Monday 5 November 2012

Being an Interior Designer is child's play, right?


      Ok, I'm feeling slightly peeved.  Nice English expression that - peeved, upset, disappointed after a throw away comment by a client, 'It's not that difficult interior design, is it?'.   Grrrr,  There is a reason that we Designers often make a better job of organising interiors - we are trained and know what we are doing.   There is a an  unappreciated skill in making spaces work,  in making them look good and work for the family, organisation, individual who is going to use it and within the budget.

With the proliferation of TV programmes that seem to show that you can redo your house in 24hrs with the minimum of disruption, everyone thinks that they can do it.  What they don't see is the planning that went into the programme prior to starting (I hope they plan, budget and schedule the work) to make sure that it all works on the day, week, month that has been alotted for this particular programme.

I will admit that being an Interior Designer is not rocket science, but it does help if you have a very definite skill set: 
  1. Being able to see the end product - seeing through the mess that is in front of you.
  2. Being able to see things from another perspective.
  3. Understanding the people that you are working for, and what they want even if they don't quite know.
  4. Be very good at planning and organising.
  5. Working with a lot of very different people, contractors and artisans.
  6.  Keeping up to date with what is on the market & changes in regulations and planning. 
  7. Patience of a saint!
There are other more intellectual aspects to the job, but for the purpose of this blog I won't discuss them.   What I want to discuss is why do people think that they can do it themselves?  I am not an accountant - I therefore use an accountant to do my books, I am not a carpenter and would use a professional to do that job, if you are not any good at space planning interiors why wouldn't you get some advice from an interior designer?  You don't have to use us for everything, but we can give you relevant and useful advice?

Interior Design is not child's play and not everyone can do it!


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