I just had this conversation with a neighbor at work who is
repainting their space and they had chosen bears simply white I
think, which was according to the TikTok, she said one of the
most favorite colors of white. But if you look through whites
on any paint color deck, then you will see that there's
hundreds of whites out there and they all differ from each other
because of their undertones. So understanding undertone is
extremely important. You're only going to get to know
this by training your eye to look and comparing one to the
other. So that's why I love having the
paint deck with me when I'm selecting colors.
You're now listening to Design Curious, a place where you,
Creative one, are here to learn about what it really is like to
be an interior designer. And I'm your host and mentor,
Rebecca Ward. If you're worried about how to
succeed in a creative career, if you're ready to learn your next
steps to become an interior designer, and if you want the
satisfaction of doing something you love every day, you are in
the right place. Grab a coffee, a notebook, and
let's dig into today's episode. Hello and welcome to episode 177
of Design Curious podcast. Today on the podcast, we're
continuing in our design skills series.
Today we are talking about mastering practical skills that
the ones that you should be focusing on and how to practice
them and get those practical skills honed so that you can on
the spot be able to answer your clients questions and come up
with great designs whenever you need them.
Before we get into that, don't forget that we have my design
mentor where we can work on these practical skills.
You can meet with me one-on-one and I can help you give you
exercises or help you explore where you might be weak in
different practical skills and we can work on that.
So now let's get into the topic of practical skills.
So if you've gone to design school, gotten a green design or
a certificate, then you will have a handle on some of these
practical skills. You might be lacking in a little
bit of applied experience of the skills though.
So it's definitely good to work on these.
So let's go through the ones that I'm going to highlight as
being necessary for having successful projects as a
residential interior designer. So we're going to 1st focus on
color theory as a core skill and we have a episode coming up with
Maria Killam, who I consider the color expert.
I really enjoyed talking with her and I think you'll enjoy
that conversation when it comes out in April.
Color is such an important topic.
It is emotional. It's part of the neuro
aesthetics conversation where people can have a memory or
emotional reaction tied to color, and it can really change
the whole feel of a space. So you're going to need to work
on your personal approach to color.
Are you very experienced with selecting colors and can you see
the undertones of each color? Especially when it comes to the
neutrals, whites, There's 100 shades of whites.
I just had this conversation with a neighbor at work who is
repainting their space and they had chosen bears simply White, I
think, which was, according to the Tik Toks, she said, one of
the most favorite colors of white.
But if you look through whites on any paint color deck, then
you will see that there's hundreds of whites out there and
they all differ from each other because of their undertones.
So understanding undertone is extremely important.
You're only going to get to know this by training your eye to
look and comparing one to the other.
So that's why I love having the paint deck with me when I'm
selecting colors because I can see, OK, this, I'm looking for
one that's more of a pink undertone.
And I can see on my fan deck that this one looks more pink
than the one next to it. So I'm going to gravitate
towards that, things like that. So it's important to know the
color undertone, it's important to know the color temperature,
saturation and value, the hue, all these things that go into
making color different from each other and livable.
So I will tend to select colors for my clients that are less
saturated then they might initially gravitate to.
If they were in a paint store, they might pick a color that's
very saturated. But I have found from my
experience over the years that the more saturated a color is,
the earlier you get tired with it.
So it's less lasting, less timeless.
And if it's a muted version of that color, then it remains a
little more timeless than something that you're not going
to want to change out in a year. But you want to select colors
also that are harmonious with each other.
So learning color theory can be really helpful with that.
It can impact your mood, can impact your perception of a
space. So many people ask if they
shouldn't paint a small space dark color because they'll make
it feel smaller. Well, probably it will.
Although when you have like black on the walls, it's hard to
define the corners and so it just feels like an
all-encompassing space. But that might be the move
you're going for. So it really depends.
It's not like I would say never paint a small space black.
I love painting powder rooms, dark dramatic colors because
it's fun and it's in a small space.
You're going to develop your own opinions, your own go to colors
for your clients that are tried and true and they will put a lot
of trust in that. When you said I've used this
color in my own home, I've used this color in five other houses.
