Education for Interior Design

Education for Interior Design

Online Design Programs

Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of going to a school for Interior Design. Some may prefer to learn how to do it from the comfort of their own home. This method is not recommended if you are trying to become certified, but if you just want to get the basic knowledge that you are required to know, this method is fine.

There are literally thousands upon thousands of courses for interior design that are offered online. Finding one that has the right information you will want to learn will require some research on your part, but it’s not that difficult. Course prices for internet schools of design can start as low as $19.00 and go as high as $500.00.

Some online courses that are offered through legitimate Colleges and Universities are much cheaper than campus courses and offer the correct certification that you will need. Generally, these courses require that you take your exams on campus or in a monitored way of some sort. Again, research is needed to ensure that you are not being scammed.

There are some alternatives to taking any formal courses at all. This called “self teaching”. This is where you will study the necessary information that you will need to do Interior Design as a profession, but you will not be certified.

Self Teaching

Teaching yourself to learn any field takes a lot of discipline and a great deal of interest. You have to be a motivated person and have the ability to focus solely on your task, but it can be done. There are many Interior Designers that are working without any formal education. They are simply going on intuition and talent. It is rare to learn all of the things that you need to know by teaching yourself, but it a possibility. These are some of the things that you will need in order to teach yourself interior design.

· Learn the proper terms from various books on interior design.

· Observe the many techniques and trends from circulating magazines and catalogs.

· Teach yourself to calculate the amounts of paint and wallpaper need to per wall by talking to your local professionals.

· Get as much practice as you can in your own home or at others’

· Use your local library or bookstore to help you brush up on the proper ways of incorporating space and a balance of space.

Pros and Cons of Self Teaching

Pros	Cons
Learn at your own speed	You don’t get the benefit of a teacher’s guidance and help
You don’t get final exams	You don’t get certification
Cheaper than paying tuition costs	Tuition is expensive
Learn in the comfort of your own home	Must learn with others watching and judging you
Have online assistance when needed	Have to wait to use computers
Practice projects can be a lot less stressful	Still have to take drafting and other technical classes
Extra classes needed are often free at adult schools	You don’t get help finding client prospects
You can earn while you learn	You can earn while you learn (may be overworked)
You can take breaks whenever you want	You can take breaks whenever you want. (may lose incentive)

· Never underestimate the power of Feng Shui. Purchase books on it if you can because it is a great resource for this type of work.

· Get a job at a department or furniture store so that you can get a feel for the job, and the newest and most interesting design techniques. This method lets you earn while you learn.

The best way to teach yourself is to keep up on current trends through magazines and furniture catalogues. It may sound strange, but it is a good start. You will however have no choice but to take a drafting and blueprinting class. You cannot avoid this. Fortunately there are many adult classes available for free.

You will also need to create a portfolio. A portfolio is like a scrapbook that has all of the listings and photographs of your work to date. Do not worry if you do not have a portfolio right away because I will give you some tips on how to build a portfolio, with little or no professional expertise.

Your portfolio will help your future clients see what work you’ve done, which will give them an idea of what you are capable of doing for them. This is your best marketing tool, so make it look as professional as possible. You will also want to add letters of recommendation to your portfolio when possible, or you can request from clients that they allow you to list them in your portfolio as satisfied customers

Different Types of Interior Designers

Interior Designers rarely work in every field. It is common for them to pick areas to specialize in. By choosing a specialty, you can further enhance your skills and abilities in that mode of design. It will certainly make for a better portfolio, and will allow you the time to become an expert designer in that field. Here are some of the specialty fields that you can go into.

Sometimes designers choose to specialize in residential areas, and sometimes they choose to specialize in commercial properties. Some even narrow their field that they specialize in by only doing work for certain types of homes and businesses.

It is also quite common for designers to refuse to specialize at all. Some will work wherever the work is. This leaves the field a little bit wider for them, but specializing is a more professional route to take. It is also better for your portfolio in the long run.

Residential Interior Designer

These designers do most of their work in people’s homes. They design various rooms inside and around the home. There is a lot of freedom in this type of field because clients generally let their designers have free reign to let their creativity create a beautiful space for them. You can do inside work, patios, guest houses, and even garages.

