Tools Used for Interior Design
Interior designers do more than just make residential and commercial spaces look good. They design functional spaces that fit the architecture and their clients' work and lifestyles. They must also work with a client's budget, preferences and any existing furnishings they want to keep. To make the proper recommendations, interior designers need more than creativity and good taste. They need the tools of their profession. Does this Spark an idea?
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Information Gathering Tools
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Before planning an interior, an interior designer must understand the space. Even when blueprints are available, most designers prefer to see a room and take their own measurements. Information gathering tools include a sketch pad, pencil, digital camera and a 25- to 50-foot metal measuring tape.
Designers typically make rough sketches of rooms and windows before measuring, then add exact measurements to each sketch. The digital camera is handy for recording existing furnishings and architectural details, such as moldings, flooring or fireplaces.
Space Planning Tools
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Space planning is the first step is designing any interior. Some designers draft floor plans using computer-aided-design software, or CAD. Designers enter room and furniture measurements and the software creates a scale representation of the room. The scale is typically 1/4 inch, where 1/4 inch equals 1 foot of real space.
Some interior designers prefer to draft floor plans by hand. Hand-drafting tools include tracing or graph paper, mechanical pencils, T-squares, compasses, protractors, triangles and architectural rulers. Architectural rulers, which are also called architectural scales, are triangular and have six sides for drawing floor plans to different scales. For adding furniture and architectural elements such as floor plans, designers use furniture templates or simply draw them by hand.
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Rendering Tools
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Floor plans provide a bird's eye view of room, but many interior designers create color renderings to show a room from a human perspective. Some CAD software creates three-dimensional renderings, but classic renderings are sketched in pencil and then painted in watercolor. Some designers use watercolor markers or colored pencil instead.
Presentation Tools
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Interior designers must help their clients visualize the completed space when they present their recommendations. In addition to showing floor plans and renderings, designers use samples and photos, especially for custom-order furnishings and treatments. Samples include fabric, carpet, trim and wallpaper swatches. They also use paint chips, wood-finish chips, sample tiles and small sections of flooring and molding.
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References
- Photo Credit Thomas Northcut/Photodisc/Getty Images
