Accessories – The Key to Good Design

Accessories are the key to good design. Why? Because they are often the focal points of a room or what people’s eyes first focus on in when entering a room. But who chooses them?

Interior decorating can be overlooked as a skill. Interior designers get precious about creating spaces, Architects about creating form and function. All of these features are vital with any interior, but there is still the finishing touches skill that is the icing on the cake of these designs, and the ability to do this with expertise requires enormous talent and shouldn’t be overlooked.

There is a lot of banter about in the design industry about qualifications, industry standards, and people passing themselves off as designers when they aren’t. It is very difficult when a lot of countries don’t have the design industry regulated. It can be frustrating for qualified individuals to compete in an industry with others passing themselves as something they are not. The only way to look at this without getting all puffed up about it is that they will not be able to complete the same standard of work as they don’t have the required skills. So at the end of the day if they start a project that is to big for them, they will probably have to employ a qualified person to facilitate it and manage what they do have the skills in. There is only so much you can bluff your way through!

I also want to stick up for the interior decorators because I think they definitely have their place in the design world. It is just as difficult for them, trying to earn a living in today’s economic climate as it is for an interior designer or architect. I think if all three professions could work together at a task, then the end result would be fantastic. You would get the entire project complete with accessories!  Let’s face it, interior designers have to know about so many trades, building codes, plumbing, electrical, lighting, heating, construction, local body codes, industry codes etc when putting together documentation, that by the time it comes to the decorating, their brain has gone to mush and the creativity dried up, but if you now let the interior decorator take over the finishing touches with fresh eyes and burning passion for the fine detail, I think that those accessories will be the cherry on top of the project that we all desire!

Natural accessories add to this living room interior. Look at the groupings and heights that create eye movement and rhythm in the interior.

I say this from experience, the building industry in New Zealand now has so much bureaucracy, that I feel by the time I have waded through all the paperwork to get a project underway, I have no energy left for the creative decorative side of the project. I would be more than happy to work alongside a passionate interior decorator to get the project finished.

The point I am really trying to get across is that we all have our own skills, we should by now know our strengths and weaknesses, know our abilities in the real world, and be willing to work within those boundaries, and be happy using other consultants to cover things that you either don’t have the skills to do or don’t have the energy!

Have fun out there!

If you want to be the interior decorator who creates good design – visit interior decorating course to learn how today.