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6 Ways Interior Design Can Be Self Taught

Designers, like Rome, aren’t built in a day.


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Are you interested in interior design self study?

The question, “Can you can self-study interior design?” comes up quite often online.

If you’re interested in how you can get into interior design without going back to school, then stick around. In this post I’m going to share five ways that you can get started in the interior design field through self study.

A tiny bit of background: People have many different reasons for why taking an in-person university or college level course to become an accredited interior designer is not an option. Some common reasons time constraints, like current job or family commitments. Sometimes the cost of going to school to get a degree in interior design is the barrier to entry.

Whatever the reason, you should know that it is possible to self study interior design, or some specific aspect of interior design and find work in the industry. It’s also possible to become an interior design entrepreneur and work for yourself, all without going back to school to learn interior design.


If you want to jump ahead to the five ways to self study interior design, go here.  If you want to understand some useful background information on interior design self study, keep reading!


What being self taught means

Being self taught can mean a few things. One of the ways it could be interpreted is that you will be teaching yourself using online resources, but not necessarily taking a course. In this scenario you are your essentially your own teacher, and there is no one looking over your shoulder making sure that you learn what you will need to learn to become an interior designer.

That puts a ton of accountability on you.

If you can teach yourself, (and I mean really teach yourself!), what you need to know to be successful you will need to be dedicated and committed to your goal. After that, it is precisely this trait of being able to show up and work that is going to give you the chance to succeed at interior design.

So can you do it?

Absolutely.

Will you do it?

That is up to you.


Keep in mind that it’s good to know what you’re getting yourself into with becoming a self-taught interior designer. It makes sense to really do your research, and also to understand what all of your options for study are before making the decision to be self-taught.


The 6 Ways to Be a Self Taught Designer

If you are sure that there is no way you could go back to school due to time or money constraints, but you still want to work in the field of interior design, here are your options:

  1. You can become a self taught decorator
  2. You can become a self taught residential interior designer 
  3. You can become a self taught interior designer by taking short online courses 
  4. You can become a self taught designer through experience
  5. You can work in the interior design industry without being an actual designer
  6. You can become a virtual interior decorator or e-designer

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1.You can become a self taught decorator

There are so many resources out there to get you started with decorating.  Home and lifestyle magazines are just the start: from short internet courses to published books on the subject, Pinterest boards and Etsy inspo, decorating advice is all around us.  

I think decorating is many people’s favorite part of interior design.  Interior designer professionals do decorate, but to differing degrees, depending on the type of design work they do.  

For example, a designer for retail shop-fitting probably doesn’t do much decorating beyond branding and atmosphere design, but a residential, solo-preneur or virtual designer often specializes in a niche decorating style like hollywood regency or bohemian contemporary.

Interior design magazine play a role in this focus on stylistic elements. With all the focus on style and seasonal looks, interior design and shelter magazines are mostly focused on decoration and home styling.  If style just happens to be your indulgence of choice, becoming a professional decorator is a great option for you.


Here’s what I would do if I was just starting out in decorating: I would work on developing my eye for interior layout, and color and composition.  I would also learn as much about furniture and decor as possible.

Here are my top tips for getting started as a decorator:

  • Photography is a great addition to a decorating resume and I would highly recommend learning at least the basics
  • Keeping a personal collection of inspirational imagery, and maybe a scrapbook of ideas is great for developing schemes of your own
  • I would also suggest learning how to create great mood boards for playing around with ideas and for sharing with future clients
  • I’d recommend starting a personal design portfolio. Decorate for your family and friend and document everything and learn how to present it in a professional way.
  • A vignette is a collection of objects, like a still life arrangement, and getting good at arranging small groups of objects and then expanding from there while bringing in new colors and textures could prove a great exercise for getting started
  • If you created a vignette a day (physical or digital) as a challenge and then ‘instagrammed‘ your daily style composition, you would be getting practice while also developing a name for yourself as a decorator
  • Volunteer to decorate for local stores to gain experience. Holidays and special occasions are times when decorating is in full focus, and many business owners are open to having someone else do it for them
  • You could even start decorating for charity and do it for free at first, just so you could build up a portfolio of work
  • Print up some name cards and keep your eyes open for opportunities like window dressing and decorating for retail

Decorating can be a lucrative, fun and very rewarding career, and there are many incredible decorators to draw inspiration from, so you will be in excellent company!


2.You can become a self taught residential designer

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The reason that it is possible to become a residential designer without going to school, is because the laws governing private and public land are different.

There are no laws, at least in 95% of the United States, which prevent you from making modifications to your own home as you see fit, so long as the work does not violate building codes.  As far as I know, this also applies to hiring someone to suggest modifications or improvements and purchases.  Please do your own fact checking for your situation.

Enter your interior designer for the private home!

