3 THINGS YOU WON’T LEARN IN INTERIOR DESIGN SCHOOLS

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The first thing that all aspiring interior designer’s do when they think about taking up interior design as a career is to look at courses interior design schools provide. Although this was all that was available over the last 20 years to get into this industry, these days it may not be the best source of information for your new career.

Many courses focus around subject areas which consider interior design as a hobby rather than a profession and so the quality of the information presented in these courses is not only vague but is not useful to a real-life interior designer.

At universities the quality of information is centered around the probability that you will expect to want to build a career as an interior designer, however, the information is not only presented in an academic way, it is written by academics who usually have never worked in the real industry or built an interior design business themselves.

The theory of interior design is very, very different to the practice of interior design and this can be seen with the multitude of unemployed interior design graduates around the world hoping to get work but not understanding why with their lovely certificates they are still unemployable or not particularly useful in an office situation.

So here is a list of things you may (or hope to) learn in an interior design school, just for comparison.

• Design styles and developing an eye for design.
• Art, architectural and design history.
• Concepts, mood boards and how to design a space.
• Decorative textiles, fabrics and finishes.
• Space planning and how to create a layout.
• How to use 3D or imaging software or to draw by hand.
• Develop a theoretical project to start or create a portfolio.
• Learn how to design with light and create a lighting plan.
• Properties and psychology of colour.
• Present information visually to clients and other professionals.
• How to write a brief and how to work with clients.
• How to market yourself as an interior designer.

These are very relevant things to learn if you want to become an interior designer, however, they are not going to be very useful in helping you find work as an interior designer.

As you can see these things are fun, useful, creative and definitely lure you in with the promise of a beautiful career. They do not, however, address the reality of what it is like to work as an interior designer and the basic skills needed to run an interior design business.

I often hear that the modules related to running an interior design business or marketing your services are vague, outdated and dry without much real-life success in terms of designers actually learning how to set themselves up if they were hoping to actually work for themselves as an interior designer.

If you are still quite young or have hopes of working for someone else as an interior designer, then this will suffice. If you were hoping to set up and run an interior design business at the end of such a degree, diploma or course, then you will find yourself very disappointed (and probably broke).

That is why I wrote this post. I want you to know the truth behind what you will and will not learn in typical courses from interior design schools. As I mentioned, this is fine if you want to go off and work for someone else (good luck getting experience with your “portfolio”), if you are straight out of school, have a large cash investment behind you or if you plan on working in academia.

Unfortunately, this isn’t usually the case. I find that often, we get into this field because one day, we hope to work for ourselves, we are creative at heart and we want the flexibility and freedom that interior design promises. Sorry to say then that those courses miss a few key skills that can only be taught by someone who has built a business from the ground up, painstakingly and usually quite slowly, making mistakes and falling far too often. That person, in my 20 years of experience is not willing to give up the information very willingly, however!

So what skills do you need to run a successful interior design business and what are the 3 things you won’t learn in interior design schools?