It's this is the white that always looks great no matter
where you go, no matter what light source you have.
Then they're going to trust you a little bit more.
OK, the next skill I want you to work on is building your
confident designer eye. So you're going to train
yourself to see proportion and balance and observe things when
you're in a space. Just always be observing, I
guess I should say, and you probably are.
If you are a designer or if you've always loved design or
you're creative individual, then you're going to be noticing your
surroundings. And so be more cognizant of
those reflections on the space and understanding proportion and
scale and balance because it's going to come into play so often
when you're selecting furniture, especially for a client, you
want the size of the furniture to be proportional.
I said before, when I was first starting out in selecting
furniture, I didn't learn how to select furniture for Indesign
School. I I learned that afterwards when
I was doing model homes, but I kind of always assumed that
every sofa would fit in every space.
I just thought there was a standard sized sofa and I didn't
even think about the fact that you can make them extra deep or
extra long or that manufacturers will create them in a certain
depth and style and height and all of that.
I was pretty ignorant of that, but I just assumed that every
sofa would fit. And of course that's where you
double check everything is when you scale it into your drawings
and you see, Oh well, a 44 inch deep sofa here is not going to
work. I need something that's more
apartment size, something that's 36 inches deep.
And so that's something that you can sharpen and learn over time.
Always maybe carry a little tape measure with you as you go about
and you are sitting in a sofa that really works for you.
You can know how tall you are and how deep that seat is.
And you know, note that down because you can always customize
a sofa from your vendor, almost always, as long as they allow
customization to fit a certain individual.
So maybe your partner is 6/5 and they're having trouble finding
chairs that they love to sit in. And so when he or she finds one
that is fits them well, then you can take down those notes.
So these are things, observations in real life.
You might not learn in design school, but you're going to want
to sharpen them so that you can apply them to your projects.
Start visiting furniture showrooms and go to a lot of
hotels. If you can travel, get inspired
that way. Restaurants, all of these places
are education. I love it when I go to Las Vegas
Market, stay in those fancy hotels, go to all the fancy
restaurants because the design is always really inspiring that
the scale that they had to do it to is just amazing.
And so I always have fun and get inspired and take notes when I'm
visiting those places. The next thing you're going to
want to work on is your space planning skills.
So really understanding traffic flow through a space in a home.
It's very important. There's a lot of open floor
plans, especially here in California.
I think there's trend going towards less open floor plans.
But I don't know if we'll ever be as closed off as we were, you
know, a couple 100 years ago where they were more concerned
about heating all of those rooms and so they could close off the
ones they weren't using. But traffic flow through a house
is really critical. It depends on how many people
are living in that home day-to-day or if they entertain
a lot. If you want your entertainment
spaces to have a good traffic flow, if you want people to be
directed towards the backyard or towards the kitchen or stay in
the living room space, traffic flow is going to make a a big
difference on that and the function of the space.
You want to be thinking as you're using your own kitchen,
how do I like having these drawers?
Here is it having the silverware or the flatware drawer over
here? Or do I need to have my cups and
plates above the dishwasher? How you store things, the
function of how much counter space you have on either side of
the cook top, things like that. So you can hone your space
planning skilled by your observation of these things.
Common mistake is that there's too much empty space so there
could be awkward layouts. Now sometimes you can't help it.
Like the architects may not really have been thinking about
the furniture layout in a space and sometimes there's going to
be a big open space. You don't know what to do it.
So it could be back-to-back sitting spaces or creating a
little game table area or conversation spot.
Trying to creatively think how to work out awkward layouts.
So you could probably even Google floor plans with awkward
spaces and then just quiz yourself and test yourself on
coming up with some solutions for that.
Because you're going to have clients that come to you and
say, I have this extra large landing at the top of the
stairs, but it's too small to fit a sofa.
What do I do with this space? And so you need to start
creatively thinking ahead about how to use up that space.
You don't want to go to waste and you want to be beautiful and
intentional and a part of the home.
So I would recommend testing yourself and quizzing yourself
with space, planning problems in order to fine tune those skills.
