Interior Design Career Blockers

Wanna pursue your career in interior design? It is not as easy as you think. You can be as creative as you can be, but these four interior design career blockers will delay or even prevent your dream from coming true:

• The Economy: Interior design business is affected by the economy tremendously. Because interior design is not considered as the "essential", people think they can have it or not. Some people can die without seeing a doctor, some people can be in jail without hiring a lawyer, but what kind of serious emergency will happen to people without having their houses done by an interior designer? None. So, when the economy is down, interior design will be the first thing that consumers would like to cut down or cut off. Interior design has been portrayed as "Luxury" or "For the wealthy", so low income people usually do not even think about it even the economy is good, middle class people will completely cut it out because it is not essential, and wealthy people will put the projects on hold because they want to observe the market and wait. I had seen this phenomenon first hand in person in New York City back in 2001 after the 911 Attack, and the recession we are having now starting from 2008. Massive laid offs that forced many interior designers out of business. The lucky ones can hang on by becoming instructors for the CE classes or the marketing instructors. Those who are not so lucky will be forced to completely give up their careers and do something else that are totally have nothing to do with interior design.

• Government's Regulations: Many countries around the world and most states in the US do not require interior designers to be licensed in order to practice interior design. In the US, the state of Florida has the most stringent regulations to regulate the professions including interior designers. However, the current law in Florida still allows the un-licensed interior designers to work on residential projects, and that makes licensed interior designers face tremendous competition from everyone including the people who are not necessarily creative or talented but just business or marketing savvy. Because these business and marketing savvy people are usually have the skills or money to open up their own design companies, they can just hire the licensed designers who are really creative and talented to work for them, and it creates an unique phenomenon in the interior design industry which is the un-professionals leading the professionals. Moreover, the income gap between interior design company owners and interior designers who work for someone else is huge. While the interior design company owners can make more than $200K/YR easily with minimum or no interior design related education or work experiences, those really creative and talented designers who work under the design company owners will be super fortunate if he/she can make $60K/YR with more than 10-year interior design related work experiences plus NCIDQ certified plus LEED AP plus 4-year bachelor's degree in interior design. If I were a parent who has a son or daughter wants to be an interior designer, do you think I will allow my kids spending my life savings to study interior design in the college after knowing all these?! Of course not! I'd rather having my kids major in business administration instead.

• The Market Norms: The government regulations are not so friendly to interior designers, but the market norms are even more cruel to interior designers. The consumers usually think interior designers are "decorators", what they do are just selecting fabrics, paint colors, furniture, light fixtures, and accessories not knowing interior design actually involves lots of structural and architectural related knowledge. Lack of understanding what interior designers do discourages the consumers to hire interior designers who usually charge slightly higher fees but hire usually less expensive decorators to do interior design work which often involves construction, electrical, plumbing, HVAC as well as ADA requirements and LEED certification requirements that will directly affect the occupants' health, safety, and well-being. For residential projects, in many occasions, interior decorators got more business opportunities than interior designers even though the projects involve construction, electrical, plumbing, or HVAC.

• Your Employers: You might be wondering how can employers be career blockers since they are supposed to serve the role as your career mentors, but in reality, they can be just the opposite. This career blocker is the bi-product of the 3 career blocks I discussed above. Because of the bad economy, because of the government regulations, and because of the market norms, interior design becomes an extremely competitive business, everyone is trying to survive in this tough business and everyone becomes your competitor no matter who he/she is. If you are a business/marketing savvy business owner, you will do whatever you can to prevent those interior designers who work under you from learning how to run interior design business or do the marketing, you will never let them do any task that relates to marketing, and you will never ever even let those interior designers work under you see a copy of your letter of agreement or contract, you will divide the tasks for different designers, one designer will only do drafting, one will only do purchasing, and another one will only do job site supervising, and they will never learn anything else but just that one task or few tasks you signed them to do, and when those real creative and talented designers who worked under you designed any project, you will publish the project on the magazines and take all of the credits but will never ever mention your employees' names. Also, when those design companies hire interns or junior designers, they will teach the junior designers or interns as least as possible so that they will not create their own future competitors. Well, you might think that is ridiculous, how much threats a junior level designer or an intern can put on an interior design firm owner or an interior designer who has let's say 15-year interior design related work experience? How about an intern or a junior level designer who is coming from a very well connected and wealthy family?! those people can basically open up a design firm funded by their affluent parents with large numbers of client sources introduced by their parents 1 month after they graduated from college, they can be market ready and beat your company anytime! How about the intern or junior designer who sucked on interior design with no creativity or talent but business/marketing savvy?! You think they can kick your butt fast? then good luck on mentoring those who are not only business/marketing savvy but also creative, talented, and rich. So, in this dog-eat-dog interior design field, you really think anyone will mentor you?! dream on!!