Interior Design Career

Adaptive reuse:

The remodeling of old or historic structures to fit a purpose different from the original. A wharf warehouse, for example, could become a shopping plaza or mall; an old home could become a law, real estate, or insurance office; inner-city buildings could become luxury condominiums or coops. Rehabilitation, or rehab, is the process of bringing any older building up to current standards so that it can be inhabited.

Amusement park design:

Carrying themes into every item of the park, from signs to trash cans and drinking fountains. It also deals with safety, traffic patterns, and efficiency.

Aquarium design:

For homes, offices, and aquatic parks and museums. This specialty could also include maintenance.

Architectural space planning:

Includes floor plan design and drafting by hand or AutoCAD.

Art and accessory dealerships:

Selling fine art and/or unique accessories retail to the public or wholesale to interior designers.

Bathroom design:

An important residential specialty, bathrooms are often designed by the same professionals who design kitchens, as many are Certified Kitchen and Bath Designers, members of the National Kitchen and Bath Association.

Buying:

For large department and furniture stores. Buyers select floor merchandise or lines (merchandise offered by particular companies) carried by the company.

Cabinet design:

Includes closet, and storage custom design to suit individual needs or dealerships in retail modular storage furniture.

Color consultation:

For marketing firms, industry, architectural, or interior design firms, business corporations, government.

Communication design:

Working with specialized needs in offices for computer terminal stations, telecommunication conference rooms, and other areas.

Construction project management:

Overseeing the construction and acting as liaison between client and contractor. This may include hiring the architect, engineers, subcontractors, craftspeople, and consultants.

Drafting:

CADD and computer-aided drafting and design.

Design for the handicapped:

Special designs for handicapped, aged, or infirm. Including design for medical facilities, rest homes, hospices, residences, or products.

Energy conservation:

Acting as consultant to architectural firms or clients to increase energy efficiency and also solar design.

Entertainment center design:

Designing the storage units for television, videocassette recorders, stereo equipment, computers, media-center rooms, and home theater.

Environmental safety:

Research into materials that will not burn or do not threaten the safety of the users or of the environment, consultation to manufacturers and architects.

Environmental/green design:

Specifying materials and furnishings that are from renewable resources, minimally impact the environment, and contribute to a safe and healthy interior.

Event planning:

Organizing and executing furnishings for events. These include corporate meetings or parties, wedding receptions, or other large-scale gatherings requiring temporary interior design.

Facilities management:

Fast-growing field where corporations utilize a manager to plan and purchase furnishings and to coordinate and be responsible for all building repairs and maintenance. The facility may be one building or dozens of buildings in dozens of locations; the manager oversees other employees in the facilities department.

Interior Design Career

Forensic consultation:

Studying a product’s construction and appropriate use for manufacturing, for application, or for purposes of testifying in litigation proceedings.

Furniture design:

Design of new and innovative furnishing items such as case goods, upholstered furniture, and accessories.

Retail sales

Includes furniture or rental business for residential.

Graphic design:

Illustration, and signage graphics such as creating a corporate image.

Greenhouse and solarium design:

Designing spaces for healthy plants (including temperature and humidity control); also designing sun spaces for people to dine, socialize, or relax in a heated spa.

Hard-surface floor-covering design:

Including both the actual design of the tiles or vinyl and the use/application of ceramic

tiles, wood, brick, and stone on floors, walls, and ceilings (including mosaic and mural work).

Hardware design:

Designing doorknobs, handles, and hinges.

Health care design:

Designing hospitals, clinics, hospices, and doctors’ offices.

Health club design:

Recreational facility and buildings that house swimming pools, indoor ball courts, gyms for workout and aerobics. Safety as well as good design is important.

Historic preservation:

Restoration of authentic interiors and maintained as museums; also, restoring fine old buildings to their original state or an adaptation of it. Historic preservation is a growing concern in both residential and contract interior design and requires thorough knowledge of specialized goods and services.

Hospitality design:

Interior design for hotels, convention centers, resorts, cruise ships, and restaurants. A large and important area in contract design.

Industrial facilities:

Manufacturing plants and accompanying offices and support areas.

In-house corporate design:

Design, consult with experts, and coordinate components to keep the corporate image prestigious.

Journalism:

Magazine and newspaper articles on design.

Justice design:

Designing secured facilities such as prisons and courthouses.

Kitchen design:

Planning the latest in cooking equipment and efficient food preparation and serving areas, plus accommodating a social environment. (A Certified Kitchen Designer uses CKD after his or her name.)

Landscaping:

Design firms specializing in interior landscaping select, sell, rent, and maintain real and artificial plants.

