What Do Interior Designers Do?
Chi-Thien (C.T.) Nguyen, the chair of Interior Design and Preservation Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), in Savannah, Georgia, says that an interior designer is a creative problem solver, social anthropologist, and experiential choreographer all in one.
Nguyen’s SCAD colleague Tony Purvis would add that interior designers intentionally create spaces that we interact with on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not. “An interior designer creates art that humans literally live, work, and play within,” he says.
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What are the responsibilities of an interior designer? What does an interior designer do?
Interior designers have many responsibilities tied to potential spaces and their respective clients. Mainly, interior designers are responsible for working alongside customers and meeting their everyday needs, following health and safety rules, meeting accessibility standards, understanding how their work fits into a broader community, and planning and completing doable design projects under specific timelines.
“I always say 10 percent is design and 90 percent is execution of that design,” says Penny Francis of AD PRO Directory-listed Eclectic Home, based in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Interior designers also do more specific tasks, including design services like sketching design plans and putting together mood boards while space planning, creating budgets/timelines, and sourcing materials. An interior design project prioritizes the use of space and its functionality.
“Typical responsibilities include creating concepts to meet a client’s needs and desires, creating construction drawings that will be used by contractors to implement that vision, coordinating with consultants in engineering fields, acting as project managers in conjunction with contractors to oversee both the big picture and the details of a project’s scope, and generally acting on behalf of their clients from start to finish on any given project,” Purvis says.
ASID’s Gocke Wyre has a practice in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she completes residential and commercial projects. “I feel so fortunate for the diversity of my career experience,” she notes. “At my firm we like to say, ‘We specialize in whatever walks through the door.’”
She explains that right now, residential and commercial design are interconnected. People who work from home want their spaces to be functional for their jobs, and those who work in-person want their off-site offices to feel comfortable—just like their homes. She has participated in many projects, including a facility for adolescents experiencing mental health issues and an award-winning multifunctional residence hall. In these instances, she focused on the sustainability and maintenance of materials used and the mental and physical well-being of future inhabitants.
What type of skills do you need to be an interior designer?
To be an interior designer, you need to be well-versed in project management, especially project timelines. As previously mentioned, you need to be able to follow inspection regulations, understand blueprints, and meet the needs of potential clients. The design process may look different for every professional, but their overall skillset will be similar.
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