Whether in the backseat during a long car ride or sprawled out in the grass on a summer's day, we've all turned our eyes to the sky to find shapes amongst the clouds. Perhaps we pointed to a particularly puffy one and exclaimed, "That one is an elephant!" Or we found a turtle, a pirate ship, or one of the 50 states. No matter the new names we assigned those clouds, we all saw something more than mere fluff. As an interior designer at SAWDUST, where we strive to design the most successful spaces for our clients, I make a living out of seeing more than meets the eye. Instead of clouds, we deal in buildings. But whether it comes to space planning, material selection, or designing at multiple scales, as an interior designer - not unlike finding shapes in clouds - I am challenged to see things differently.
As the Interior Design Director at SAWDUST, where we specialize in hospitality and commercial design, I am part of a team that designs restaurants, schools, gyms, bars, salons, and all kinds of great spaces that service the public. For each project, we design layouts that optimize flow and functionality while enhancing the overall user experience. We take on 10,000-square-foot buildings on a 30-inch computer screen. Because everything we draft on those screens materializes into real-world solutions, we must be able to visualize things in unique ways. For instance, given a bird's eye view, we can see a space in a front-facing elevation or visualize walking through its walls in three dimensions.
As interior designers, we can look at a floor plan of boxes and circles and see tables and chairs. We decode lines as walls, doorways, and windows. Better yet, we see lines that don't exist at all. Interior designers see everything as spatially related to one another. We draw imaginary lines from one design aspect to the next, connecting dots and forging relationships between forms in space.
It is then the interior designer's job to evaluate the importance of those relationships. In this stage of the design process, the success of a project is often either cemented or stifled. While a non-designer subconsciously recognizes a space's failures: "Dear, it's a bit drafty in here," an interior designer can diagnose the exact problem and find a solution. Because of the poor layout at the back of the restaurant, Mr. and Mrs. Jones are seated too close to the front door. To solve this problem, we must move the bathrooms ten feet this way, move the kitchen to the right two feet, shift all seating accordingly, and place a vestibule here. Voila! No more drafts for the Joneses.
At this moment, you may or may not be in the back of a car, or it may or may not be a summer's day, but I urge you to look up at the clouds and select one. This time, don't focus on its shape; look at its material makeup. Look at its texture, pattern, and color. Is it white or cream, gray or blue? If you've ever seen the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, then you know blue isn't ever just blue. In a monologue dedicated to cerulean, Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly delivers a poignant commentary on design: color is not just a color. Every shade, hue, and tone is a selection that holds both historical context and psychological weight.
It is an interior designer's job to see those contexts and weights behind the color because using the wrong one can be detrimental to a space. If a client is opening a hotel and wishes to have a bright, sunny lobby, they may think to paint it yellow. However, yellow might not be the best color to meet guests looking for a peaceful night's rest, as yellow stimulates the brain and makes one feel alert. In finding a solution to a client's yellow lobby wishes, an interior designer would consider the sun exposure and light quality of the space and select a shade of yellow that provides a sunny disposition without alerting the guests like a lit-up traffic sign. And just as interior designers see more to color than meets the eye, the same is true for texture and pattern. When interior designers look at a plaid, while others see an intersection of orthogonal lines, we see a derivative of a Ralph Lauren Home collection circa 2009. Our minds are contextual design libraries that enable us to create a comprehensive visual experience instead of simply pairing nice-looking patterns together.
Moreover, when interior designers see a polished marble tile, while the average person sees a sleek texture, we look at its slip resistance and friction coefficient. Where some may see a pretty material for their restaurant floor, an interior designer sees a disaster waiting to happen. This is all to say that interior designers study art, theory, history, and code. Through our studies, we can look deeper than the surface level of any material and, in turn, can design spaces to their fullest depths.
Now, imagine you are looking back up at the clouds. Your eyes are tracing their outlines, but then you blink, and as if looking through a microscope, you see millions upon millions of water particles. You blink again, and the whole sky is in your vision. You see how clouds meet the horizon and carve into the city skyline. From micro to macro, you see the entire picture. As interior designers, we, too, see our projects at multiple scales.
We look at a building and see how it fits into the ecosystem of its neighborhood, but we also can see the rooms inside, the furniture inside those rooms, the fabric that adorns that furniture, and the thread woven into that fabric. We understand how decisions at each scale inform the others and how altering one aspect can set off a chain reaction that throws off the entire user experience. For instance, take an elementary school. The school is looking to design a new auditorium. One might think you select some seating and a stage and call it a day.
However, an interior designer sees the auditorium at all scales. There is the acoustics. If you place acoustical baffles in the ceiling, you must contend with the larger-scale lighting plan and the HVAC systems. If you place acoustical panels along the walls, you must contend with the tactile scale of little elementary hands running across them. There are the lighting conditions. How well will the lighting illuminate the room for daily use as the school's extra gymnasium? And what about lighting the auditorium's stage for the community-wide Christmas concerts? Grandma and Grandpa need to be able to see their grandkids from the back row, but their grandkids can't have a direct light shining on them during their third period gym class when trying to catch a kickball. An interior designer looks at the auditorium and sees all these concerns, not just some seating and a stage, because they know how to address the space at all scales.Just as it's possible to look up at the sky and see more than clouds, interior designers look at an environment and see more than tables and chairs. We see space configurations and understand how to create the most optimal flow. We see materials and understand that their colors, patterns, and textures hold more profound meanings. We see entire projects in the grandest of scales down to the most minute details.
Interior designers are creators. Like all creators, we see the world through a different lens - through our craft. Just as a baker considers the rise and color of his bread and knows his bake is perfected, or a welder sees the uniformity and smoothness of her weld and knows the steel is bonded, an interior designer sees what it takes to make an environment successful.
When it comes to environments where others see clouds, we see elephants, turtles, and Texas. So, when you want to open the business of your dreams, who would you entrust to envision your space?
