Interior design, the work of bored housewives? What misogynistic rubbish.

An insight into the misunderstood world of interior design

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Questions about interior design asked under the cone of deathly silence:

Have you ever walked into someone’s home and thought,

• “Wow, this is so nice. Why doesn’t my house look like this?”

OR

• “What do interior designers really do?”

OR

• “Why would anyone hire an interior designer? Anyone could do that.”

OR

• “Aren’t interior designers an expensive luxury?”

Interior design is the invisible stitch of beautiful homes but is often scathingly discussed with a misogynistic reference to bored housewives. As an interior designer and a woman, I would like to defend bored housewives AKA Jackie Kennedy, and dispel the idea that it is easy or not important. I think our opinion of interior design comes from a misunderstanding of what interior designers do, our tendency to play down the value of design, and just some good ol’ sexism. This post is about interior design and dispelling the misogynistic rubbish around this form of design.

Most people around me decorate their homes themselves but when I was growing up, I did have a very fancy friend who everyone knew as that person with ‘the nice house’. To paint a picture, she had a coffee table that looked like a piece of art, an art nouveau-inspired entrance, and beautiful Edwardian-style wall paneling throughout the house. But best of all, the house was full of art that I spent a lot of time staring at when I should have been talking to people. To me, my friend lived in an establishment worthy of public viewing.

Then as an adult, she told me that her parents had hired an interior designer to decorate the house when they moved in. Thine veil had been liftedith and I could finally see that the interior’s aesthetic was not inherent to her house or them as people. An invisible person had thought about how design elements could form a welcoming and pretty home. Somehow I thought that people living in nice houses had great taste but no, it was the interior designer they hired who did. The invisibility of interior design seems to eerily track the invisibility women experience themselves, we just expect it. (Also do interior designers leave secret traces of their identity? Sound off in the comments if they do…I’ll save this for a Reddit thread).

So what could an interior designer do for you?

Well, create mood boards, sample boards, and shopping lists with all the links to the items to buy, go shopping with you, and set it all up in your home. The number of times I have heard ‘could be clients’ say that they finally understood what interior designers were for when they viewed my shopping lists would make me… well maybe about $20 BUT STILL. Great interiors take time to produce and yes, this does cost money but I would like to point out that this is usually a once-off cost. Each of the services above might cost you a couple of hundred dollars each (give or take depending on experience) but can also ironically save you money.

Isn’t that worth what you might spend on a pair of sunglasses or a fiddle-leaf fig plant? I was fascinated to discover how accessible and varied this service was when I started learning about interior design. Unexpectedly, I found myself considering hiring an interior designer myself in the future, just for ease. As an interior designer hiring an interior designer, what I would want more than anything is a developed concept of my home. The central conceit of a design is something I have discussed a lot in this newsletter, and it is where you take a trend such as biophilic design, minimalism, eclecticism, or cabin-chic, and in combination with your taste/needs apply this aesthetic to your home design. An interior designer will do this difficult task for you and produce a mood board like this:

Moodboard

Then a sample board perhaps like this:

And eventually, the story of your home will emerge. From this point, floor plans, schedules, contractors, shopping lists etc. can be arranged but you can achieve a lot even with a mood board and sample board.

Any questions please shout out! Until next week ta ra!

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