Are you thinking about getting into interior design? Or are you new in the field of interior design? If so, you might want to know what the challenges and obstacles are for interior designers so that you can avoid falling victim to them. This is why our team at Pasesi Interiors has put together this list of five obstacles and challenges you can expect to have as an interior designer. Hopefully, this will allow you to better prepare yourself in advance for when you face them yourself.

The industry of interior design is quite a competitive one, and the schedule you have can be quite intense. Those two things alone can take a heavy toll on interior designers, especially those who are new to the game. Two other factors that can make things difficult for interior design companies are coming up with the right management process (especially as it pertains to how to run a project and time management) and developing the appropriate designs. Below, we get into more detail about some of the main obstacles and challenges interior designers encounter.

1) Figure out your brand and the client experience

Image source: https://thesocialmediamonthly.com/the-power-of-brand-identity/

Most of what you do as an interior design company will depend greatly on the experience the client will have and your brand identity. These two things are present in almost every step of the process. Not only that, it appears that they are even becoming more and more significant as time goes on, whether it’s deciding the correct dimensions of an area, or selecting the right furniture, or obtaining the best lighting for the design, or acquiring the best materials for the job, or managing the project.

When working on a design project, it is imperative that you infuse the identity of your brand at all times and in everything you do. This is something that many designers and companies fail to do. Doing that will allow your design to tell a story, which is something that a lot of clients crave for these days. So, never neglect the brand identity and always think about the client’s experience from start to finish.

2) Manage your time very well

If you are unable to manage your time well, you will most probably struggle a lot as an interior designer because there’s a lot of work to complete. And, more often than not, this work has to be done in a rather short time frame. You should make sure to carefully think about how you are spending your hours in a day. The first thing to do would be to look at all your projects and determine which ones have the highest priority and which ones don’t. Then order them according to their priority.

You should then plan out your time allocation to those projects in such a way that you do not fall behind on their completion. The last thing you want to do is fall behind on your projects because that will greatly hurt your chances of getting return clients or getting stellar references and recommendations that could have led to more clients. Interior design is an industry that often has relatively short turnaround times, especially considering how much work goes into individual projects. It would benefit you greatly, in the long run, to implement the best time management tactics as you possibly can.

3) Explain the vision and process

In interior design, a lot of the work you do is on papers and screens. This makes it difficult to really give a client a good, concrete idea of what the overall vision is. It’s not as easy for untrained eyes and minds to grasp the big idea from drawings, sketches, plans, and renders. So, this makes it challenging to demonstrate certain aspects of a design to a client or potential client. For them, the actual physical thing might be the only way to really get the full picture across.

So, it then becomes your job to make sure the full vision and idea are relayed to them in a way that they can follow along and understand as much of the process and intended outcome as possible. This may involve showing them multiple plans, material samples, mood boards, and so on. Explaining as much of the process as you can to the client will go a long way for many reasons, one of them being that they will appreciate that you care enough to make sure they understand as much as possible. It will also ensure that both you and the client are on the same page at all times, hence preventing potential misunderstandings in the future.

4) Manage Expectations

There’s a high chance you have encountered or will encounter a client who has very high expectations for their project. This is definitely something you should watch out for. It is important to do your best to manage these expectations. These high expectations may include things like expecting a lot from a small budget or expecting a quicker turnaround time than is possible. As the interior designer, you have to be the one to determine what the reality of the situation is: what the available budget can actually accomplish and how long the project will actually take to complete. You’ll find that this is a huge factor in this line of work. It’s also a challenge that affects interior designers at all levels, not just beginners.

It’s also worth mentioning that a great way to keep expectations in check is to have visual implementations and visual representations as often as possible. This helps because the client and the designer both understand what they’re working with and how they are working at every stage of the process. It can be challenging for a client to make decisions on certain things. So, to help with that, you could go by some kind of process of elimination. An example would be to either have them pick the things they like or the things they don’t like. Then that will allow you to determine the direction to go from there.

5) Know how to differentiate interior design styles

Image source: https://interiordesignerpune.co.in/interior-designing-modern-vs-contemporary/

It would benefit you greatly to be able to distinguish between the different styles in interior design, especially between modern and contemporary. It is evident that there are interior designers who are not really able to differentiate the two. It’s a misconception that the two are the same when, in fact, they are not. One difference to note between the two is that modern interior design is more in reference to a time period, and contemporary interior design is not really linked to one time period.

Modern is more in reference to the early 20th century as it somewhat arose from the industrial revolution. This style was relevant for that period because it was more functional and had more symmetry to it. This style is associated with distinct, clean lines and warm neutrals. On the other hand, contemporary interior design is more linked to the trends in interior design. As mentioned before, it is not really linked to one time period. Instead, it could be a combination of influences from many time periods. So, it’s important to understand the difference between these two styles, as well as the difference between all the other interior design styles.

Those are five obstacles that an interior designer is likely to come across. We hope you learned a lot from this information. Hopefully, you can now be better prepared to tackle these challenges as they come. Let us know below which one you are going to start preparing for; is it time management, or is it figuring out your brand identity, or something else?

Thanks for reading! We have new blog posts every week, so make sure to come back for more.