design principles that informed my interior designer's thought process. I was also grateful to finally get some answers to my design quandaries.

If I had wanted to buy anything from this list, I would have been able to work with an in-store Design Desk designer to look at the items in person and coordinate deliveries.

I can see why the Design Desk drives so much business for Crate & Barrel. On average, hiring an interior designer costs $100 per hour, with some charging up to $500 per hour, Forbes reported. While the price of the suggested product list was steep, getting personalized advice from the Design Desk was completely free.

I initially hadn't put artwork next to the TV because I thought it would be too distracting, but I loved how the gallery wall frames in Walker's design filled the blank space.

I hung two paintings by my grandmother, a prolific artist, and am thrilled with the way they look there.