Interior design quotes are a great way to get inspired and motivated when starting a new project. Some of the most famous designers in history have said some amazing things that can help you on your way.
Here are the most famous interior design quotes that will get you thinking.
Interior Design Quotes to Get Inspired
001 – “an interior is the natural projection of the soul” – Coco Chanel
002 – “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” ― Leonardo da Vinci
003 – “Less is more” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
004 – “We shape our homes and then our homes shape us.” – Winston Churchill
005 – “Good design doesn’t date.” – Harry Seidler
006 – “The best rooms have something to say about the people who live in them.” – David Hicks
007 – “The home should be the treasure chest of living.” – Le Corbusier
008 – Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.” – Frank Gehry
009 – “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs
010 – “Architecture is inhabited sculpture.” – Constantin Brancusi
011 – “A room is not a room without natural light.” – Louis Kahn
012 – “Every room needs a touch of black, just as it needs one antique piece.” – Jan Showers
013 – “The door handle is the handshake of the building.” – Juhani Pallasmaa
014 – “No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.” – William Morris
015 – “Interior decoration partly thrives on being social.” – Nicholas Haslam
016 – “One should never be the oldest thing in one’s house.” – Patsy Stone
017 – “The details are not the details. They make the design.” – Charles Eames
018 – “Real comfort, visual and physical, is vital to every room.” – Mark Hampton
019 – “I always put in one controversial item. It makes people talk.” – Dorothy Draper
020 – “Dare to be different and unique but make sure you answer the brief ” – @amiconsulting
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021 – “Architecture is a visual art and the buildings speak for themselves.” – Julia Morgan
022 – “Being identifiably ‘something’ will help you stand out from the crowd. ” – @RunForTheHillls
023 – “I am going to make everything around me beautiful—that will be my life.” – Elsie De Wolfe
024 – “I’d say the most important advice would be to network, network, network. ” – @chapter7design
025 – “Be patient and positive. These things take time and do not happen overnight. ” – @noushkadesign
026 – “The best rooms have something to say about the people who live in them.” – David Hicks
027 – “Listen to the building and the project rather than impose a specific style and design to it ” – @AzouInteriors
028 – “Chandeliers are the marvels of drop-dead showiness, the jewelry of architecture.” – Peter York
029 – “Be faithful to your own taste, because nothing you really like is ever out of style.” – Billy Baldwin
030 – “To create an interior, the designer must develop an overall concept and stick to it.” – Albert Hadley
031 – “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
032 – “A house is much more than a mere shelter—it should lift us emotionally and spiritually.” – John Saldino
033 – “Architecture is the learned game correct and magnificent of forms assembled in the light.” – Le Corbusier
034 – “Design is defined by light and shade, and appropriate lighting is enormously important. ” – Albert Hadley
035 – “With plenty of self belief, ambition and hard work you can turn your passion into a career.” – @bhavintdesign
find your inspiration with these interior design quotes
036 – “A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense.” – Bruno Munari
037 – “Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space.” – Zaha Hadid
038 – “There are two things that make a room timeless: a sense of history and a piece of the future.” – Charlotte Moss
039 – “My advice to new interior designers would be to have confidence in your ability and your vision ” – @mrs__w
040 – “Whether spare or elaborate, harmonious moldings are the mark of a successful classical interior.” – Peter Pennoyer
041 – “Most importunely enjoy it and welcome to this fabulous world of interior design ” – @Twist_Interiors
042 – “Underneath all I design lies the solid belief that beauty is a positive force.” – Barbara Barry
043 – “Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There is begins.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
044 – “Good buildings come from good people and all problems are solved by good design.” – Stephen Gardiner
045 – “If your client doesn’t already know they’re style be the one to help them find it ” – @atominteriors”
046 – “A room should never allow the eye to settle in one place. It should smile at you and create fantasy.” – Juan Montoya
047 – “Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.” – Charles Eames
048 – “Another word for minimalism is ‘elegance.’ Elegance is beautifully resolving an issue with minimal means.” – Tom Kundig
049 – “Furniture that is too obviously designed is very interesting often belongs only in museums.” – Milo Baughman
050 – “The principle of the design – the harmony, rhythm and balance are all the same with interior design.” – Venus Williams
best tips straight from experts
051 – “Interior design is making the best possible use of the available space” – Anonymous
052 – “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” – Thomas Edison
053 – “True modernism always appears effortless but can only truly be achieved by exercising the utmost discipline.” – Waldo Fernandez
054 – “When you’re building a room, you’re building character, and character is the strength and wisdom of a home.” – Rose Tarlow
055 – “For a house to be successful, the objects in it must communicate with one another, respond and balance one another.” – Andrée Putman
056 – “I like an interior that defies labeling. I don’t really want someone to walk into a room and know that I did it.” – Bunny Williams
057 – “Form follows function—that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
058 – “All rooms ought to look as if they were lived in, and to have so to say, a friendly welcome ready for the incomer.” – William Morris
