Renovation shows are such a great genre of TV. Seriously, nothing else in this world will get you yelling about how the benchtops clash with the walls despite the fact that you’re sitting on a bright orange couch that you got for free and clashes with absolutely everything in the room (just me?). As you might be able to guess, there’s way more to it than paint swatches and pillow covers – as much fun as those are.
Residential interior design deals with people’s living spaces and is the sort that you’re probably more familiar with. Commercial interior designers deal with business spaces where people interact with products and brands. Cafes, hotels, and restaurants are the most common spaces.
Oscar Giraldo took out the Australian Interior Decoration Graduate of the Year Award for 2019 after completing his Bachelor of Interior Design (Commercial) degree with Billy Blue College of Design at Torrens University Australia.
“Interior Design [is] not only accessories and paint swatches,” he said. “It’s understanding how one can navigate and interact with a space; it’s creating concepts and moods that people could feel in an environment. Basically, it’s creating an experience for a brand, person or product.”
If you’re tossing up a commercial Interior Design degree, it’s the experience of customers that you’ll be thinking about a lot. When you go to the shops, you don’t just run in and out of a blank white room to pick up whatever it is you’re getting. You get a full experience whenever you walk into the store.
Don’t throw away all your paint swatches yet, though.
As Oscar says, “Like any other job, there are aspects that not everyone would enjoy. Reality shows, basically show how people struggle to make decisions fast and financially suitable for the challenge they are dealing with.”
“Personally, I try to enjoy all of the stages of a project (some parts more than others, of course) but without the ‘less glamourous’ tasks, one can’t understand the whole process. Each phase has a purpose and understanding each one of them, will help you make the right decisions for your design and your project.”
Torrens University has a ton of design courses, including courses specifically for hopeful residential and commercial interior designers. If you’ve been watching renovation shows and thought that you could handle both the fuzzy throws and everything else the gig involves, then you can check out what they do here.
If you’ve made a New Year’s Resolution to chase your interior design dreams, then 2020 is your year.