Interior design buildings housing high-end fabric, furniture, and home accessories are considered number one on the interior designers' shopping list of decorator-only showrooms. The Decoration and Design Building in New York City--better known as the D&D Building, and the Pacific Design Center--also known as the Blue Whale in Los Angeles, California have broken the cardinal rule of designers only admission. Despite the grumbling of a variety of interior designers--most of whom make their money from markup commissions on the fabrics, furniture, and home accessories sold to their clients--are other trade-only showrooms destined to follow?

The fabrics, furniture, and home accessories in these fortresses of design are expensive, custom-made, and oftentimes unique, one-off pieces. The showrooms are glitzy and meant to intimidate the general public. However, they are extremely designer-friendly. They are well-laid out, provide all manner of tips and clues for interior designers to easily make fabric, furniture, and home accessory selections and coordinate their clients' projects. Fabric samples and furniture and home accessory brochures for less portable items are available for the designers' client presentation boards.

Although the merchandise here is expensive, the price you see is not what the professional designer gets. You, the client, see the retail prices; while the designer pays the wholesale price and charges the client the difference as a commission. This is what could be termed "high-end discount shopping in style."

Yes, the secret is out. You, mr. and ms. ordinary homeowner have been running from one garage sale, flea market, swap meet, thrift shop to the other looking for bargains, while designers have been discount shopping in style.

The fact is, some of these exclusive showrooms have for many years had sales open to the public at least once a year. If you've been lucky enough to be on the right mailing list, you may have received an invitation. Occasionally, designers will tell some of their clients about the sales. Designers and shopkeepers often stock up at these annual sales on things they frequently use. The discounts are deep.

Now that the secret is out, these are resources to you, the general public do-it-yourself decorator. There are no organizations to belong to, no degrees to obtain. In other words, you don't have to be a member of a private club with a secret handshake and a code word to get in.