interior rank design

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.

My home garden Design

Orchid Home Garden

Orchids are still very popular plants for the home and garden, although many gardeners get overwhelmed with the huge number of orchid species and knowing their particular growing conditions. Here I will summarize the different types of orchids and suggest which ones would be best suited for your orchid home garden. The orchid family has over 30,000 species and more than double this number of cultivars or hybrids. Thus we need to understand a bit of orchid ecology before we select orchids for our home or garden. There are four broad types of orchid, each coming from a different growing environment. There are the climbing epiphytes, whose roots attach to the bark of trees, and the saprophytes which live on decaying matter. Terrestrial orchid plants grow in the soil and lithophytes can survive on rocks with very little soil.

The home gardener therefore needs to choose plants depending where she wants to display them. Fortunately plant breeders have done the selection for us and now days there are many varieties of easy-to-grow orchids that we can raise. The most common orchids found in garden centers are the Cattleya, Dendrobium, Cymbidium, Ondontoglossum, Paphiopedilum, Oncidium and the Phalaenopsis. As an orchid gardener you'll need to decide what is best for your own particular situation - space available, climatic conditions and the color of the orchid blooms which you like the most. I have listed the most popular garden and home orchids to give you an idea what to choose.

Cattleya:
This orchid is also known as the "Queen of Orchids". They are epiphytic orchids from temperate regions.

Dendrobium:
These epiphytic orchid plants produce a generous spay of flowers and there are many different colors found among Dendrobium varieties.

Cymbidium:
Cymbidium orchids originate from South America and are among the most common home and garden orchids found, mainly due to the blooms lasting for months.

Ondontoglossum:
These are cool growing Tiger orchids, originating from the Andes Mountains. Their colorful flowers usually have delicate patterns and markings.

Paphiopedilum:
Originating from East Asia, flowers often are stripped or spotted. Commonly known as the Slipper Orchid, they have broad leaves and prefer indirect sunlight.

Oncidium:
These South American epiphytes prefer a drier potting mix and have distinctive mottled markings.

Phalaenopsis:
Also known as the Moth orchid and their flowers come in a wide variety of colors.

Enjoying the Vegetable Bounty From Your Home Garden

When I first started gardening I made a very rookie mistake. I didn't have a big plot to plant in and didn't have any experience, so I planted tomato plants. I'd always heard they were easy to grow. I planted eight of them. At the same time. When the tomatoes started ripening I didn't know what I was going to do. I gathered them up as quickly as I could and took them into work and gave them to neighbors. Actually, I'd leave them on the neighbors doorsteps. I made gallons of tomato sauce. I made gallons of homemade salsa. I ate dozens of tomato sandwiches. I had learned a good lesson. The next year I planted only four tomato plants. I also planted them three weeks apart. That way when they came in they were much easier to deal with. I still made tomato sauce, salsa and ate delicious tomato sandwiches, but there wasn't any panic to use them up quickly. I used the extra space in my garden to plant pole green beans.

I still garden today. Only now my garden has tomatoes, green beans, carrots, zucchini and cucumbers. The green beans are our favorite vegetable. We grow both pole and bush varieties and we enjoy them in many different ways.

The best part about having green beans growing in the garden is the ability to pick them and eat them right off the vine. We also like to use a variety of ways to preserve them. We freeze and can them so that we can enjoy them for months to come. It is very easy to freeze beans, you don't need any special equipment. You simply rinse the beans, drain them and cut off the ends and cut them to the desired length. The beans are then boiled for three minutes, then put into ice water to cool. Put them in a zip lock bag, or use a Food Saver and you're done. The beans will last for up to 18 months in the freezer.

We also like to can green beans. Canning them is a bit more complicated and does require some equipment, but the beans will last up to five years. You'll need a pressure cooker, jars and lids. The jars and lids must be sterilized. I do this in my dishwasher using the sterilize cycle. As when freezing,rinse, remove the ends and cut the green beans to the desired length. Add the liquid to the jar along with any flavorings you wish and then put them in the pressure cooker following the manufacturers directions. I remember the first time I canned beans I was a bit apprehensive about it. I just followed the directions and it turned out fine. Now we add different flavorings to the jars as we can them. We like to add things like fresh dill and garlic.

Along with canning and freezing I enjoy trying new green bean recipes. I've learned that I can enjoy fresh and tender young beans raw or just quickly blanched in many different types of salads. I didn't realize how many cold green bean salad recipes there are. A very tasty cold salad is one that includes feta and pecans. Another includes lemon and Celery. These are fresh salads which are also perfect side dishes for a cookout. Some of my recipes work best with older beans that are cooked for long periods of time along with spices, such as Greek Green Beans and the Armenian dish Fassoulia, which is a mixture of meat and beans.

Home Garden Design

After being in a property for a number of years, a lot of people decide that they would like a new garden design but are often stuck as to where to start. There are a number of considerations, the most important one is of your taste. What do you like?

Just because it is a garden, it doesn't need to be overrun with grass, plants, trees and flowers if you don't want it to be. Some may prefer the low maintenance benefits afforded by wood decking, gravel, wood chips, tile or concrete.

