Tips of finding a right interior designer

There are many interior designers out there, but many of them do not have any formal interior design related education or necessary creativity. Here are some tips that will help you to find the best interior designer:

1. Check the credentials:

When interviewing interior designers, asking for a copy of NCIDQ certificate. NCIDQ stands for National Council for Interior Design Qualification. This organization gives out grusome exams twice each year to qualify interior designers. Interior designers must have 4-year BA or BS degree of interior design or 2-year associate degree related to interior design plus 2-year work experience as an interior designer in order to qualify to take this 3-part exam. Interior designers have to answer many multiple choice questions that test designers' professional experience and knowledge in interior design for the first 2 parts of exam and quickly finish up series of drawings to demonstrate the abilities to design an interior space in a very short time as the 3rd part of exam. Many interior designers I have seen working in the field for years could not even pass these 3 parts of exam all in once, many of them only could pass the first 2 parts of exam all in once but flunk the 3rd part of exam multiple times. For the designers who pass all 3 parts of exam, NCIDQ will issue a certificate with a 6-digit certificate number. Write down the 6-digit number and log onto www.ncidq.org to find out if the designer is NCIDQ certified.

If you want to design your house to be energy efficient, water concerving and eco friendly, you might want to hire a designer who is a LEED AP which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional. These LEED APs also need to pass a very difficult exam to be certified. You can easily find out if the designer is a LEED AP by logging onto www.usgbc.org and look for the designer in the LEED AP Directory.

At last, just like hiring a general contractor or a builder which you want to make sure he or she is state licensed. Nothing is different from hiring an interior designer. Make sure you ask for the copy of the license issued by the state government and write down the license number, and log onto the state's professional regulation department website to find out if the designer you are hiring is state licensed.

2. Ask for the designer's portfolios:

Looking at designers' portfolios not only helps you understand the designers' design styles and principles, but helps inspring you to find out what you really want for your future new home. However, most of designers will only show you those beautifully edited finished project photos done by professional photographer, but you should also ask for the design drawing set called construction documents which includes floor plan, furniture plan, lighting plan, reflected ceiling plan, electrical plan, finish plan, elevations, sections and details, and schedules, plus 3D perspectives. The reason to see these design drawings is to see if this designer is practicing "designs as it builds" design method. For maximizing the numbers of the projects he or she designs and minimizing the time spent on each project, many designers don't even design a space on paper in advance, instead, when the builder is building the house, the designer just goes to the construction site and looks at the space and starts to design on spot verbally. Projects done by this design method usually lack of sophisticated design details and creativity, and this kind of design method constantly caused un-necessary demolitions of the already built structures in order to allow the "later on" design ideas to apply. Also, mistakes can occur easily if any project is not designed or planned carefully on paper in advance, and usually the customers like you will be the ones to swallow these costly mistakes. If the designer can't show you a set of well drawn construction document with 3D perspectives, it is very likely this designer is practicing "designs as it builds", of course, he/she won't have any drawing to show you because everything was designed verbally at the construction site.

3. See free-hand sketches:

During design meetings, observes if the designer can express his or her design ideas through quick free-hand sketches. This is the best way to see if the designer can view space 3 dimensionally, without the ability to view space 3 dimensionally, the designer will not be able to visualize the scale and proportion correctly. Another benefit of seeing free hand sketches is to make sure the designer you are hiring is the designer who actually has the design talent, not those designers who simply are just good businessmen but knowing nothing about design. Of course, no one can stop you from hiring a "designer" who knows nothing about interior design but just business savvy. Those designers still can provide you the design service by hiring someone else who really knows the design to do the design work, but you should be very worried if those real designers resign while the project is under design or construction phase. It is like you always go to a very nice restaurant because you like the taste of the food, but one day you go there and realize the taste of the food changed, not as delicious as before, but the name of the restaurant is still the same, the owner is still the same, the waitress is still the same, well, but the original chef is gone...

4. Meet the design team:

Requesting to meet the entire design team members is very important, especially if you realize the designer you hired is not a real designer but just a businessman. Including those real designers in design meetings is very essential because you want your design needs to be expressed smoothly and efficiently directly to those real designers. Another benefit of knowing those real designers is maybe one day those real designers will be able to provide you the same or even better design service directly in the future in much lower cost because you just helped yourself cutting off the "middle man".

Taking the LEED exam?

Many of you are preparing LEED exam and trying to be LEED APs, but I will suggest you spending the time on playing golf which will be more beneficial to your businesses.

