Interior Design: What Goes Beyond Constructing A Home Or Workplace

Interior design is both science and art where the interior aesthetics of a space are enhanced and beautified to make it pleasant enough to inhabit. Individuals who do interior designing take into account the seven elements of interior design viz. colour, form, space, texture, pattern, line and light to create an environment that addresses its purpose.

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To get started with interior designing, one can choose to pursue any of the diploma or certificate courses that are available in both offline and online mode. One can also specialise in various domains of interior design viz. Residential Designing, Living Space Designing, Kitchen Designing, Corporate Interior Designing, Restaurant Designing, Green Interior Designing, Lighting Design and many others. Apart from these, if one learns working on softwares like Autodesk AutoCAD LT, SketchUp Pro, TurboCAD, Autodesk 3ds Max, Easyhome Homestyler etc., it will be an add-on. Doing such courses and possessing the knowledge of the softwares used in interior design will give you insights of interior design and you can get to know the nitty-gritty of interior designing. Further, one can also pursue a bachelors or masters degree in interior design from IIT-Bombay, NIFT, Manipal School of Architecture- Manipal etc.

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For those who aspire to excel in interior design and want to become an interior designer, Shikha Roy, a fresher from the commerce stream shares her experience to give important insights of interior designing.

Here we go!

Shikha Roy, New Delhi

Last year, I graduated in commerce from Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, University of Delhi. Although I am from commerce stream, I want to make a career in interior designing. Interior designing has always fascinated me as I love designing and decorating places, especially my home. This fascination led me to learn the basics of interior designing from YouTube. I also learn working on 3ds Max, SketchUp Pro and AutoCAD during my weekends.

Immediately after my graduation, I started looking for internship opportunities in interior design. I was very confident that I would find one as I was good at working with softwares like SketchUp Pro, 3ds Max and AutoCAD which are essential for interior designing. Soon, I got a chance to work at Vastuki Studios Private Limited, an interior design company based in Gurugram. It was a three month internship with a stipend of Rs 12,000 per month and the office timings were from 10 am to 5 pm.

On the first day of my internship, I received a warm welcome from the HR and my manager. I got a short induction by the HR which was about the company, policies related to internships, work-culture and most importantly, what I had to do during my internship period. In my team, there were two more interns, two permanent employees and our reporting manager who was very cordial and helpful.

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The work assigned to me on daily-basis were as follows:

• Respond to clients’ queries via phone or Whatsapp and note down their requirements followed by sharing them with my manager.

• Create 2D and 3D models of rooms or spaces (as given by the clients or my manager) with the help of softwares keeping in mind the dimensions, hatching, nomenclature and lettering etc.

• Create renders.

Apart from the above mentioned work, we (the interns) were also taken to the actual sites and were asked to measure all the rooms of the property/building and sketch the proper layout.

Before pursuing my internship, I used to think that interior designing is easy and anyone can do it, one just needs to paint the walls with different colours and put some showpieces here and there but after completing my internship, my view of the career has changed. I experienced and understood what all it takes to beautify a place which involves a lot of research, hardwork and many behind-the-scenes efforts.

I learned so many things there, like - how to think creatively and visualise the creation, how to make notes during the design meetings, how to understand client needs and more more. My internship helped me connect with experienced designers and understand their perspective on common projects. In totality, it was a great learning experience and now, I am very confident that I can excel in this field and make a good career ahead.

One thing that I want to share is that internships are very critical as they give us a reality check of the area/field we want to go into, so try to do an internship before opting to go full-time into a field. If you want to pursue interior design then doing courses of SketchUp Pro, 3ds Max and AutoCAD etc will be extremely helpful.

Good luck!

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