Interior design is a fascinating job. It involves creativity in finding the right furnishings and thinking open-mindedly about how to organize a home. Yet it also requires expert planning and tenacity in order to complete projects by their deadline, leaving clients happy with the results.
Both the creative and the logistical side of interior design can be demanding, which is why technological solutions to this role can be so helpful. Here re a selection of technological aids to help make the lives of interior designers a little easier this year.
Virtual Shopping
Shopping online is something that all interior designers will take part in. You’ll know that to really examine a piece of furniture, you’ll want to see it in the flesh – not just online, where colors in photographs might be a little misleading. But the online world does help to expose you to a huge variety of goods and the competitive prices that they’re sold at.
With modern websites, there’s a bonus for interior designers: their offerings are often shown in several photographs, including those which you can rotate by 360 degrees so that you’re aware of what items look like from every angle.
Furthermore, some websites, in a nod to interior designers, actually help you pluck out the item you’re looking at and place it in a photograph of the room you’re designing – helping you situate the item in the wider context of the room.
Floor Planning
On the subject of being able to visualize a room’s interior, including specific items of furniture added to their correct dimensions, there are several digital floor planning apps and online helpers that are designed to make your life a little easier. Use the best floor plan software for your purposes by searching through the best options online and selecting the one that’ll work with your process.
Floorplanning is notoriously difficult because, without an app or program that helps you layout a room, you may well make mistakes regarding the size of furniture and how it’ll all fit into the rooms you’re refurbishing or designing from scratch.
That’s what makes these software solutions so useful” it can cut corners in your furniture selection process, enabling you to make sound decisions about where furniture should go, which furniture fits perfectly in the space provided, and how the overall room will feel once it’s populated by the furniture you’ve chosen.
Planning Charts
Interior design isn’t just about getting your creative juices flowing in order to make the most delightful interiors you possibly can. It’s also about delivering these interiors to your clients to the deadlines that they’ve set – and that takes quite a bit of organizational planning.
You’ll need to know when certain objects are to be delivered, you’ll need to plan the workmen who’ll carry it or install different items of furniture, and you’ll want to do all of this in such a way that not a day is wasted in your creation of the interior you’ve thought up.
All of this takes planning nous, and that nous is often supplemented by technology that helps you chart out your time and the tasks you still have outstanding. In interior design, many tasks also require a previous task to be completed before they’re commenced. Think here of wall painting before you install the furniture.
Online planning charts often have features that allow you to set up these depending on factors, which means that you can tick off pressing tasks and unlock the following task as quickly as possible when you’re working to tight deadlines.
Websites
If you’re a successful interior designer, your phone is probably ringing off the hook with potential clients looking to engage your services. Word spreads fast about the role you’re in and the job you do, and it won’t take too much time before you’re well known in your operating area, and you are enjoying a high quantity of work.
But if you’re just starting out, or you have yet to become well known, a website can really help you generate a little publicity for your approach and new clients to work with.
Setting up a website is remarkably easy. You’ll just need to engage with one of the many website builders out there, which are designed for ease of use so that even a complete newcomer to website building can create something aesthetically pleasing and accessible in an afternoon.
Remember that your key pages on your website will be case studies: examples of the projects you’ve pulled off recently and a little text to describe your thought process. It’s reading these that will help potential clients get in touch and ask to engage your services.
Social Media
As well as a website, social media feels like it’s made for interior designers. There are thousands of interior design pages on the likes of Instagram and Pinterest, where fans of the craft share their favorite looks and designs on “mood boards,” which they share with their followers. Existing interior design professionals also leverage this media to help show off their latest work.
At a minimum, you should be posting excellent, alluring photographs of your work on Instagram. That’s where you are most likely to be seen by those who are searching for interior design tips and tricks. You should also consider making an account on other visual social media platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Architect’s Software
Finally, if you’re also willing to do a little home remodeling – knocking in walls, for instance, in order to create open-plan interiors – then you’re going to find architect’s software incredibly useful. It’s worth taking a short course online to help you get to grips with this technology if you’re not already familiar with how it works.
It’s designed to help you visualize and plan radically new interiors while still paying attention to the structural integrity of the home you’re looking to change. While the plans for extensions and the knocking in of walls belong to builders, having access to his software will help you better visualize the end results of such larger-scale home changes.
There you have it: the key technology that every interior designer should engage in this year.