Law:

Handling litigation over interior design projects, working toward legislation, or serving as advisors concerning design laws, public safety, historic preservation, or a host of other

design-related areas.

Law office design:

Incorporating specialized needs, equipment, and personnel with an image.

Library design:

Meeting needs of different kinds and locations (such as law libraries) and all the inherent equipment and space planning.

Lighting design:

Twofold career option: designing lighting plans and specialty lighting needs for interiors, and designing the lighting fixtures or luminaires.

Interior Design Career

Management:

In design firms, in industry, or in design-related business, or as facilities managers.

Manufacturer’s representatives (reps or sales reps):

Liaisons between the trade and vendors. Call on design firms within a designated territory to whom they provide or sell product samples or catalogs. They order stock merchandise and provide the link between the manufacturer and retailer or designer in obtaining goods and services, providing swifter service, and troubleshooting. Reps also assist the designer in preparing specifications, selecting merchandise, preparing bids, and writing purchase orders.

Marketing:

Consultants to wholesale and retail firms and to exporters/importers of design goods.

Medical facilities:

Interior design for hospitals, clinics, and other medical care facilities.

Model-home design:

Renting or selling furnishings to model homes. Similar to residential design but without having to deal with a user who will live there. Luxury models for condominiums, flats, or coops incorporate expensive and luxurious design.

Museum design:

Planning spaces; meeting specialized needs for display design, background materials, specialized lighting, humidity control, and traffic fl ow. Curatorship—directors of

museums or archives are yet another career option.

Office design:

Range from small home offices to high-rise buildings. Professional offices, such as medical or law offices, are another office specialty.

Plumbing fixture design:

Designing sinks, lavatories, bathtubs and saunas, toilets and bidets, and faucets.

Product design:

New and innovative furnishing items such as furniture and accessories.

Product evaluation:

Consulting with and recommending marketing strategies to companies that are introducing new designs and products.

Professional organizer:

Assisting individuals and businesses in organizing their surroundings through categorization, decluttering, cleaning, and the application of organizational principles, thus enhancing time, productivity, and task management efficiency. May belong to the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO).

Publicity and public relations (PR):

Establishing and/or marketing an image for corporations, company products, or other designers.

Purchasing agent:

An interior designer can act as purchaser for large companies, negotiating and overseeing correct ordering of furnishings.

Real estate specialist:

Interior designers often buy real estate, improve or remodel the building, and sell it at a profit. Building new nonresidential buildings and leasing them is another aspect. A real estate agent can also arrange financing and sell homes or contract buildings.

Rendering:

Artists’ conceptions of interior or exterior design.

Restaurant design:

A specialty in the interior design of restaurants, cafeterias, bars, and fast-food services.

Retail design:

From individual boutiques to large department stores and from single shops to entire shopping malls, creative designers are in demand.

Retail selling:

Many interior designers own, manage, or work in retail stores. Specialty shops might include accessories, selected new or antique furniture, textiles, or fi ne art. Interior designers

themselves are often expert sales people.

Salon/spa design:

Design of beauty and barber shops, tanning facilities, nail sculpturing, and health/beauty spas.

Set design:

Set design is needed for television, theater, movies, and for taking photographs for furniture companies.

Showroom designer:

The interior design and space planning of permanent and seasonal showrooms of furniture, fabric, carpet, accessories. This can be done on a freelance basis or as a permanent employee of a manufacturing firm.

Solar design:

Requiring knowledge of energy efficiency, sun control, and sunlight-resistant materials. Specialists in solar interior design are needed in both residential and contract design.

Textile design:

For fabrics, wallpaper, or carpeting. Working inhouse for large conversion companies, or freelancing and selling designs (or being paid royalties) for textile design. Custom design occasionally calls for one-of-a-kind textiles.

Training specialists:

In areas such as computers, retail sales and marketing, lighting, product or material specifications, or other design services.

Transportation design:

Including specialties in aircraft interiors (passenger jets to corporate jets), marine design (interiors of luxury liners to private yachts), bus and train interior design, and even automobile design.

Turnkey design:

In which the designer sells the project and assumes complete responsibility to hire all consultants/subcontractors and finish the project with very little input from the client, who needs only to turn the key and walk in to a completed interior. Vacation homes are one application of this specialty.

Universal or transgenerational design:

Planning and furnishing buildings that are easy to use without drawing attention to

the user, regardless of age or physical abilities.

Window treatment design:

Today so many style and mechanical options exist in window treatments that it takes expertise to know which treatments to specify. Fabric coordination with overall design and furnishings is also necessary.

Interior Design Career have various opportunities. You can check our post  what is interior design? to know more about interior design.