Many Interior Designers prefer this type of work because it is less stressful, and the deadlines are usually a little bit more relaxed. Homeowners rarely harass you to keep them posted on every aspect of what you are doing, so it can be a rewarding specialty. When you are allowed to create something that makes both you and the client happy, the feeling is much better.

The money that can be made doing residential design can be a little bit less lucrative at times, but there are always wealthy people that can use a great interior designer as well. Sometimes, the work for residential areas can be quite small also. This type of work is generally for the designer that is in love with the aspect of being creative, rather than the need to be rich. If you are thinking of Interior Design as a means of expressing your creativity, this could be the right place for you.

Commercial Interior Designer

Designers that specialize in commercial property and work do projects for businesses. The type of business varies greatly. You can do work for banks, hotels, restaurants, law firms; you name it. Any business that you can dream of is open to this specialty.

Good people skills and negotiation techniques are a vital aspect of this specialty as well. After all, you are dealing with business people. They respond well to a good business person. You could be required to design an office space, a hallway, lobby, and possibly and entire interior building. The possibilities are endless here.

This is a specialty where your ability to estimate the value of your own work will come in handy because many businesses accept bids from the designers that they are interested in working with. Also, you will often have to work under specific instructions as to what the client is looking for, so listening skills will be important here.

This type of specialty can be very lucrative if you can establish a good rapport with your client. Doing a good job will lead to a steady, return client, and your ability to satisfy this client will often guarantee you more work as the client’s word of mouth can lead to other businesses desiring your services.

You may also have to work a little more closely with your client in this field as well because business people like to be on top of things to ensure that they are done right. It may be a little bit annoying at times, but it is worth it in the end.

These are not the only branches of specialty. Some designers can choose any sub branch to specialize in as well. There are quite a few and all of them are intended for the designer that has a particular forte in the field. They also offer great employment opportunities for the designer that would like to make extra money on the side. They are as listed below.

· Kitchen and Bath

This is a branch that you may wish to specialize in if you are quite adept at it, or if you have a general knack for it already. There are a great many possibilities in this branch because these are areas of the house that are often in need of dramatic change, and they are high traffic areas. You should have knowledge in cabinetry and plumbing for this particular branch.

· Windows and Draperies

This seems like a small area to specialize in, but the windows of a house or building play a big role in the overall structure. They are a source of energy efficiency in every home, and they are often changed on a yearly basis. Basic heating and cooling knowledge helps, as well as dry walling, and space management.

· Lighting

The lighting of any area is often a bit more complicated than plugging a lamp into a socket. Often, it is the addition of special lighting that can completely change a room’s environment. Some small additions or subtle lighting can change the way a room feels. Lighting is an often overlooked sub branch of Interior Design.

Continuation Of Periods In Furniture

FROM Greece, culture, born on the wings of the arts, moved on to Rome, and at first, Roman architecture and decoration reproduced only the classic Greek types; but, as Rome grew, her arts took on another and very different outline, showing how the history of decorative art is to a fascinating degree the history of customs and manners.

Rome became prosperous, greedy, powerful and imperious, enslaving the civilized world, and, not having the restraining laws of Greece, waxed luxurious and licentious, and chafed, in consequence, at the austere rigidity of the Greek style of furnishing.

We know that in the time of Augustus Caesar the Romans had wonderful furniture of the most costly kind, made from cedar, pine, elm, olive, ash, ilex, beach and maple, carved to represent the legs, feet, hoofs and heads of animals, as in earlier days was the fashion in Assyria, Egypt and Greece, while intricate carvings in relief, showed Greek subjects taken from mythology and legend. Caesar, it is related, owned a table costing a million sectaries ($40,000).

But gradually the pure line swerved, ever more and more influenced by the Orient, for Rome, always successful in war, and had established colonies in the East. Soon Byzantine art reached Rome, bringing its arabesques and geometrical designs, it’s warm, glowing colors, soft cushions, gorgeous hangings, embroideries, and rich carpets. In fact all the glowing luxury that the new Roman craved.

