What is Interior Design

“If you think interior design is just about choosing fabrics and collecting colour charts, think again”- Liz Ford

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering, what exactly is Interior design, well, maybe we could get into the ins and outs of the industry so that by the time you are done reading this, everything is crystal clear.

All over the internet, interior design is defined as the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more pleasing environment for people using the space. It is the coordination of the decorative elements of the interior of a house, apartment, office or other structural space including colour schemes, fittings, furnishings and sometimes architectural features.


Photo credit : Jill Sellers

Photo credit : Jill Sellers

If you’ve been to a fancy hotel, you might not have noticed but the vibe was carefully curated with the help of an interior designer. As such, you enjoy your stay at such a place, the selfies are the bomb and you want to do brunch there again the following Sunday. That hotel inadvertently gets regular clients just by paying attention to the décor aspects and hiring professionals to help the situation.

The professional work an interior designer does go way past aesthetics, they communicate the vision of the space and manage to incorporate functionality, great visuals and your ideals into one unified enviable space. They deal with:

  • Conceptual drawings, 3D Renderings of the Space

  • Lighting scheme and plan

  • Floor plans

  • Material specifications

  • Colour schemes

  • Furniture layouts

  • Project managing

Don’t be mistaken, many of the wonderful spaces you have seen were carefully planned by professionals; it doesn’t just happen by accident.

Photo credit: Alberto Castillo

Photo credit: Alberto Castillo

Take for example a home – when you think of home, you see a beautiful organized, cozy space that brings about feelings of comfort; a safe space to go to at the end of the day. A home is a place where we spend most of our time and we are very connected to it.

But if you are to look at an office, things are different. The space is intended to maximize the productivity of the team, it is usually sleek and modern, or colourful and creative, in order to inspire workers and increase efficiency within the space. An office is never trying to mimic your home and neither is the home trying to mimic the office. They are both intentionally driven towards completely different vibes.

While some of us have a picture of what we want, in general people have no clue at all. The cliché mindset that interior designers are exclusively for the rich and famous is completely false. In Uganda and Rwanda at least, a few areas are starting to warm up to the idea of interior designers, but the majority think it’s a waste of money. You’d be surprised to find that in many cases, interior designers actually save you money when they plan ahead and make sure major mishaps are avoided, and we know with a project as big as your house, nobody wants a huge mishap taking place because that can mean big bucks going down the drain!

In the next post, we talk about how to know if you actually need an interior designer, so stick around!

K’wanzi Accents is a small interior design firm based in Rwanda and Uganda & you can contact us via email: info@kwanziaccents.com or camilla@kwanziaccents.com and brenda@kwanziaccents.com 


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How and when its best to involve an Interior Designer?