Five habits that will make you a better designer

This blog post may contain paid affiliate links.

Over time, I have come to realize that sometimes the simplest actions can gradually make you a  better designer which is why today I am going to share 5 simple habits that you could be doing without tons of effort and that will eventually make you gain the skills to design better spaces.

Being open to feedback

I remember when I used to go to school, we would come up with floor plan solutions and when it was time for revision, every single time the teacher would find something that was odd in my floor plans, and they would give me feedback on how things could be better for the space. This was something that at the time, I didn’t personally liked, because I would feel disappointed when I had spent hours on my space planing and then the teacher would destroy my floor plan, but today I am very grateful of all of the feedback because it has allowed me to be a better space planner and to carefully think about every single detail in my projects. The reason I am telling you this is to remind you that feedback from the professionals is the best thing that can happen to you while you are in school or even at work. Don’t think that anyone is trying to look down on your work but it is only to help you become better. If you know anyone who has been in the industry for longer, either that is your teacher or your co-worker, and I would say even your friends and your family, always ask for feedback and their opinion in regards to your work. A very important aspect of being an interior designer is to not fixate your ideas on one perspective and stay open to other opinions and points of view. 

Exploring beyond the ordinary

The best design ideas and inspiration will not come from you being in front of your computer looking at your autocad floor plan and trying to figure out the ceiling design for your project. You have to explore beyond the ordinary. So, how do you do this? It’s actually pretty simple. The mistake that a lot of us make when we are trying to look for inspiration is that we go to pinterest and we try to find pictures of interiors that are supposed to be our inspiration and doing this is not wrong, but the problem is that this is all we do, we do not explore from other sources. Other sources can be anything. If you go to a restaurant, pay attention to every single design detail, write down notes about the space, do they have any design on the ceiling? Does it look nice? Any focal points, what are their materials and the color selections? This is called exploration beyond the ordinary. 

Experimenting with visualization techniques

There are a number of visualization techniques that you can use to showcase your interior design work, these could be free hand drawings, digital drawings, and we also have design boards. Which one is better? You could be impressed by the number of clients who are impressed by freehand renderings, and not necessarily by digital renderings. On the other hand, some clients really want to see a realistic view of their space before it can be built. What I am trying to say is that you should experiment with more than just one type of visualization technique. This is not only going to make you practice these skills but it can make your work easier. I know a designer who only focuses on hand sketching and she finds that her clients are always impressed by these types of drawings and it’s more likely that they will approve her design right away when they see it on paper. It's funny but some people think that realistic renders are not that complicated to make, as if with one click on your computer it's going to make the most beautiful render whereas when they see that you manually drew their space, right away they know that you are truly an artist and they trust your work. Now, this does not happen every time but the point that I want to make is that you should be practicing your rendering and also your manual drawings. The fact that we have this digital software will never replace the art of creating a manual drawing so just keep that in mind.

Learning architecture

For me, this point is one of the keys to mastering the world of interior design, and I will tell you why. No matter how small an interior design project is, there is always going to be some sort of architecture involved. Let’s say you are redesigning a living room, and you wanna change the windows of that living room, you gotta make sure that your new windows coordinate with the rest of the windows that the house has and with the overall architectural elements. If you ever work on projects with architects, having some understanding about architecture terms and concepts is going to make the communication process and problem solving way easier. 

There are many ways you can do this, you can learn from architecture books, from the web, from architecture accounts, even driving around your neighborhood and taking pictures of home exteriors. Another way of learning is by listening to podcasts from designers and architects. There are tons of information sources at our fingertips and trying to have a general understanding of this discipline is definitely going to come very handy at some point of your career as an interior designer.

The simplest habits will lead you in the right direction and will prepare you better to succeed in interior design, so make sure that you are implementing these easy habits because they will transform your career.