Advices to anyone who wants to study interior design at schools

If you have the following characteristics, you shouldn't study interior design and become interior designers. Otherwise, you will hit the career hurdles like you have never imagined before:

1. Introverted, not social: If you are not a social butterfly, the chance for you to meet the wealthies and establish the client base is low. Anyone who is born to rich or married to a wealthy will have more chances to become a successful interior designer than you do even if you have all the interior design education and credentials. This is especially hurting those creative individuals because most of creative people are usually quiet and not very social.
2. Not knowing wealthies, no connections: If you don't know wealthy people or well connected, no matter how creative you are or how well you can draw or design, you won't be able to compete with any designer who doesn't know anything about interior design but know many wealthy people because those well connected people will have more potential clients than you do.
3. Having Integrity: If you have huge integrity, then you shouldn't become an interior designer unless you are going to work for someone for the rest of your life because most of the interior designers started out on their own by taking away their ex-employers' clients. That is just what it is in this field. Other people's loss is your personal gain. That is how you climb up to the ladder.

Being an interior designer

After 11 years into the interior design business and designed celebrities' houses' such as the famous wrestler turned actor, The "Stone" and Former music mogul "Tummie" boy (I have to change the celebrities' names for confidentiality reason), what I have learned? alot, how much I have made? Not much! Why? because I had worked for somebody.

One thing I regret about entering this business is not knowing wealthies or having connections. I also blame myself for not being social or having "charisma". It seems like being a successful interior designer, the creativities and drawing skills are no longer necessary because many of the successful interior designers out there are either very social, talkative with lots of connections to the wealthies or very business savvy, they don't necessarily have any interior design education, credentials, creativities, or drafting skills, they only hire someone who has the design skills or background to work for them, and they claim all the credits and make all of the money. They pay very little to those real interior designers who did all the work, many of the senior level interior designers are making less than 50K/year but working like dogs. When their bosses published the projects on the magazines, those designers' names usually were not on there, so when the potential clients read the magazines, they came to the bosses if they want to have design work done for their houses or spaces.

Maybe it is for protecting their status quo or the sense of insecurity they have due to their own conciousness about how little they really know about the designs, those bosses usually divided the tasks for designers to do, some designers only do drawings, some do furniture /equipment purchasing, some do construction supervision, some do estimation, and some do bookkeeping or contract writing so they will never be able to learn the full procedures of interior design and know how to run the business. They also barely hire the interns because they simply just don't want to train their own future competitors. I don't blame their insecurity because they know anyone can easily take away their businesses just because the person who was born to the rich and has connections or who is business savvy.

I ask myself why interior design business is so screwed up? Unlike other businesses, a well known and famous doctor is well known and famous because of his/her great professional medical skills, a well known lawyer is well known because of his/her professional law related knowledge, a well known interior designer could just be a good businessman without knowing anything about interior design. Too many un-professionals lead the professionals in interior design field, no wonder we do not have the respect we deserve.

I met many very creative interior designers in this business who are just not very social or business savvy, they are usually introverted and quiet, but they shouldn't be punished for that! Why do they deserve to be enslaved by the businessmen and get paid with almost nothing? Why can businessmen hire interior designers and claim themselves interior designers but not interior designers hire businessmen to run their businesses and be called interior designers?! That is what ASID, NCIDQ, or IIDA really should do! To help those talented interior designers who do not know how to run business, who do not know rich people,  who do not have connections, or who are not good at socializing to be successful designers, the business owners, and prevent them from being design slaves hired by those fake designers who claim themselves interior designers but actually just bunch of businessmen.

Any of you out there who is looking for an interior designer to design your project, you absolutely have every right to go for those name brand interior designers who are actually just businessmen, but when you do that, please ask them to introduce you his/her entire design team and get to know those real interior designers work behind the scence and establish good working relationship with them. They might be the ones who would design your next projects with much lower price because you just helped yourself eliminating those "middle men".

the difference between interior decorator and interior designer.

You cannot call yourself an interior designer if you haven't passed the exam for the license. You can only call yourself an interior decorator. Yes, there's a difference between interior decorators and interior designers. For instance, interior decorators use other people's designs to make the room look good. Interior designers design the rooms themselves to make the room look good. You really do not need an education to become an interior decorator. Don't get confused between the two.

Can anybody be an interior designer? Not quite.

Don't be misled by those "do it yourself" shows; things are not as easy as it apears to be. My advice is to not touch the structural stuff in your house. Leave it to the professionals. If it's so simple, there would be more interior designers.

tweakism in the interior design business;

For the art movement, there is Impressionism and Modernism. For interior design, there's Tweakism. I look down on the designers who only know how to tweak from other people's original design. I really don't consider them to be interior designers but rather, they're simply tweakers. I look down on the so-called designers who only made it into the business due to having connections and knowing how to talk business and it has nothing to do with their ability to design.

That is not what I'm all about.