Every Project Starts with a Perspective
Each designer brings a distinct way of seeing, listening, and making decisions. While perspectives vary, the approach remains consistent: thoughtful judgment, careful attention, and a commitment to seeing a project through. The work reflects individual sensibility, shaped by shared standards and a long view of how spaces are meant to function and live over time.
Design, Personified
Design is a personal process, and the working relationship matters. Each designer brings their own way of thinking, communicating, and making decisions, while operating within the same shared expectations. The rest is experience, and knowing what to do with it.
Amanda Patella
Amanda Patella blends instinct, artistry, and practical experience to shape houses that feel personal rather than prescribed. As a partner at Chic On The Cheap, she brings that same perspective to every project she leads. A Sarasota native, her path to interior design wasn’t planned. She once imagined working with animals or studying archaeology, until a photography class and a late-night Photoshop assignment revealed something else entirely: a fascination with the relationship between art and architecture. That curiosity eventually led her to the University of Florida, where she earned her Bachelor of Design.
Today, Amanda approaches each project with the same curiosity and empathy. She’s especially comfortable working with clients who arrive with strong opinions, evolving ideas, or a house that simply doesn’t feel finished yet. Her role is to listen closely, ask the right questions, and shape those instincts into spaces that feel cohesive, thoughtful, and unmistakably their own.
Her hometown roots inform her sense of place as much as her aesthetic.
As a child, she toggled between ambitions: archaeologist, artist, veterinarian, architect, until design gave her a way to satisfy both art and structure.
Knows more polka lyrics than most people know cities, a quirky holdover from holiday traditions with Wisconsin relatives
Finds satisfaction in simple wins, she genuinely enjoys vacuuming and pressure-washing (which, if you ask her, is instant gratification)
Mark Dalton
Mark Dalton founded Chic On The Cheap with a simple belief: good design should respect both intelligence and investment. After moving to Sarasota in the mid-1980s, he began building a practice grounded in clear thinking and transparent structure, long before those ideas became industry talking points. Flat fees, hourly work, and no hidden markups weren’t marketing decisions; they were simply the most honest way to work.
Decades of residential projects have only sharpened that philosophy. Mark believes luxury isn’t defined by excess, but by judgment, knowing where to invest, where to edit, and how a home should feel once the noise is stripped away. Chic On The Cheap grew naturally from that mindset, a name that captures a simple idea: thoughtful design is about discernment, not spending more.
Mark moved to Sarasota in 1984 and has been working in and around design ever since.
He’s a believer in old-school values: say what you mean, charge fairly, and do the work well.
At home, he’s the one doing the dishes. Design, in his view, doesn’t excuse you from participating in real life.
If you’re looking for “cheap,” he’s not your designer. If you’re looking for smart, he’s been here all along.
Ready for a space that feels like it’s always been yours?
If you’ve closed on your Wellen Park home and are considering what comes next, this is where it comes together.
The house is already built. The difference is in how it’s finished.