059 – “Tonal and subtle color combinations allow us to mix furniture and pieces from different eras together to create a cohesive narrative.” – Rafael de Cárdenas
060 – “Don’t undersell yourself – you have worked hard for your qualifications, your clients have come to you for those skills ” – @reynedesign
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061 – “Design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.” – Norman Foster
062 – “The key to being successful is being really practical and totally understanding how your clients live and what their needs are” – @Urban_Grain
063 – “A modernist seeks rigor and honesty beyond ‘form follows function,’ creating spaces that transcend enclosure and become an art form.” – Lee F. Mindel
064 – “Classicism is about remembering instead of forgetting. I’m interested in making the old new and seeing what is modern in historical things.” – Thomas O’Brien
065 – “There is a real sense of perfection of scale in the neoclassical period. When mastered, it becomes easy to adapt to any kind of style.” – Jean-Louis Deniot
066 – “It has to be a subtle, un-strident mix, and the key, of course, is getting the personality of both house and those living in it right.” – Nicky Haslam
067 – “Innovation is often the ability to reach into the past and bring back what is good, what is beautiful, what is useful, what is lasting.” – Sister Parish
068 – “Get paid for your time and for your work, otherwise you will be pursuing an expensive hobby rather than a professional interior design career. ” – @adriennechinn
069 – “Minimalism is designing to allow the art, the books, the view, the people—whatever matters most to the inhabitant—to be the soul of the space.” – Deborah Berke
070 – “Rawness and refinement are not opposite ends of a luxurious spectrum. They are two complementary features with which to populate a luxe environment.” – Kelly Weartsler
Find your inspiration
071 – “A room should never allow the eye to settle in one place. It should smile at your and create fantasy.” – Juan Montoya
072 – ” Home is the starting place of love, hope and dreams.” – Anonymous
073 – “Learn to look not just with your eyes but with your heart. Find the things that connect with you. How else will you know how to design your home?” – Kelly Hoppen
074 – “Listening to a client when taking a brief is one of the most important skills you can have as an interior designer and one that is often over-looked” – @myintdesign
075 – “The best traditional houses are anchored by a low-key sophistication—elegance and refinement balanced by understatement and an abundance of comfort.” – Gil Schafer
076 – “I want to create a place, like a little island, where you can have all your things around you and be comfortable and read a book and even sleep overnight.” – Patricia Urquiola
077 – “If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris
078 – “Luxury is when it seems flawless, when you reach the right balance between all elements. Understated theatricality – that is what my luxury is all about.” – Jean-Louis Deniot
079 – “Don’t be tempted just to pick any job, really go with what feels right in the aesthetic as you need to create beautiful things that you love and relate to. ” – @osborninteriors
080 – “You create your own decoration. You choose your color, you choose your mood…. If you are depressed, you put some bright yellow and suddenly you are happy.” – Phillip Starck
Get Inspired by These Interior Design Quotes!
081 – “Design is coming to grips with one’s real lifestyle, one’s real place in the world. Rooms should not be put together for show but to nourish one’s wellbeing.” – Albert Hadley
082 – “Classicism is not to say it is staid—quite the contrary, as it is rooted in the classic elements that write the rules and then allow you to reinterpret them.” – Brian McCarthy
083 – “In modernism there’s a certain openness, transparency, and relationship to context, how it deals with the pragmatics of the situation—all of these things are part of it.” – Richard Meier
084 – “Chairs are uniquely the best expression of design. They encompass more of the challenges by which I live and work than any other single component of furniture.” – Vladimir Kagan
085 – “We often think of the principal responsibility of a modern interior, particularly one in a project with a beautiful site or a great view, as staying out of the way” – Steven Harris
086 – “It’s the antithesis of ‘decor’ and the opposite of ‘designed.’ It’s full of personality and comfort. It’s collecting and layering to create a style entirely one’s own.” – Roman Alonso
087 – “Designers and people in general are too attracted by ‘new’, but nothing ages more quickly than ‘newness’. All my objects reflect [a] marriage between past and present.” – Marcel Wanders
088 – “A designer has a duty to create timeless design. To be timeless you have to think really far into the future, not next year, not in two years but in 20 years minimum.” – Phillip Starck
089 – “Integrating reclaimed materials into the architecture—among them, wood or stone flooring, rough-hewn beams, and parged walls—creates a very engaging and tactile environment.” – Darryl Carter
Invaluable advice from top designers
090 – “We’ve found that bringing back objects from travels can add an almost totemic resonance to a space, invoking a different perspective and recalling that nomadic state of mind” – Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch
091 – “The design of a dress, furniture, a house, a room, a street and a city are all the same process.” – Gianfranco Ferre
092 – “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh
093 – “Yves Saint Laurent’s fantastically eclectic rue de Babylone residence inspires me for all those überchic clients of ours today who follow their own paths and make their own rules” – Jamie Drake
094 – “A combination of texture, soft patinas, warm woods, and old stone mixed with down-filled furniture, graphic textiles, and ceramics creates spaces that are easy, comfortable, and warm.” – Mark Cunningham