There is a lot of overlap in the residential field, but this is the traditional domain of the decorator/designer, who shares the market with the handyman and DIY expert, the home goods store and the furniture sales industry. One way to break into this industry is to team up with local stores that offer design services, or to join forces with construction professionals who are looking to expand their offerings.

Large interior design firms often focus on contract and commercial work. Some have both residential and commercial projects on the go. Large firms typically specialize in private homes for wealthy clients.  However, the middle class market residential interior design market is growing with the rise of e-design services have become available.

The goal: Learn enough about interior design to be able to create good schemes for your clients based on their visions, and then help them to bring those plans to life. If you can do this consistently through practice and refinement you might just be able to start your own interior design business!


Here are some of the things you would need:

  • Name cards
  • A company website
  • Name cards
  • A portfolio of work
  • Good trade contacts for wallpaper, paint, lighting fixtures, furniture, flooring and mill work
  • Basic office set up with computer software

You’ll be happy to know that many residential designers who work for themselves work out of their homes.


One way to get started with design work is to start out by offering decorating services. Then you can add to your service offerings as you learn on the job.

You also have the option of choosing to do full-service interior design or e-design. With e-design you could do the creative work, (also known as the concept), and then turn it over to the client. The client would then use their own resources to actually implement your design.

Full service is when you help the client to find the professionals to do installations, wall or floor treatments, painting and wallpapering,  and you oversee the design project from conception to completion. This includes providing drawings, managing as well as paying the various trade subcontractors who do the construction work. By contrast, e-design services are purely digital and remote based. More on this later.

You also have the option of providing ‘blended’ design services that may include both virtual and physical services, but allow for more flexibility. This could be packages tailored to the specific needs of your clients.


You can become a ‘self taught’ interior designer by taking a short course

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Yes, online courses are a way to self study interior design! I present this as an option, because there are so many good short courses out there right now, and some that you can even access for free. In fact, the more technical your interior design study subject, the higher the chances that you can use your certificate to break into the industry. Think CAD drafting and 3D modeling. I talk more about this in an article related to getting into architectural design through specialization. More about that here.


You might be wondering how much commitment is involved in taking a specialized course to become a designer. In the tech world these are often thought of as “boot camps”. Depending on the type of course you choose there may be minimal commitment involved or a lot. Some courses provide everything you need, while others may require you to do specific reading and research on your own time, answer questions and submit work. Decide how much you’re willing to invest of your time and effort and then choose the specialized design course that is right for you.


Benefits of taking a specialized course to become an interior designer

One of the big reasons I suggest doing a specialized interior design course is because it is structured.  That’s undeniably the biggest benefit to a design newbie.  

True, a short course may not qualify you to become a commercial design industry designer or give you the portfolio you need to start landing clients, but it will get you some skin in the game and get you going in the right direction.  

Why?

Because once you understand what it is you need to learn, you can more easily continue expanding on your own.


A short course may also act as a ‘taster’ to help you gauge how much tolerance you have for the idea of studying further. If you absolutely hate it, either the course did not meet your expectations in some way or maybe, maybe studying is not for you. Or you might gently consider that perhaps interior design isn’t for you. Hey, at least you can figure this out now, before you get too much further down the road!
Count that a win.

If you ever change your mind about going to college for interior design, a short course will give you a good idea of what you’ll be learning later, and it never hurts to be ahead of the ‘competition’ by getting a jump start on the concepts you’ll learn in more detail later. For those of you with time or money issues, look for the low cost options, or get yourself to a library and look around on the web. You’ll be surprised to discover that there are plenty of interior design study options out there.


Fun fact: Many universities and online interior design programs offer short decorating courses for adult learners.  These sampler courses are there to interest you in their bigger offerings, of course, but if you want to mostly study design yourself, it doesn’t hurt to consider trying something lower commitment.


4. You can become a self taught designer the way these famous designers did

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Here’s one of those lesser-known facts people might not know unless they do some detective work:

Quite a few of our favorite celebrity and reality show designers got started in the industry without an interior design degree.

Luckily for you, I’ve played detective on a few of these for you so that you don’t have to.


Some of my favorite examples of designers who got unconventional starts or are self-taught are:

Self taught interior designer Martyn Laurence Bullard

Martyn Lawrence Bullard, an absolute master decorator, who got started working in an antique furniture shop as a teenager and learned from there.  

Martyn famously arrived in California with $100 in his pocket, and begged his first wealthy client to hire him.  He worked on referrals from there and never looked back.

Mr Bullard is known for his starring role as a designer to the stars on Million Dollar Decorators on Bravo and Hollywood Me in the UK.  Martyn has a permanent place on Elle Decor’s A-List, features in Architectural Digest’s top 100 designers and is considered on the top 25 designers by The Hollywood Reporter.  His style is over-the-top glamorous, and has been dubbed Hollywood-meets-ethnic-exotica by some.  

