Interior Design Careers

There is more to Interior Design than home decorating. The career opportunities for interior design graduates are endless.

According to the United States Department of Labor, employment of interior designers is expected to grow 19 percent from 2006 to 2016, faster than average for all occupations.

If you are interested in a hands-on education, working with the latest design software technology that results in a wide variety of fulfilling positions, this may be a career path for you. Earn a Bachelors of Science in Interior Design or an Interior Design & Decorating Associates degree and start your career as a:

Green Designer - Green designers work with builders, specifying eco-friendly materials from renewable resources and designing energy efficient homes & buildings in Florida.

Healthcare Designer - Designing the interior structure of hospitals, doctor offices, medical clinics and facilities. A healthcare interior designer job is to make sure the medical facility is built within the governed regulations and technical requirements needed to function. Also, a major role of a medical interior designer is to design the clinic for optimal operational productivity and increasing the bottom line.

Buyer or Purchasing Agent - Working for large retail stores, department stores and furniture stores. A Buyer decides what merchandise will be sold at a store. Professional Buyers travel to trade shows and are innovators for the latest trends.

Hospitality or Service Designer - Working with hotels/resorts, sports stadiums and restaurants. A hospitality designer creates a pleasant & functional space for people to gather.

Set Designer - Working on television, exhibit, movie and theater sets. A set designer works closely with the director and studies the script to determine the appropriate set design. This includes selecting the furniture, wall & floor coverings and other props to give the set the desired mood and time period of the script.

Government Designer - Designing the interiors for public buildings such as court houses, training facilities and jails. Designers who specialize in public buildings concentrate on accessibility design and operational design. During the interior design process of government buildings the interior designers make sure the accessible environment meets the needs of people who are blind or have poor vision. Also, the designer is responsible to design the facility to meet the needs of the service it provides.

Preservationist -Working with historic buildings and museums. A Preservationist helps preserve, conserve and protect buildings and its materials of historic significance.

Event Designer - Designing and decorating corporate parties, charity balls or other large gatherings

New York Interior Design Programs

There are many New York interior design programs available for the aspiring design student. If the individual wishes to be on campus then one school that offers an Associates Degree in Interior Design is Berkeley College, which is located in midtown Manhattan.

Berkeley College is a top New York interior design school that provides a real world education that interior design professionals demand. The class sizes are small and students get hands on training. Students receive free lifetime career assistance as well. Internships are offered and there is a large network of employer connections through the school.

The New York interior design school campuses of Berkeley College are located in White Plains. Berkeley is a recognized leader in preparing students for their professional careers in interior design, 96% of graduates secure jobs in their areas.

Other schools in the New York interior design program offer online training. One of those schools is Westwood College where you can obtain a Bachelors Degree in Interior Design. An online program is designed for the student who feels that they just do not have the time to attend classes for whatever reason but still have the desire to obtain a well-respected degree in interior design.

Another New York interior design school that offers an online degree is The Art Institute Online where the student can achieve a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design. This school is a division of The Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

Whether you attend a New York interior design school in person or online you will be prepared to enter the exciting and creative world of Interior Design with the knowledge to succeed. Before an Interior Designer receives his or her license, they must meet some very strict guidelines. The Designer must have a combination of six years of school and work experience before taking the licensing exam. Once the Interior Designer has completed the six-year requirement, they must pass a test administered by the National Council for Interior Design Qualification.

Interior Designers wishing to do commercial design work must have a bachelor's degree in interior design from an accredited school. All Interior Design students including New York interior design students will learn how to use computer aided design (CAD) software. Securing an internship free is a good way to get practical knowledge and experience. Internships can often lead to full time positions.

New York interior design students must learn other skills besides design to be successful professionals. Artistically inclined is a good skill to have along with strong people skills. It is recommended that New York interior designers take some business courses as well since many Designers are self-employed. Interior Design is an ever-changing profession and today's designer must stay up to date with all the trends.

My Interior Design Best Selling Books

Holly Becker writes Decorate: 1000 Professional Design Ideas for Every Room in Your House. In this book, top designers come together to share over 1000 tips on how you can change your room and do it to meet your budget. You can get inspiration from the beautiful colored examples in the book, photos of bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, parlors, as well as checklists, shortcuts, and cost cutting methods, so that you will be sure to find something in there that meets your eye as well as an explanation of how to make it possible in your own home.

Christine Lemieux writes Undecorate, a book that heralds a brand new kind of style that seeks to push aside the stuffy professional styles of today and bring their own personality into their home. The book profiles about twenty homes all over the nation and shows how it came to be the way it was by tying it in with the owner's particular personality. Following the interests of car fanatics who turn their master bedroom into an air stream trailer to a couple that makes their house a log house, to someone who creates and English manor, to a variety of other kinds of strange creations that reveal the personality of the builder, this book will show you how to accomplish the same feat.

Domino: The Book of Decorating, written by Deborah Needleman is a book that offers step by step guides to decorating your rooms. No matter what styles you prefer, the book will have something in that vein as well as tips on how to mix and match styles, too. The Domino team contributes their own personal design efforts so you can see how they transformed their own rooms and in what kinds of styles they decided to work in. This is a great book if you are interested in redoing a room in your house.

