What an interior designer does
An interior designer is professionally trained to create a functional and quality interior environment. Qualified through education, experience, and examination, a professional designer can identify, research and creatively resolve issues and lead to a healthy, safe and comfortable physical environment.
Interior designers provide various services including:
- Consulting services to help determine project goals and objective
- Generating ideas for the functional and aesthetic possibilities of the space
- Creating illustrations and renderings
- Developing documents and specifications relative to interior spaces in compliance with applicable building and safety codes allocating, organizing, and arranging a space to suit its function monitoring and managing construction and installation of design
- Selecting and specifying fixtures, furnishings, products, materials and colors
- Purchasing products and fixtures
- Designing and managing fabrication of custom furnishings and interior details
- Designing lighting and specifying
Frequently Asked Questions About Interior Design and Designers
1. What is the difference between an interior designer and an interior decorator?
Interior designers are professionally trained in space planning. In 18 states, hey must pass a strict exam and be licensed. While both designers and decorators acre concerned with aesthetic, style and mood, interior designers have comprehensive training and command skills that may include an understanding of:
- Flame spread ratings, smoke, toxicity and fire rating
- Classification and materials
- Space planning for public and private facilities
- National, state and local building codes
- Standards regarding to the needs of disabled or elderly persons and other special needs groups
- Ergonomics
- Lighting quality and quantity
- Acoustics and sound transmission
2. Do interior designers do more than make spaces attractive?
In addition to the aesthetic of a space, an interior designer creates a space that is functional, efficient and safe and enhances the quality of the working and living environment.
3. Are architects and engineers ultimately responsible for most of the jobs that interior designers perform?
No. Increasingly, buildings are designed not as completed objects, but as “shells” into which tenants and others create their own design. Think of the numerous examples of completed exteriors with incomplete interiors such as shopping malls, restaurants, office buildings, hotels and apartment complexes. Interior designers focus on and specialize in the planning of the interior elements of a building’s design.