Beyond Pretty: Learning to See Like a Designer

Classes recently started, and I am back teaching interior design after a summer break-- and I’m enjoying it. I have been thinking more deeply about what I'm really imparting to these young people: Good design isn’t primarily about having good taste. It's about seeing a space and looking at it differently. It's about getting to know the people who live there and learning how they want to live, interact, love, communicate, entertain, and, especially today, work in their homes.

When a designer enters a space, they are not simply thinking, “What color should this room be?” We’re thinking: How does the owner move through this space? Where does daylight come from? What are the acoustics like? Is the flooring appropriate? And, yes—eventually—how should it look?

 A pet peeve of mine is when people say to me that interior designers are so good at making everything look pretty. Don’t get me wrong—I like that we are able to make things look better and more appealing. But I tell my students that making things look pretty is the easy part. Give me a credit card and proximity to a furniture store or designer showroom, and I can make any room look amazing in about two hours flat.

A designer’s job is so much more than that, though. When I walk into a room for the first time, I see things differently from someone else—maybe even the person who lives there. I notice scale, proportion, lighting, texture, traffic flow—and often I can't stop noticing these things.  Why is the rug the wrong size? Why is the furniture hugging the walls? Why is that chandelier hanging too high on the ceiling?

Beautiful rooms still have to work for the people living in them, and that is where we make the difference. Interior designers fix poorly placed furniture that creates fall hazards, install lighting that makes stairways safer, address sustainability, and make our clients more comfortable in their homes. We help them become more independent, safer, more connected, more relaxed, and more confident in their living spaces.

Each fall, a new group of interior design students walks into my classroom. They arrive expecting to learn about color, fabrics, furniture, space planning, and yes, the pretty. They will learn all of those things. But first, they have to learn something much more important: how to see.

I teach them that pretty is an outcome—it isn’t the purpose.

I’m making a point to teach my students that their education isn’t only going to change what they know—it's going to change what they notice.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed Beyond Pretty: Learning to See Like A Designer and found a little inspiration for your own home and how you want to live in it.

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