095 – “An iconoclast has vision. They mix things up and make you see things in a fresh way. They also often have a wicked sense of humor, which makes them so fun to sit next to at dinner.” – Miles Redd
096 – “To design for a globe-trotting client is always an exciting adventure. I love to use vintage ikats from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. And exotic tiles always add an air of fantasy to a space.” – Martyn Lawrence Bullard
097 – “Furniture is needed for practical reasons, and because it must be there, it may as well be as pleasant as possible to look at, and in a less definable psychological way, comforting to the spirit.” – Edward J Wormley
Quotes about interior design to find your inspiration
098 – “In the case of not obeying the rules of design, something becomes incredibly personal. It becomes your own, and it becomes also something that nobody else shares because it’s your own eye.” – Robert Couturier
099 – “Proper proportions, grounded compositions, and identifiably correct details make me feel rooted in time, place, and culture, but they also free me up to dive into decorative flights of fancy.” – Alexa Hampton
100 – “Minimalist design is deceptively complicated. Those clean lines and unbroken planes don’t come easily. Cornices, moldings, trim, and the like were invented to hide construction imperfections.” – Russell S. Groves
101 – “I think my unrelenting drive for order is what makes me a modernist. It’s about creating an atmosphere with an economy of means and allowing anything extra or unnecessary to fall by the wayside.” – Thad Hayes
102 – “Ultimately it’s about working with clients so they are comfortable and excited about all the new changes that are going to happen in their home and with trades to ensure the project is delivered! ” – @fbainteriors
103 – “I like to try to achieve a calm serenity in my work. I want to create interiors that allow furniture, art, and, of course, architecture space to breathe—but there must always be a warmth in the atmosphere.” – Rose Uniacke
104 – “What is quality? Quality design must have a sense of authenticity. My work is not cutting edge, it is not supposed to be, but sometimes, the middle of the road is the most dangerous place to walk.” – David Collins
105 – “Being an iconoclast is a state of mind and heart. It’s having a free spirit, finding inspiration everywhere, and not minding rules. It’s appreciating the raw and natural, finding beauty in anomalies.” – Kelly Wearstler
Get ahead with these tips!
106 – “The here and now defines modernity—being present in the moment while equally aware of past experiences and the likely future, thus able to synthesize this knowledge into a coherent and inimitable design.” – Alan Wanzenberg
107 – “Minimalists can answer the what, where, and why for everything they own. It’s designing to allow the art, the books, the view, the people—whatever matters most to the inhabitant—to be the soul of the space.” – Deborah Berke
108 – “From the primitive crafts I discover to the changing colors of the sand dunes of Namibia as the day progresses, the constant awareness while traveling brings more depth and a broader color palette to design.” – Vicente Wolf
109 – “Get to understand and know the market you are trying to build your business in and above all listen to your clients as it is important to create a scheme that suits them not you but have a little bit of you in it too… ” – @SassyProperty
110 – “I love creating rooms that are layered, cozy, and familiar—filled with deep overstuffed sofas, venerable brown furniture, a friendly mix of patterns, colors, collections, and paintings, and carpets that look better with age.” – Richard Keith Langham
111 – “First and foremost, travel to exotic places informs me as a designer as to pattern, color, and texture usually expressed in local crafts. It’s wonderful to work with the traditional artisans to produce a design element, then use it in a modern way.” – Richard Mishaan
The best rooms have something to say about the people who live in them.
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112 – “To be a modernist is a way of living, and how one approaches life. It’s not just about having the latest design from Milan, because if you know what you’re doing you can have an antique piece that feels very modern in an environment.” – Steven Volpe
113 – “The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live. It is about the realities of what makes for an attractive, civilized, meaningful environment, not about fashion or what’s in or what’s out. This is not an easy job.” – Albert Hadley
114 – “Nothing adds soul to a space like a distinctive wall covering. It envelops the room in such unique spirit. Designs that may read as too loud in larger quantities are a great choice to accentuate in moderation, such as on a ceiling or one wall. In smaller doses, they evoke just the right amount of drama.” – Kelly Weartsler
115 – “The basis of being a modernist and designing for one is clarity. Achieving the latter requires distilling an idea to its elements, and then carefully calibrating proportion, light, and materiality to most honestly reflect the way the client wants to live.” – Ron Radziner
116 – “The details are not the details. They make the design.” – Charles Eames
117 – “I always put in one controversial item. It makes people talk.” – Dorothy Draper
118 – “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
119 – “Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous.” – Ralph Caplan
120 – “Design is so simple. That’s why it’s so complicated.” – Paul Rand
Conclusion
Interior design quotes can be a great way to get inspired. They can remind you of why you started designing in the first place, or give you new ideas for how to approach a project.
Additionally, the quotes about interior design can help inspire you as you create your perfect home. They remind you that you don’t have to be limited by what is currently in style, and that there are endless possibilities for creating a beautiful space.