Then you're going to work on your composition with focal
points. One of the really common
problems you'll run into if you're going into a remodel or
just advising someone on the layout of their family room is
when there's a split focal point in that room of the fireplace
and the TV. Sometimes you can't align them.
As much as people don't like TV's over the fireplace.
Sometimes that's the only solution.
But it's a good thing to think about to see if there's any
alternates that might be asymmetrical.
Solutions on a wall for having the fireplace and the TV
staggered, but then using cabinetry and other features to
help it remain a beautiful focal point in the room.
And then learning how to layer textures and lighting and
accessories, art, greenery into the space to help the
composition come together. Sometimes the space doesn't feel
alive or welcoming until you have all those finishing touches
in there. Even if it's been designed
beautifully with furnishings and the architecture and the space
plan looks good, it doesn't feel quite welcoming until I get the
softer touches in or that focal artwork on the wall.
I love to use larger artwork, larger than most people usually
buy, which you know, as a designer can have a lot of good
resources for large artwork and it helps to fill up the space.
You don't necessarily need a piece of furniture on that wall.
You might just need a really big piece of art.
So things to think about there. And you're going to develop your
taste over time. So that's another area is that
your taste will evolve with experience.
You'll be curating how you choose what stays and what goes.
You kind of develop your own principles and roles as a
designer when you walk into the space and see like I always do
this or I never do that most of the time.
And then you can know when to break your own rules too.
A lot of the times I will encourage clients not to put
TV's in their bedrooms, mainly for the health purposes of it.
It's not great for your sleep, it's not great for your
relationship, and it doesn't look great either.
So I will encourage them not to have TV's in the bedroom.
But if they're really insistent on it, then we'll work around
it, of course. Yeah, you'll develop kind of
your tried and true and then your go TOS.
Like I always put can lights in the ceiling in the bedrooms as
well as in the laundry room. I have multiple or the closet or
things like that where previously the builder might
just do a mono point. You have go to ways for
improving the lighting in a house and that can honestly like
just going through and doing a lighting plan that updates the
house so much and it can really help the appreciation of a home.
Clients might not realize that until they have a designer on
hand. And the last piece of advice for
pulling all of these practical skills together would just be to
practice, practice, practice. Like create some daily exercises
for yourself, redesigning existing rooms.
I've said before how hard it is to redesign your own space that
you live in, but challenge yourself and see like, OK, if I
wasn't living here, what would I recommend to a client who has
minimalism taste or who has maximalism taste?
Try to push yourself to be creative in the details that
you're putting in there and then create quick concept boards for
practice, Put together mood boards on Pinterest and things
like that. So there's definitely a lot of
ways to push yourself to practice, but it's not going to
get better by default. You really have to develop it.
And especially with working with color, I would think above all
like practice, practice, practice with color.
And if you are painting out your own rooms a couple of times with
your own sweat equity, then you're going to learn a lot
through that trial and error and understanding how light can
change color and how colors that might be reflected from the
outside. There's a lot of green coming
in, or it's reflecting off the neighbor's house and things like
that. So there's a lot of ways to
practice these skills and a lot of practical skills.
You need to know, of course, the practical skills of every
designer like CAD, drafting and things like that.
It's always very useful. So always looking to grow and
improve these types of skills. I feel with practical skills,
most people think about these type of things when they think
about what an interior designer does and the type of skills that
they need. That's probably why I spent a
little bit less time on this topic today because everyone
kind of knows what the practical skills are.
But I hope you got a few ideas on how you should probably be
trying to practice them more everyday, be more observant, and
then incorporate that into your schedule and your goals for
growth. All right, we have one more
episode on the design skills series and then I'm going to tie
it all together after that on how to be the best designer
using all of these skills pulled together.
So stay tuned for that on the solo episode next week, I'm
going to have another great interview for you.
You're going to love. So stay tuned for that and until
then, stay creative. Thanks for listening.
If you love this episode, please leave a rating and a review.
This helps me reach other curious creatives like you.
If you have a topic request or would like to contact me, simply
head over to my website awarddesign.com or e-mail me at
podcast@awarddesign.com.