Lucinda Griffith has worked in the interior design industry for over 25 years. She offers her unique perspective on what it's all about
So, most of you probably have an idea in your head of what Interior Design is. It’s curtains, and cushions and playing with lovely fabrics. It’s dressing a sofa and buying furniture and finding lovely lamps. It’s paint and wallpaper, and tablescapes… Bliss. It’s like playing dress up, but with a house.
Hmm. Well, yes, it can be all those things but they are really just the icing on a cake. It’s all very well having beautiful icing to look at, but if the cake it hides is dry and inedible, then the icing is pointless.
True interior design is more about baking than it is about icing. The clue is in the title; the design of an interior. That means anything you can see on the inside of a house, whether it be the architraves around the door, or the style of the door and the door handle or door knob you use everyday. It’s the height and the style of the skirting, and which way a door hinges. It’s the lighting circuits and the position of the sockets. The layout for the bathroom, where the tiles stop and start. Making sure the heated towel rail takes more than a hand towel. It’s what floors go where. It’s where to put the radiators or the hot water cylinder. It’s making sure that the furniture you want fits, and if it doesn’t fit in the space, then working out what furniture does fitto get the use from the room that you want. It’s making sure you can fit the breakfast cupboard you long for in the kitchen you are building or the high-level ovens. It is making sure that there is space in the cupboards for the wedding china you never use because it only fits in the attic. All these things and a hundred more are what makes the cake delicious before it is iced.
Spending time on the practical side of a house is worth so much more than the finishes you might end up with. If the house doesn’t work, then it won’t matter how pretty it looks. The problem is that we do tend to focus way too much on the fabric we long to use, or the paint colour we have planned to finally have, and we forget to think about where the hoover will live, or the spare linen be stored.
So, before you go online and start shopping for Ikat cushions and fabulous headboards and all the other million and one things you can have for your house, think about how it is actually going to work – not how it is going to look.
This is where interior design can make all the difference. Taking the time on this step, or working with someone like me (just saying), will mean that you don’t end up with the builder choosing your skirtings, the plumber choosing where to put the radiator, and the hoover living behind the door in the spare bedroom because you didn’t realise the cupboard you had in mind for it has been eaten up by the hot water cylinder…
Focusing on the layout and the use of space before you begin means that you can get it right the first time, facilitating your budget to go so much further, helping you to understand your plans, and working with you to edit them to ensure that they tick all your long term boxes.
It’s worth it! Ultimately, it will mean that you end up with a space that changes your life, rather than just your bank balance, making your life better by bringing you the ease and pleasure that good design should add to a house. All that before you have even got the paint swatch cards out…
