How to start a career in interior design and become an Interior Designer. Interior design is an exciting career and you can be as creative as you want to be. If you enjoy arts, design and being creative, interior design can be a great fit for you and an exciting career.
Inorder to start a career in interior design, you will first need to obtain an interior design education. There are various routes you can take to get the training and education you need to to be come an Interior Designer and start your career in interior design. The training or educational path you choose to select can determine how you start your career in interior design. Lets first have you answer a few question….
Understand Your Interior Design Career Path
Do you know the difference between an Interior Designer and an Interior Decorator? Spend a moment to think about this and come back here and start reading again…
Being an Interior Designer and an Interior Decorator are similar in some areas but is also quite different especially interms of the type of interior projects involved and their roles and responsibilities. If you get this wrong and chose the wrong career path and you will be entering into a wrong interior design industry and be disappointed or even getting yourselves into liability issues while working on projects for clients.
To put it simply, a career as an Interior Decorator deals more with residential projects such as single family houses, apartment and condo interiors. Alot of their work also involve in home staging for residential properties for sales. Furthermore, a majority of an Interior Decorator’s work involves in decorating a space and that may involve in furniture rearrangement, color selection, drafting work, material and finish selection and creating sample boards.
A career in interior design will involve all the tasks, roles and responsibilities of an Interior decorator above and much much more. An Interior Designer most of time spends more or their interior design career in commercial project such as designing restaurants, night clubs, offices and retail spaces, interiors for schools, hospitals, shopping malls, cars, airplanes and sometimes even new houses and more. The tasks, roles and responsibilities of an Interior Designer involves designing interiors, designing furnitures, lighting fixtures, detail construction drawings, involves in various engineering matters, project management and etc.
Both Interior design or interior decorating are exciting, challenging and creative career. You will just need to be aware and select the right fit for you inorder to build your interior design career. Once you have decided the type of interior design career path you like persuade and I am assuming you have selected a career in interior design, you will then need to path out your choice of interior design training and education. There are basically 2 options or routes you can obtain your training.
Start a Career in Interior Design – Option 1
Going to an interior design school such a college or university would be one of the option inorder to obtain your interior design education and training which generally will take anywhere from 1-5 years of full time education and c tuition fees can range from $2,000 – $50,000 to complete the program for a general certificate, a diploma or a degree. Most required core courses will be selected for you and each school will be different.
I will need to clarify the 2 terms education and training. In most colleges or universities, you are taking an education and gaining the knowledge via academic lectures, books or texts and various forms of exercises. Majority of these education gained are very much academic based. However, training is and should be at the least a combination of knowledge and its application both in the form of exercises and practical and real world skills. Most college and universities fall short in this area and many students can potentially graduated without a job.
The advantages, however, by going to these types of educational institutes are your education in interior design will be recognized and you maybe eligible to join various interior design associations.
So therefore, starting a career in interior design by going to a college or university can be advantageous but however lengthy and costly and you may only gained knowledge & applied knowledge but not practical skills. Most of the time, the first 2 years of studies are really more of an introductory to interior design and you won’t be involved in more larger design projects until 3rd year.
Inaddition, there is no course sampler, you could spend over $3,000+ tuition fees per year and if you decided you don’t like the profession, you will lose all of it.
You can learn about going to this page what subjects are needed to become an Interior Designer.
Start a Career in Interior Design – Option 2
The second option to start a career in interior design is by self-taught. There are alot of self-taught interior designers and even interior decorators. With the internet, there are many more online interior design courses available ranging from individual courses to full interior design program. However, at the moment, we do not believe there are any online program that offers a truly professional interior design program for both residential and commercial interior design. Most of the current online programs are for interior decorating and mainly concentrated in the area of residential interior design and decorating.
With self-taught approach, you are able to choose and select the interior design courses or program or even an interior design specialties you like to persuade rather is in the classroom or online. Self-taught interior design approach’s tuition fees will cost you much lesser tuition fees to complete your education. However, you will need to do alot of research work and carefully selecting the type of school and courses. You will also need to ensure you are selecting the right courses that will provide you the skills to start a career in interior design.
Another advantage of a self-taught interior design education, you have the choice in selecting a more practical training route that will provide you the real world skills and knowledge to start your interior design career or practice right away upon graduation.
Start a Career in Interior Design Summary
It is important to select the education route you wish to take for your interior design education. Remember, when choosing an interior design education, you are looking for a training and a well rounded training including both design theory and practical skill and most importantly, real world practical skills rather that is design, project management, cost, materials and finishes, marketing and etc. Unfortunately, many school and University out there are focusing on alot of theory and not sufficient real world practical skills which can leave interior design students have problems finding employment, unable to start their career and making the market space very competitive for finding employment and gaining the require experiences.
Please also remember, when search for your interior design training, find a program that not will provide you the knowledge and practical skills in interior design , your training should also covers both residential interior design and commercial interior design. As well, your training should provide you sufficient skills to either find employment and be productive inside a design office as well as able to start your interior design office right way upon graduation.
Tips:
- know the difference between interior design and interior decorating
- more technical learning in interior design comparing to interior decorating
- learning curve for interior design is more
- good to take the interior design route education as you can also perform interior decorating work as well
- becoming an Interior Decorator first will be difficult to work on interior design projects as you will not have the knowledge and technical skills
- think about how you want to persuade your interior design career upon completing your interior design education rather you wish yo work for an interior design office or starting your own consulting practice
- ensure your interior education combines both design theory, technical skills and real world practical skills and applications
- determine how much money you wish to invest into your interior design education as this will affect your choice of training route
- determine how much you wish to invest into your interior design education again as this will affect your choice of training route