Remember, it is your garden so you can do to it what you want.

The best way to get inspiration for your garden design is to go and see what else is out there that takes your fancy. You can look anywhere, your friends houses, public gardens, even a patch of grass in the middle of a city can provide you with a wealth of ideas.

Once you have an idea as to the style of garden you would like, you need to consider the size of your garden and plan accordingly. If you only have a small working area then you do not want to go overboard with planting. Your small garden could very quickly become cluttered and feel claustrophobic. If you have a small garden you should utilise layers to create a sense of depth and airy colour schemes.

If you are lucky enough to have a large space as your canvas then you can really go to town with your designs. Pretty much anything goes and is left entirely up to your tastes.

Don't just jump in and buy plants, flowers or anything else for your garden until you have a plan drawn out on paper, this should be a to scale representation of your garden with everything in place. It is much easier (and cheaper) to make changes on paper than it is to do then once you are putting your garden together.

Home Garden Basics - Simple Tips to Get Your Home Garden Started

There are hundreds of gardening tips that you can find in the internet, and if you are just new with this hobby, it may seem like a lot to you. You would like to focus on the most basic home garden guides that can help you get started. Here are a couple of gardening tips that are easy to follow, if you are just starting with your home garden:

Choosing the Best Garden Site

Preferably, it is best to choose a site for your home garden that will receive a lot of sunlight, and has potentials for good drainage. If you think that the soil is not fertile enough, you can always buy good topsoil from your local gardening supply shop and put fertilizers regularly. You must not choose an area where there would be other shrubs or trees that may compete with sunlight and water.

Get the Right Garden Tools

When buying your home garden tools, choose the right tools for the job, and only buy the ones you need. Gardening tools made of stainless steel are the best buys because they last a long time and can they help you dig into the soil easily. Make sure that the tools are comfortable to grip, as you may be using these home garden tools for a long time.

Choosing Your Plants

You may want to check your neighboring areas to see which plants are suited to your area's climate and terrain. If you need to transplant some of your newly bought plants, be sure not to transplant them too deep or too shallow to give the roots enough room to grow. Some plants, especially vegetable varieties are ideal for rotation during the year. You could find more information on which crops will be best for your home garden from your local library or through research on the internet.

Using Fertilizers

There are many commercial brands available for fertilizers, but using organic fertilizers have been proven the best choice. They are not only safe for most plants, but they are also good for the environment. As you develop your hobby, you would also learn the benefits of composting, from where you can get free organic fertilizers.

Gardening is one of the most relaxing hobbies, and rewarding as well, because you see the results of your efforts through beautiful flowers and tasty fruits and vegetables. It may take a while before you can see some harvests from your home garden, but through time, you would learn to appreciate the bounties of gardening more.

The Home Garden

The garden should be near the house and away from trees. If it's some distance away from the house, it will not be as well looked after, nor will most use be made of vegetables grown. Vegetables near trees cannot get full sunshine; even more important, tree roots will rob them of water and fertilizer they need to do their best.

If you can, move the garden spot every 10 years or so to help keep down diseases. Proper rotation and use of disease-resistant varieties will help, but sooner or later the old garden spot becomes so full of various disease spores and nematodes that you cannot grow a good crop of many vegetables without use of special soil fumigants.

Soil should, of course, be well drained. Few vegetables can stand "wet feet." A sandy loam with a clay subsoil is best. Heavy clay soils may be made quite suitable by adding heavy quantities of stable manure or compost, or by turning under cover crops, preferably legumes such as vetch, clover soybeans.

Since the best quality quantity of vegetables cannot be duced on anything but a fertile soil, do whatever is needed to make it fertile.

Requirements for growth.

1. Proper degree of heat.

2. Moisture.

3. Oxygen in the air is essential for seed germination and good growth.

English peas, for example, will sprout when soil termperature is only a few degrees above freezing, while seed such as tomatoes will not germinate at all.

To start these tender vegetables for early crops, artificial heat, as in hotbeds, is needed. Otherwise, for early crops, buy plants from commercial growers, or from local growers who produce them with artificial heat. Tender vegetables that do not transplant such as melons, cucumbers, cantaloupes, and squash, should not be planted outdoors until soil has warmed up. These may, however, be started earlier in small pots in a hotbead.

To make the most out of your gardening efforts, take time to do some planning. Also keep a record of wheather you had too much or too little of certain vegatables at any time during the season for a continuous supply. Don't trust it all to memory.

Things to consider when planting.

1. How much of each vegetable to grow to supply your family needs.

2. Which vegetables are most need for good health.

3. How much extra to plant for storage

4. Which varities are best to plant.

5. When to plant for continuous growth and supply.

6. Which pesticides are best for control of insects and diseases.

7. Supplies needed such as, sprayers, dusters, tools, fertilizer, or mulching material.

Jotting this down on paper, plus any notes made during the season about special pest problems or how a new variety or practice turned out, will be valuable the next season when planning and planting time roll around.