Interior design work can be an independent if somewhat solitary existence. The traditional image of an interior designer is as a lone wolf, visiting houses and meeting with clients on their own.
It’s a vagabond existence, an interior designer like James Bond only with an ability to match striped pillows, denim couches and sheep skin throw rugs. (A good interior designer can make this work.)
That said, the above is just one option for starting a career in interior design. An interior designer need not work alone if they don’t wish to. Some will lack the business acumen and drive to run a business themselves. Others won’t be comfortable with or see the point of assuming liability.
Whatever the case, as the website Archeng Design puts it:
“Not everyone that is interested in interior design will want to run their own business. Some would prefer to express their creativity while working on a job for someone else. There are many places that you could work and still be an interior designer.”
Archeng Design offers three places where an interior designer can work in-house:
1. An architectural firm
After all, architects primarily busy themselves creating floor plans and exterior designs of buildings. As Archeng notes, an interior designer can perform complementary work, reading and creating blueprints, drawing up sample piece, and creating interior schematic models.
2. A design center showroom
Lots of furniture stores and department stores have rooms specifically devoted to interior design. An in-house interior designer can arrange the floor in these showrooms.
3. A retail furniture store
While there are less of these today between the rise of the Internet and America’s economic struggles in recent years, plenty of business is still done at vast, warehouse-sized furniture stores. They’re the cavernous repositories where dozens of couches, kitchen tables, recliners and whatnot stand at military attention. Someone has to set all of them up, determining what mixes and matches well, what can be marked up and whatnot. That’s where an interior designer comes in.
There are other options as well. An interior designer can go to work for a firm specifically geared around interior design (Source). They can also opt for the entertainment industry, doing set design for film, live theater or television, with the advent of Internet broadcasting opening up even more opportunities.
Indeed, the sky’s the limit for an aspiring interior designer, with potential jobs and places to work plentiful.
