Interior design

The basics of interior designing

Whether you are building a new home or redesigning an old one, it does not hurt to learn a little bit about interior designing. It is best that you at least know the basics. There is no place like home, so better build the one that you will truly love. Designing your own home requires creative thinking, careful planning, and research.

Your Ideal House
It is important that you have a good picture in your mind of the kind of house that you would like to have before you start an interior design training in your home. One of the first things that you need to do is to determine the size of your house, the color, the spaces, and the formality of the house. Doing a little bit of research before you start building your dream house can come very handy as you go along with your project. You can start off your research by reading some magazines that feature different interior designs or home designs. You can cut off some pictures that you like and put them in a scrapbook; in that way you can put some notes or comments on the sides and you can use it as a reference when you are already building your house. You can visit model homes or tradeshows as well for homeowners to check out the different styles and trends in interior designing so that you are sure that your house will not look dated.

The Formality and Size
First, determine the formality of your house. Do you love entertaining large groups or do you want to keep things private? Once you have determined this, you can now plan on how big your rooms should be and how you are going to organize them. With the size of the house in mind, you can now decide on the colors that you can use inside and outside your house, the types of furniture you can use, the furniture placement, etc. Don’t forget the outside of your house and the garden decoration. The style of the outside of your house should compliment the inside of your house.

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The Color
It is important that you know how colors work and how to use them. You can start by using a color chart for painting. Through a color chart you can decide whether you would like to go for a monochromatic scheme or complimentary scheme. Determining the color that you should use in a room depends on the feel that you want to convey. As a rule of thumb, using one color group creates a feeling of harmony and continuity. While using too many colors create an abruption in the mood and space. Using one color group may seem limiting, but you can enhance the room by using different textures and tones.

The Space
Before you arrange the furniture, organize the proportions of the spaces in your house. Ideally, you would want your house to appear spacious as opposed to cramp. You can create a feeling of a large space in your house by using lighter colors, using one color group, and by using large mirrors. Other things to take note of are allotting space for furniture against the wall and for movement around it and avoiding furniture of the same height and width.

These are just the basics of residential interior designing. You can invest on computer softwares and house designing books to help you with the complex parts of interior designing.

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Colleges and Schools, Interior design

Choosing a career in interior design

Interior designers are imaginative, creative and artistic, an you can learn that in any interior decorating college. They also require well-disciplined, organized and skilled business people. Compounding knowledge with aesthetic vision, interior designers work with clients and other design professionals to produce design solutions that are safe, functional, magnetic and would meet the needs and desires of the people using the space. These skills should be met in order to achieve a pleasing and above satisfactory career in interior design. Like the case with any other career, the interior design career can be rewarding and fulfilling if perseverance prevails. Excelling in interior design requires vim, technical proficiency, vision and dedication to the mission.

Keys to Success
As members of a service profession, interior designers’ fortunes greatly depend on their ability to satisfy their clients. Thus, they must understand the artistic and technical requirements of a project, interpersonal communication, public relation and management techniques.

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Artistic and Technical Requirements
Interior designers should be familiar on how to plan a space and on how to present that plan visually so that it can be communicated to the client without further complicated explanation. They must also know about the materials and products that will be utilized to make and furnish the space, and how texture, color, lighting and other factors compound and transact to make a space. In addition to that, must realize the structural requirements of their plans, the health and safety issues, building codes, and many other technical aspects.

Interpersonal Communications
Interior designers must be comfortable meeting and dealing with various types of people. They must be able to communicate distinctly and effectively to the clients, as well as be attentive listeners regarding the clients’ side. Because they must usually work with architects, contractors and other service providers, interior designers are required to be both good team leaders and good team players. They must be willing to open negotiations and mediations when necessary to find solutions to the stated problems.

Management Strategies
Interior designers must have fantabulous time and project management capabilities since they would often work on more than one project at a time under demanding deadlines. They must know about business planning, and they are required to know how to sell or deal their ideas to their clients, create informative and persuasive propositions and presentations, and maintain good client relationships. They work in a wide range of environments such as restaurants, hotels, stores, offices, airports, hospitals and homes. Surveys indicate that a majority of interior designers practice their interior designing career in several areas, although they tend to prefer one or two. Many interior designers work initially as residential designers.

Practitioners often impart to design education as part-time educators or participants in studio critiques or reviews. Some interior designers turn to full-time educators, helping to train the next generation and expanding their knowledge to these people. Some interior designers also work as sales and marketing masters in related industries. For instance, an interior designer might be the sales and marketing representative for a major furniture manufacturer, providing product details to interior designers and architects. These are just some of the careers in interior designing that professionals go into, some of them receiving much more fortune than others do. Your career really does depend on your capabilities and knowledge about the field.

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