The effect of this misalliance upon all Art, including interior decoration, was to cause its immediate decline. Elaboration and banal designs, too much splendor of gold and silver and ivory inlaid with gold, resulted in a decadent art, which reflected a decadent race and Rome, fell! Not all at once; it took five hundred years for the neighboring races to crush her power, but continuous hectoring did it, in 476 A. D. Then began the Dark Ages merging into the Middle Ages (fifth to fifteenth centuries).

Dark they were, but what picturesque and productive darkness! Rome fell, but the Car-loving Ian family arose, and with it the great nations of Western Europe, to give us, especially in France, another supreme flowering of interior decoration.

Britain was torn from the grasp of Rome by the Saxons, Danes and Normans, and as a result the great Anglo-Saxon race was born to create art periods. Mahomet appeared and scored as an epoch-maker, recording a remarkable life and a spiritual cycle.

The Moors conquered Spain, but in so doing enriched her arts a thousand fold, leaving the Alhambra as a beacon-light through the ages. Finally the crusades united all warring races against the infidels.

Blood was shed, but at the same time routes were opened up, by which the arts, as well as the commerce, of the Orient, reached Europe.

And so the Byzantine continued to contend with Gothic art that art which preceded from the Christian Church and stretched like a canopy over Western Europe, all through the Middle Ages. It was in the churches and monasteries that Christian art, driven from pillar to post by wars, was obliged to take refuge, and there produced that marvelous development known as the Gothic style, of the Church, for the Church, by the Church, perfected in countless Gothic cathedrals, crystallized glories lifting their manifold spires to heaven, ethereal monuments of an intrepid Faith which gave material form to its adoration, its fasting and prayer, in an unrivalled art.

There is one early Gothic chair, which has come down to us, Charlemagne's, made of gilt-bronze and preserved in the Louvre, at Paris. Any knowledge beyond this one piece, as to what Carlovingian furniture was like (the eighth century) we get only from old manuscripts which show it to have been the pseudo-classic, that is, the classic modified by Byzantine influence, and very like the Empire style of Napoleon I.

Here is the reason for the type. Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Empire, when in 726 A. D., Emperor Leo III prohibited image worship, and the artists and artisans of his part of the world, in order to earn a livelihood, scattered over Europe, settling in the various capitals, where they were eagerly welcomed and employed.

Even so late as the tenth to fourteenth centuries the knowledge we have of Gothic furniture still comes from illustrated manuscripts and missals preserved in museums or in the national libraries.

Rome fell as an empire in the fifth century. In the eighth century, Venice asserted herself, later becoming the great, wealthy, Merchant City of Eastern Europe, the golden gate between Byzantium and the West (eleventh to fifteenth centuries). Her merchants visiting every country naturally carried home all art expressions, but, so far as we know, her own chief artistic output in very early days, was in the nature of richly carved wooden furniture, no specimens of which remain.

Avoid In Interior Decoration

|E all know the saying that it is only those who have mastered the steps in dancing who can afford to forget them. It is the same in every art. Therefore let us state at once, that all rules may be broken by the educated the masters of their respective arts. For beginners we give the following rules as a guide, until they get their bearings in this fascinating game of making pictures by manipulating lines and colors, as expressed in necessary furnishings.

Avoid crowding your rooms, walls or tables, for in creating a home one must produce the quality of restfulness by order and space.

As to walls, do not use a cold color in a north or shaded room. Make your ceilings lighter in tone than the sidewalls, using a very pale shade of the same color as the sidewalls.

Do not put a spotted (figured) surface on other spotted (figured) surfaces. A plain wallpaper is the proper, because most effective, background for pictures.

Avoid the mistake of forgetting that table decoration includes all china, glass, silver and linen used in serving any meal. In attempting the decoration of your dining-room table avoid anything inappropriate to the particular meal to be served and the scale of service. Do not have too many flowers on your table, or flowers not in harmony with the rest of the setting, in variety or color.

Do not use peasant china, no matter how decorative in itself, on fine damask or rare lace. By so doing you strike a false note. The background it demands is crash or peasant lace.

Avoid crowding your dining table or giving it an air of confusion by the number of things on it, thus destroying the laws of simplicity, line and balance in decoration.

