Interior designers typically do not create new furniture or lighting designs, nor do they invent new color combinations. They cannot radically alter the architectural space of a home.

Myth #1

The writing of this article was prompted by a correspondence with a potential client and a series of interior design articles sent to me for editing by a journalist.
Before writing this article, I decided to check if someone had already written such an article before me. I found and read several articles on the topic “Myths in Interior Design”

All these articles were written by journalists, not designers. The problem is that designers write little about design, while journalists, due to their incompetence, believing they can write on any topic, fuel myths and misconceptions related to our challenging profession. It would be beneficial for designers to write more about their profession. I present to you a designer’s perspective on the problem of myths in interior design:

Designers are creative individuals.

Who benefits from this myth?

  • Designers who have issues with self-organization. Who disappear, do not answer calls, do not show up for meetings, are late, and miss deadlines. “I am a creative individual!” or “I have no inspiration today!”

  • Builders who want to increase their significance in the eyes of the client by labeling the designer: “What do you expect from him? He is an artist! He just draws beautiful pictures.”

Why am I sure that the definition “creative individuals” does not suit designers? Firstly, this stems from the very concept of design as industrial art. Design, by its nature, lies at the intersection of planning, construction, invention, and the creation of aesthetics. The peculiarity of design is that each item is considered not only in terms of utility and beauty but also in terms of the process of functioning.

“Creativity” and creative ability are, to some extent, inherent in every normal person. Psychologists view creativity as a high level of logical thinking. The main indicator of a creative individual, its most significant characteristic, is the presence of creative abilities, which are seen as individual psychological capabilities of a person that meet the requirements of creative activity and are a condition for its successful execution. Creative abilities are associated with the creation of new, original products, with the search for new means of activity.

  1. Interior designers, unlike artists, encounter a greater number of conditions and limitations in their practice that must be taken into account during the design process.
  2. Interior designers, unlike artists, are not the sole authors of the project they are working on. The co-authors of the designer often include people lacking creative abilities: ventilation designers, builders, foremen, clients, sales managers of furniture showrooms, furniture manufacturers.

  3. For interior designers, unlike artists, functionality, solving design tasks formulated by the client is more important than aesthetics and creative ambitions.

  4. Interior designers, as a rule, do not create anything new; they merely compile other people’s ideas. The essence of an interior designer’s work, in simplified terms, is to select the most suitable solution from the available options, to find a place for each item. If we delve deeper, the designer must resolve all the numerous contradictions between the explicit and implicit needs of the client, the design tasks, and the reality represented by the boundaries of load-bearing walls, while needing to fit a substantial array of interior items within these boundaries.

 

The contradictions and limitations are created by: Construction technologies, building codes, standards, budget constraints, technical requirements for the installation of engineering systems, plumbing, lighting fixtures, ventilation systems, etc.

 

Design tasks, formed by the necessity to resolve numerous contradictions, leave a narrow field for the realization of creative tasks that the designer may, if desired, set for themselves.

 

Conclusion #1

Work with ambitious designers who set creative tasks for themselves. Ask your designer: “What tasks have you set for yourself, aside from those we discussed in the technical assignment during our first meeting?”

 

Interior designers, as a rule, do not create new designs for furniture or lighting fixtures, do not invent new color combinations. They do not introduce the world to new shades of gray. It is not within the designer’s power to radically change the architectural space of the designed apartment or house. At least, significant changes in the quality of the real estate object are typically not achieved. It is impossible to work constructively on interior design with designers who, during the process, draw lighting fixtures, furniture, and finishing materials they have invented. Such a design project is fantastically expensive to implement or completely unfeasible. It is merely “beautiful pictures” without the possibility of bringing them to life.

 

Interior designers work with real and existing objects. They do not create new entities. The original and unique product of their creativity is a conglomerate of ready-made solutions (modules) that are carefully fitted together and represent a single harmonious whole.

5. An interior designer does not create “a thing in itself,” something ideal and complete. The result of the designer’s work is a compromise – a mutual concession in opinions: of the designer, the client, the designers, and the builders in order to achieve a result that is as adequate as possible to the set design tasks. A correct formulation of design tasks is a reliable foundation on which the “interior design” building stands.

6. The work of an interior designer is never complete. The designer’s work does not belong to them, unlike that of an artist. After the interior is built and the residents move in, it begins to live its own life, independent of the designer. The residents intrusively invade the harmony created by the designer and make their adjustments: they arrange souvenirs and photographs on the shelves. They cover “designer” beds with colorful bedspreads. In short – they inhabit the interior. The owners of the “designer” interior do not always have the taste and desire to maintain the ideal harmonious picture. Years go by… Residents change. The new residents have their own ideas of beauty. They want to update the interior, adapt it to themselves. Sometimes the function of the room changes: an office turns into a children’s room. A bathroom turns into a laundry room or storage. Time passes, and the interior becomes outdated. All elements of the interior: decor, finishes, furniture, and even forms go out of fashion, one after another. After decades, only the most valuable remains in its place, that which has truly found its ideal spot.  

“…it is not

so much the creation of an individual personality, as that of an entire society; it is rather

the result of the creative efforts of the people, than a bright flash of genius, it is a sedimentary

layer, left behind by a nation; layers, deposited over centuries,

the essence,

left as a result of the gradual evaporation of human society;

in short, it is a kind of organic formation. Each

wave of time

leaves its sediment on the monument, each generation — its layer, each

individual adds their stone. This is how beavers act, this is how bees act,

this is how people act.”

(Victor Hugo)

  

7. The best designers I have worked with did not have specialized education in interior design, nor did they have artistic education. Very often they couldn’t even draw!   The best school for a designer is to complete a complex project from start to finish many, many times. With author’s supervision!!!

 

8. How designers exaggerate the significance of “insight” in their work.   I had an acquaintance – an interior designer, who said that in order to come up with an interior, she needed to “sleep with it (the interior).” To experience the interior you are going to design, to immerse yourself in its spirit, to get to know it, to live it. And then wait for an insight at night.   I do not believe in the productivity of this approach.   Firstly, because the interiors she created did not withstand any professional criticism. Secondly, this recipe seems too simplistic to me. Thirdly: What if the insight does not occur? Perhaps this possibility should be stipulated in the design contract…