An interior designer creates interior living or work spaces to accommodate people’s needs. A designer problem-solves difficult structural living arrangements to create spaces that enhance residents’ qualities of life. According to the Patty and Rusty Rueff School of Performing and Visual Arts at Purdue University, interior designers must adhere to code and regulatory requirements, encouraging environmental sustainability. An interior designer researches, analyzes and plans interior layouts to make them physically, socially and aesthetically functional. Students in Purdue’s interior design program develop analytical skills to plan commercial, institutional, health-care, retail, and residential interiors. Modern technology and advanced computer programs allow interior designers to create virtual living areas before finalizing them for development or construction.
Interior decorators don’t create interior spaces; they embellish interior spaces that already exist. The National Council for Interior Design Qualifications, NCIDQ, states, “Decoration is the furnishing or adorning of a space with fashionable or beautiful things.” An interior decorator often paints walls, hangs wallpaper, selects and places furniture, installs window treatments, and adds accessories such as throw rugs, lamps, throw pillows and wall art to a room. An interior decorator doesn’t knock out walls or structurally change the layout of an interior space. An interior decorator often uses her skills to adorn a living space once an interior designer has made necessary structural or functional changes.
In short, interior designers may decorate, but decorators do not design. Interior designers apply creative and technical solutions within a structure that are functional, attractive and beneficial to the occupants’ quality of life and culture. Designs respond to and coordinate with the building shell and acknowledge the physical location and social context of the project.
Designs must adhere to code and regulatory requirements and encourage the principles of environmental sustainability. The interior design process follows a systematic and coordinated methodology including research, analysis and integration of knowledge into the creative process to satisfy the needs and resources of the client.