Avoid using on your walls as mere decorations articles such as rugs or priests' vestments primarily intended for other purposes.

Avoid the misuse of anything in furnishing. It needs only knowledge and patience to find the correct thing for each need. Better do without than employ a makeshift in decorating.

Inappropriateness and elaboration can defeat artistic beauty but intelligent elimination never can beware of having about too many vases, or china meant for domestic use. The proper place for table china, no matter how rare it is, is in the dining room. If very valuable, one can keep it in cabinets.

Useless bric-a-brac in a dining room looks worse than it does anywhere else. Your dining room is the best place for any brasses, copper or pewter you may own.

If sitting room and dining-room connect by a wide opening, keep the same color scheme in both, or, in any case, the same depth of color. This gives an effect of space. It is not uncommon when a house is very small, to keep all of the walls and woodwork, and all of the carpets, in exactly the same color and tone. If variety in the color-scheme is desired, it may be introduced by means of cretonnes or silks used for hangings and furniture covers.

Avoid the use of thin, old silks on sofas or chair seats. Avoid too cheap materials for curtains or chair covers, as they will surely fade.

Avoid too many small rugs in a room. This gives an impression of restless disorder and interferes with the architect's lines. Do not place your rugs at strange angles; but let them follow the lines of the walls.

Avoid placing ornaments or photographs on a piano, which is in sufficiently good condition to be used.

Avoid the chance of ludicrous effects. For example, keep a plain background behind your piano. Make sure that, when listening to music you are not distracted by seeing a bewildering section of a picture above the pianist's head, or a silly little vase dodging, as he moves, in front of, above, or below his nose!

Avoid placing vases, or a clock, against a chimneypiece already elaborately decorated by the architect, as a part of his scheme in using the moulding of panel to frame a painting over the mantel. In the old palaces one sees that a bit of undecorated background is provided between mantel and the architect's decoration. If your room has a long wall space, furnish it with a large cabinet or console, or a sofa and two chairs.

Avoid blotting out your architect's cleverest points by thoughtlessly misplacing hangings. Whoever decorates should always keep the architect's intention in mind.

Avoid having an antique clock, which does not go, and is used merely as an ornament. Make your rooms alive by having all the clocks running. This is one of the subtleties, which marks the difference between an antique shop, or museum, and a home.

Avoid the desecration of the few good antiques you own, by the use of a too modern color scheme. Have the necessary modern pieces you have bought to supplement your treasures, stained or painted a dull dark color in harmony with the antiques, and then use dull colors in the floor coverings, curtains and cushions. If you have no good old ornaments, try to get a few good shapes and colors in inexpensive reproductions of the period to which your antiques belong.

Avoid the mistake of forgetting that every room is a "stage setting," and must be a becoming and harmonious background for its OCCUT pants.

Avoid arranging a Louis XVI bedroom, with fragile antiques and delicate tones, for your husband of athletic proportions and elemental tastes. He will not only feel, but also look out of place. If he happens to be fond of artistic things, give him these in durable shades and shapes.

Avoid the omission of a thoroughly masculine sitting room, library, smoking-room or billiard-room for the man, or men, of the house.

Architecture And The Furnishing Room

CANDLESTICKS, lamps, and fixtures for gas and electricity must accord with the lines of your architecture and furniture. The mantelpiece is the connecting link between the architecture and the furnishing of a room. It is the architect's contribution to the furnishing, and for this reason the keynote for the decorator.

In the same way lighting fixtures are links between the construction and decoration of a room, and can contribute to, or seriously divert from, the decorator's design.

It is important that fixtures be so placed as to appear a part of the decoration and not merely to illuminate conveniently a corner of the room, a writing desk, table or piano.

In planning your house after arranging for proper wall space for your various articles of furniture, keep in mind always that lights will be needed and must be at the same time conveniently placed and distinctly decorative.

