Interior Design Courses Every Designer Should Take

For the graphic artists and people with a natural eye for creative styles, interior design starts out as a calling – a talent; you’ve likely displayed it all your life in a variety of ways. But, as with all talents, it must be honed to become competitive and truly fulfilling.

Given its importance in home design, there's a lot of demand for particularly talented people with an eye for style and function. Best of all, with the right formal preparation to add to your natural flair for meshing styles and making eye-catching designs, you can get paid to do what you’re so good at.

Interior Design Trends

In order to get really good at combining a range of colors and textures for your future clients, it’s necessary to familiarize yourself with the past as much as possible. Understand styles that were en vogue, and the subcategories of those styles. Traditional, contemporary, modern, fashion-forward, and chic are just a handful of interior décor styles that still find their way into present-day room elements.

You have the potential to work in studios on the top floors of skyscrapers, luxury condos, schools and government buildings – so a solid understanding of a wide range of design styles is indispensible. The more you know, the more in demand your services will be; so take the time to gather a solid understanding of the role of color in different styles.

Specific Interior Design Education Requirements

A bachelor’s degree is entry-level; it will cover most of the elements of interior design you’d be expected to have by any serious employer. In the modern age, computers play a huge role in much of the work you’ll do, and you’ll have to solidify your natural talent with technical understanding of structures and mechanical systems. Depending on your intended area of specialization, there’ll be other electives, such as:

• instruction in space planning; such as furniture layout, floor plans, etc
• general architecture and design
• three-dimensional, computer-aided design using software like AutoCad
• courses with an emphasis on hospitality design, corporate or retail design
• home design – a favorite of many students, given the robust house-building market

With bachelors firmly in hand, and a solid idea of your intended area of specialization, you can opt for advanced study in the form of a master’s degree, or simply head off into industry. Keep in mind, though, that it is a very competitive industry, and you’ll need a lot of work experience to outcompete other applicants who’ve pursued higher education – but it’s all quite doable.

Employment Options for Interior Designers

The employment options run the full spectrum – you can work almost anywhere as an interior designer. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth in this field far exceeds the national average for other jobs; particularly as a result of the housing market – people want to hire you to help them renovate, remodel or build their homes.

Companies need your help in creating attractive offices to woo top talent, and to take advantage of the increasingly computerized business sphere. From an annual mean wage of just under $50,000 per annum, to the quite reachable upper reaches of almost $90,000 per year, interior designers stand to make quite a lot when compared to the average profession.

Ultimately, an interior design degree is most attractive because of how fulfilling it is for the design-minded applicant. You can truly carve out a niche for yourself; doing precisely the things you’re good at. There are numerous post-graduate opportunities in almost every industry – from environmental planning, construction engineering and landscape architecture, to perhaps something closer to home – such as residential duplexes. These are just the tip of a considerable iceberg.