My Passion for Design by Barbara Streisand is a beautifully illustrated persona tour of the great star's homes and collections. From the Broadway stage, television and film stardom, her work as a director, and her work in the recording studio, Barbara has been an iconic figure with an extraordinary voice and immense talent. Now, in her first book, Barbara gives readers a glimpse into the taste that has inspired her beautiful home. This book focuses on the architecutre and construction of her home and contains many photographs of rooms she decorated herself. Other illustrations include the gardens she planted on her California coastal land. She gives us a look into the world of on of the most beloved stars.

Charlotte Moss Decorates: The Art of Creating Elegant and Inspired Rooms by Charlotte Moss gives a singular vision through a beautiful collection of her acclaimed rooms. Moss has led a celebrated career in the interior design world. Her book offers readers a glimpse into the methods behind her magic. For each room that is featured, Moss breaks the numerous stages of the design process, revealing storyboards and sketches developed for each project. Each chapter offers a dose of decorating advice and includes recommendations for her favorite flowers and fragrances.

Your Interior Design Ideas For a Home Office

Good Office Furniture Designer Should Be One Step Ahead of You

In this new era, office furniture designers have a lot to think about rather than just building tables and putting chairs together. Modern office spaces today require huge requirements from the furniture it uses. In some cases the furniture and the design is custom made to fit the exact office space needed. Nowadays, businesses are becoming conscious that they are only piling up even bigger expenses rather than saving a few dollars.

Over the past three or four decades, furniture designers faced challenges on how fast office spaces changed. This had been primarily a direct effect of changes in technology. To most offices each new technical development had been bringing lots of changes and new requirements.

Computers have become increasingly important in any modern office environment. This brought innovative challenges in designing appropriate office furniture. Though, almost every year there are new technologies, new products and new techniques that develop our present systems.

Even if you are thinking of using modified furniture solutions for your office, cheaper furniture does not always give as much flexibility and adaptability as better designed furniture does. In lots of instances, managers or office directors have purchased tables and computers just to find out that they purchased the wrong table because the computer won't fit.

Containing furniture solutions which can adjust to the fast changing technology can make a huge difference. Modern furniture designers have brought a lot of new and original techniques of managing problems facing many businesses.

Today, there is increasingly greater awareness on issues about environment. This has been extended to office furniture design. There are greater needs for materials that are natural and that came from sources which are not harmful to the environment. Forests have been increasingly a popular means of getting the materials for making office furniture.

Furniture designers and their clients should make sure that the materials they use in their office furniture come from sources that are environmentally friendly. This is one factor that you can swing prospective customers on your side.

Retail Interior Design Advice

Experienced Retail Interior Designers take advantage of certain formulas which are recognised as being effective tools in the successful marketing and selling of goods. They are able to use their 'tricks of the trade' to produce effective design capable of significantly boosting a company's sales and profit.

Any business owner who has employed the services of a good Retail Interior Designer will tell you that whilst the cost of hiring a designer might at first appear to be an unwanted expense, with the right choice of designer, it is a cost which can lead to significant returns. With in-depth knowledge and awareness of the types of psychological conditions that can be manipulated to produce a desired impact on shoppers, specialist designers are coming up with increasingly sophisticated techniques. These techniques are used to assist retailers in persuading consumers to part with their hard-earned cash.

Supermarkets and other food outlets make use of strategies like the smell of baking bread to make their customers feel hungry. Retail outlets use techniques such as placing merchandise that is considered as an impulse buy at the end of aisles, or in close proximity to till areas. Stock which has a wide profit margin is often placed at a customer's eye level, as it is a well established fact that consumers are more likely to purchase goods which are in their line of sight.

The exterior image of your store and window display areas in particular, can be used to great advantage. Huge numbers of people love shopping so much that they essentially consider it a leisure activity and many people spend hours of their spare time, shopping and browsing in shop windows. Sophisticated design can create desire and longing in an individual and encourage people to enter stores and purchase items they didn't intentionally set out to buy. The first role of a retail designer is to make the front of your store look inviting and accessible to customers and to design and create a provocative window display that will urge individuals to come inside to purchase items.

The interior of any store is of equal importance and it is essential to create the perfect mood and atmosphere to make your clients feel relaxed and comfortable. A quality shopping experience in the right environment will encourage customers to spend time browsing and spending their money. Customers are much more likely to come back to your store after a pleasurable shopping experience and the inevitability of their return leads to a likelihood of increased sales and profit.

Within the retail interior a number of tools are employed to create the right image for a store and give it an appealing ambiance. Good use of colour, music and light can be used to make customers feel more comfortable. Generally people feel more at ease when there are other people around and they have a clear line of sight. So it is important that stores feel spacious, are simple to navigate and that they are kept clean and totally uncluttered.

New and creative, themed displays can help a store keep a fresh and vibrant appearance and can be used to promote both seasonal and sale items effectively. The practice of moving displays around from time to time can also assist stores to retain the interest of customers and make them feel more inquisitive and curious.

Whether you choose to employ a Retail Interior Designer or decide to take on the challenge yourself, don't undervalue the impact that visual communication has on your sales.