One is astonished to see how often the careless placing of electric fixtures upsets the actual balance of a room. Therefore keep in mind when deciding upon the lighting of a room the following points: first, fixtures must follow in line style of architecture and furniture; second, the position of fixtures on walls must carry out the architect's scheme of proportion, line and balance; third, the material used in fixtures brass, gilded wood, glass or wrought iron must contribute to the decorator's scheme of line and color; fourth, as a contribution to color scheme the fixtures must be in harmony with the color of the side walls, so as not to cut them up, and the shade should be a light note of color, not one of the dark notes when illuminated.

This brings us to the question of shades. The selecting of shapes and colors for shading the lights in your rooms is of the greatest importance, for the shades are one of the harmonics for striking important color notes, and their value must be equal by day and by night; that is, equally great, even if different. Some shades, beautiful and decorative by daylight, when illuminated, lose their color and become meaningless blots in a room.

The dining room of this apartment is Italian Renaissance oak, almost black from age, and carved.

The seat pads and lambrequin over window are of deep red velvet. The walls are stretched with dull red brocatelle (a combination of silk and linen), very old and valuable. The chandelier is Italian carved wood, gilded.

Attention is called to the treatment of the windows. No curtains are used, instead, boxes are planted with ivy which is trained to climb the green lattice and helps to temper the light, while the window shades themselves are of a fascinating glazed linen, having a soft yellow background and design of fruit and vines in brilliant colors.

We have in mind a large silk lamp shade of faded sage green, mauve, faun and a dull blue, the same combination appearing in the fringe combination not only beautiful, but harmonizing perfectly with the old Gothic tapestry on the nearby wall. Nothing could be more decorative in this particular room during the day than the shade described; but were it not for the shell pink lining, gleaming through the silk of the shade when lighted, it would have no decorative value at all at night.

In ordering or making shades, be sure that you select colors and materials, which produce a diffused light. A soft thin pink silk as a lining for a silk or cretonne shade is always successful, and if a delicate pink, never clashes with the colors on the outside. A white silk lining is cold and unbecoming. A dark shade unlined, or a light colored shade unlined, even if pink, unless the silk is shirred very full, will not give a diffused, yellow light.

It is because Italian parchment-paper produces the desired glow of light that it has become so popular for making shades, and, coming as it does in deep soft cream, it gives a lovely background for decorations, which in line and color can carry out the style of your room.

Figured Italian papers are equally popular for shades, but their characteristic is to decorate the room by daylight only, and to impart no quality to the light, which they shade. Unless in pale colors, they stop the light, absolutely, throwing it down, if on a lamp, and back against the wall, if on side brackets. Therefore decorators now cut out the lovely designs on these figured papers and use them as appliqués on a deep cream parchment background.

When you decide upon the shape of your shades do not forget that successful results depend upon absolutely correct proportions. Almost any shape, if well proportioned as to height and width, can be made beautiful, and the variety and effect desired, may be secured by varying the colors, the design of decoration, if any, or the texture or the length of fringe.

The "umbrella" shades with long chiffon curtains reaching to the table, not unlike a woman's hat with loose-hanging veil, make a charming and practical lamp shade for a boudoir or a woman's summer sitting-room, especially if furnished in lacquer or wicker. It is a light to rest or talk by, neither for reading nor writing.

The greatest care is required in selecting shades for sidewall lights, because they quickly catch the eye upon entering a room and materially contribute to its appearance or detract from it.

A Young Girl's Room

Young girls usually like furniture with straight, slender lines made of some light-colored wood or painted one of the soft, silvery grays, blues or lavenders. Blush-pink is sometimes used on youthful furniture and apple-green delights young girls if you are sure to give them as curtains pink gingham, linen, or taffeta, with pure white net or scrim against the sashay apple blossom effect!

We know daffodil rooms in which a lovely yellow and stem green are combined. In fact one mother with half a dozen daughters, in the. Spring of their years, has taken a flower for each prom and the family always say, "You will find it in the Primrose Room," meaning Kath-erine's, or "It is in the Rose Room," meaning Belle's.

One modern girl ultra modern, whose room is much discussed, has used colors of a more sophisticated sort than those above. She goes in for crimson, royal purple, orange and emerald green, and shades her lamps with plain natural colored parchment paper, over which she drops squares of chiffon hole cut out in the center. These "veils" are of every rich Oriental shade and weighted with gold fringe or balls sewn to the corners. Her walls are covered with Japanese fiber paper in dull gold, and at her windows hang curtains of a very thin, rope color material found as theatrical gauze. This she has bound with emerald green satin ribbon. The valance at the top and the bands, which loop back, the curtains are of cretonne having a purple ground with birds as design, in most of the colors used over lampshades.