You can read more about Martyn here.


Self taught interior designer Kelly Hoppen

Kelly Hoppen was only a teenager when she started her own interior design business and she went on to have an extremely successful design career in the UK.

Kelly was only sixteen when she was given the opportunity to design a family friend’s kitchen.  She later went on to have several celebrity clients, including David and Victoria Beckham. 

–Kelly has designed everything from homes to yachts and jets.  She has done many large-scale commercial projects internationally and has written nine books.

–She has been called the second most influential female interior designer in the UK by the Daily Telegraph and placed in 2012’s 100 Inspirational Women list by Vogue magazine. The Evening Standard newspaper included her in a 2017 list of London’s most influential people.

–These are just some of her accolades, which include many interior design awards.   She has also appeared on several major television shows.

Learn more about Kelly here.


Self taught interior designer Vicente Wolf

Vicente Wolf arrived in the US a Cuban immigrant with a family construction business background and worked odd jobs, including being a model before becoming a photographer.  

He later worked in a design showroom and taught himself about design by observation and going to art galleries in New York in his free time.  Vicente wrote the book, ‘Learning to See’, which is an absolute gem, and an early design influence for me personally.  

Vicente was named one of the 10 most influential designers in America and he was inducted into the House Beautiful Hall of Fame, while Architectural Digest listed him in the top 100 designers. Vicente says he learned through experience and “a lot of hard work”.

You can read more about Vicente here.


The lesson of these self taught interior designers is: Don’t let not having an education prevent you from getting started in interior design. You can do absolutely anything with the right mixture of determination, patience and hard work.

I have a feeling that it might have been the impetus these designers had to prove themselves without falling back on qualifications that gave them their drive.  Keep in mind, though, that the best way to become a self-taught design professional is likely to go into business for yourself.

If instead you would rather have a regular career in the interior design industry this leads nicely into my fifth point.


5. You can work in the interior design industry without actually being a designer

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This is one angle that I don’t think many people think of, but it’s what I always thought I would do if I wanted to get into architecture. 

If, theoretically, I absolutely loved architecture, didn’t have the opportunity to go to school for it, but still really wanted to work in the industry, I think I’d be willing to do almost any type of job in an architectural studio or firm, in order just to be around architecture.

Think about it.  There are many jobs in an interior design or architectural studio which are not design, but which support design. 

You could learn one particular skill, like drafting, or you could focus on photography for architecture or interior design or even real estate.  You could be an office manager or a purchaser for a design studio, be a personal assistant to a designer; even try writing on the topic. The potential here is near limitless.


6. Virtual interior designer or e-Designer

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As interior design has become more readily available to the average homeowner through online-based services, so has the market for new types of designers to fill the vacuum for more inexpensive services than what larger design firms typically provide.

Enter the virtual interior designer.  A designer you could become in a matter or days or weeks.

The story of virtual design is a new one.  Virtual design is quite literally the new kid on the block, and has only really been around since about 2010. In 2020, everything changed with the pandemic, and the virtual interior design market came to life. 


You can read more about the story of the rise of virtual interior design here.


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The number of choices for home products grows every year, and with it comes the tremendous amount of work it can be to sift through all the options. Even those who have a general sense of what they like often find it hard come up with a good, original and also practical design scheme. Some people would like to do it themselves, but don’t have the time.


A virtual designer typically works through an online application which allows them to communicate with potential clients and handle all aspects of the designing process from a computer.  The entire process, end to end, is done online. Here’s what that tends to look like:

The Virtual Interior Design Process

Virtual designers typically find clients online or through referrals. They then advertise their services on their own interior design website.

Virtual designers often advertise in a specific niche of design work, focusing on a certain style or type of client. Designers use a questionnaire to discover the needs of the client and craft a design brief.

The client brief may include information like which retailers the client prefers to shop with, the scope of the project and their budget. The client chooses one of several packages offered by the designer and signs a service agreement contract which states the conditions.

The client provides the measurements and photos of the space and any furniture to be included in the final design.

The virtual designer typically furnishes one or several conceptual mood boards, color, materials and finish boards, a keyed furniture placement plan and a furniture shopping list with links to retailers, sometimes making use of the designer’s trade discounts.

The client is able to approve or reject individual items and a certain number of revisions are covered by the designer-client agreement. Finally, the client is responsible for purchasing products and installing the furnishings.


The typical virtual interior design job takes 3 days.  Virtual designers can charge well for their services, and can take on several clients at a time.

If you are interested in doing this type of design work check out our comprehensive articles on the topic of virtual interior design which offer useful information on how you can get started with virtual interior design and even run your own business.


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