Every young girl likes a three-winged mirror on her dressing table. We think her very wise. The hair most carefully arranged is going to look the most attractive and the hat put on at an angle to accentuate the special charm of the girl who is inspecting herself, is the hat one will call a "winner." Your young girl knows!

As to the wood of which her furniture is made, that is a question of the style of the season. This sounds, and is, very expensive unless your young girl is the clever, up-to-date, self-helping sort who can do things herself. There are many girls of fifteen and sixteen who paint their own furniture and do it very well.

They get their brother or some friend, expert with the saw, to amputate unbeautiful knobs and other fancy excrescence, once the fashion, but compared with modern creations patterned after classic shapes, offensive to ^her eye. Any girl with a keen intelligence can educate her taste by studying the furniture displayed by the leading dealers.

The young girl's room must be what she, not your mature woman, calls attractive. So consult each girl in turn. Young girls as a rule like bright and spring like colors. One should feel on entering that some happy girl calls it her very own. Hangings and furniture covers can be of solid colors, pink, yellow or pale blue with dancing, frilly white sash curtains. If. Preferred, lovely chintz and cretonne to suit each style of furniture come at all prices.

Dear to the heart of your young girl is a dressing table with a three-winged mirror. They sound an extravagance, but remember you can pay a great deal for one; a moderate sum, or you can even make one yourself! If you are blessed with plenty of this world's goods and can satisfy your heart's desire we would suggest furniture of the Louis XVI style made in some light glossy wood or painted. This style with cane let into wood is very girlish and charming. But do not be discouraged; if you are possessed of more taste than money, use your wits. Buy what you can and make the rest!

We have in mind an ingenious woman who made for a young girl friend a fascinating three-winged mirror in fact the whole table by reconstructing an old-fashioned washstand that had one drawer and two doors below. The doors were removed and became the side wings of mirror. Sides and back of stand were also taken away and the back lifted to form back of center mirror. Mirror glass was then fastened to center and wings and framed with picture molding. Sides and back with doors having been removed, the four corner uprights figured as the four legs of a slender dressing table. The whole was painted and enameled white. A clever girl can make almost anything!

One young woman we know bought up many kinds of old tables, chairs, bureaus and beds at auctions in her town, and these she stored in her father's barn to make over on rainy afternoons after school hours. This resulted in her refurnishing their home, and then, that turned out so alluring, she drifted into decorating the homes of friends. To day, five years after she painted her first piece of furniture, she has become a full-fledged decorator, with her sign out!

She loves doing rooms for young girls and says "Give your girl, as well as your older woman, a sofa in her room and on the foot of each sofa a dainty, soft and warm coverlet to draw up over the feet and limbs if she wants to steal a nap after lunch or before dinner. Let this coverlet be one of the bright colors used for lampshades or sofa pillows. Give your young girl gay colors and graceful shapes; plenty of mirrors and windows, lots of windows! Youth would have light and life."

Your young girl needs a writing desk in her room and so placed that the light falls over her left shoulder. If it is comfortable to write, she will be far more apt to answer letters and not put off the "bread and butter" sort! Start her with a generous supply of paper, pens, ink, stamps and blotters. After that she is the one to see that her equipment is kept up so that the desk of some grown-up is not resorted to for necessities.

As much a necessity as her desk is her worktable. And when your young girl moves into her beautiful and complete new room, she is of tea so fascinated by the convenience of silks and cottons to match all her belongings that the task of repairing ceases to be a burden and things get done as a matter of course. It is all taken as one of the items "in the day's work" or program.

Those who live with young people of either sex know that half the battle of teaching order is won when a place has been provided for everything. By this method "house-keeping" is reduced to its simplest form and the actual cost of service kept down. All youth has its untidy moments not to be taken too seriously, but the chronic habit of untidiness, if not checked, gets into the character.