Reader Question: Becoming an Interior Designer

Hello everyone, I've received and email from a reader that I would like you to help me respond to. Tiffany, a recent high school graduate, is interested in becoming an interior designer and needs some guidance. Here is her email:

"My name is Tiffany and I wanted to contact you to get a little bit of your input on the idea of pursuing a career as an interior designer. I have recently graduated high school and want to begin college. I have found that a big interest of mine is interior design... I was just wanting some information, ideas, and a little bit of ideas to let me know what I need to be waiting for. I would sincerally appreciate this... Thank you."

It's makes me smile that Tiffany would reach out to me for advice. Tiffany, the first thing you should know is that I am not an interior designer. I actually studied Marine Biology in college and work as an Environmental Scientist but I have a strong interest in interior design. I voraciously consume information about the subject and write about the topics that interest me. I also have a father who once owned his own interior design business, a brother who works as an interior designer and was actually on the third season of HGTV's Design Star, and an uncle who was a very talented artist. I guess you can say interior design is in my gene pool. I also do small amounts of design work (usually for friends and usually for free) because I love it so much. I am working to build that business and perhaps one day will do more (paid :) work as a decorator or designer.

Now that you know more about my background you can see that I can't actually provide guidance about what kind of schooling is necessary to become an interior designer. This is why I would like to turn this question over to my readers. I know that some of you are professional interior designers & decorators, some that may have followed a traditional route and some that have not, and I was hoping you could give Tiffany some advice. It would be great if you could give her some insight into the path you followed to get to where you are today.

Photo Credit: Jorge Luis Garcia Jimenez, Interior Design Student, Pratt Institute, 1960

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Introductions All Around

I'm opening up the blog today to all of my wonderful readers. If you author a blog, have a shop website, or wish to share anything else about yourself please leave a comment today. I'd love to know more about you and I'm know all of the others readers do too. It's been over a year since my last introductions post and it's time for an update. One of my good blog friends, Little Brown Pen, recently wrote a similar post and created a list of all her reader's blogs. I think this is a fabulous idea and I would love to do the same so don't be shy.

Photo Credit: Michelle Verdugo

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EmersonMade - A Hand Made Purchase

EmersonMade is a hand made business that many of you are probably familiar with. They get lots of blog love and I've admired their creations for some time. The website is enchanting and Emerson, the business owner, is the most adorable model of her hand made accessories. EmersonMade creates hand dyed and hand stitched blooms and accessories. Each bloom they build is one of a kind, varied, and has its own unique character and soul – your flower soulmate! just for you (words from EmersonMade isn't that sweet?).

After much admiring I finally have the perfect event to wear one of their creations. I wanted to share this purchase with you because I know we all do a lot of online window shopping and it's often tough tell what the product is going to be like when it's in your hands. So here is my honest opinion folks - I am absolutely in LOVE! I ordered the 3" Wild Rose Clip in Sunday White, it is the most perfect crisp white linen with a yellow felt center. The hair clip is tremendously grippy and you can tell it will stay put. You are probably going to think this so weird but my favorite thing about my purchase is the box it came in. It's gorgeous and I'm never getting rid of it.

New to EmersonMade is the E.M. Clothing Line and it is chock full of beautifully tailored pieces. Now that I know my very own hand made bloom I can add a few items from the clothing line to my wish list. A few items, who am I kidding, I want every single piece!

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Anthology Magazine - Print is Not Dead

I can barely contain my excitement over a new quarterly shelter and lifestyle print magazine. Did you hear that? I said print shelter magazine. It feels like slowly the shelter magazine world is coming back to life and it is exciting. While there has been an explosion of fantastic online magazine within the past year there are moments when I really miss curling up with a great magazine that I can hold in my hands and flip through the pages. So many of those moments are perfectly captured in this video produced by Anthology Magazine - Print is Not Dead.

The Founders of Anthology Magazine, Anh-Minh Le and Meg Mateo Ilasco, envision the magazine as a collection of stories about home décor, travel, design, entertaining, and culture shared with readers. The Anthology website provides a sneak peek into the premiere issue and I love what I'm seeing so far. In fact, I love it so much I ordered myself a copy and I can't wait for it to arrive.

Anthology also has a blog that is updated daily for a dose of inspiration and peak of behind the scenes magazine production.

Design Evolution's First Contest

There was a really great response to last week's post about the color palette generator available from Big Huge Labs. I thought it would be fun to have a little contest that would let you give the color palette generator a try.

I would like you take a photo of whatever you want and create a color palette from it. Once your palette is generated (like the one below) create a mood board for a room you would design around that palette.

You can create a design for any room you like and your original inspiration photo can be of whatever floats your boat. This will be a great exercise to show you that inspiration for interior design can come from absolutely anywhere.

Here are a few examples of previous mood boards I have created. You are free to create a mood board of any style or format. If you don't have access to photoshop, which is what I use to create mood boards, there are a lot of free online options like polyvore, pinterest, or mydeco.

Once your mood board is created leave a link to it in the comments or you can email it to me verdugo.designevolution@gmail.com. Since I'm calling this a contest I'm sure you are thinking "what's the prize?" I'm giving away my copy of the book Marie Claire Maison: Colour. Instead of picking "the best" or "my favorite" mood board, because everyone's style is so different, if you participate you are eligible to win the book. I will put everyone's name in hat and pick a winner at random. You have until Monday, September 20th to leave a link to your mood board AND your inspiration photo/palette in the comments (or you can email).

Tuesday I will create a post with everyone's mood boards (if you have your own blog/site feel free to leave the link to that also and I will include it with your mood board) and announce the winner. I look forward to seeing what you all come up with!

Delightful Deal Alert - Old Navy Ballet Flats

One of the ultimate wardrobe staples, regardless or the season, is the ballet flat. The Old Navy version is so affordable you can pick up one in every color.

I only wish they also came in printed canvas. They would be the perfect substitute for the J Crew I've been admiring.

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Delightful Deal Alert - A & G Merch

Delightful Deal Alert - Wisteria

Koloni Stockholm

Koloni Stokholm was born in 2006 with graphic designer Lotta Kühlhorn and shop owner Karin Carlbark. Their first joint project included self stick tile decorations that intended to give bathrooms and kitchens an instant face-lift. The product line has grown to include coasters, mugs, cutting boards, tea towels, cupboard paper and shelf edging. This collection of items for the home is designed with love, happiness and lots of color. Find information about retailers that carry Koloni Stockholm products here.

Fun Color Palette Generator

I have a fun tool to share with you this Friday. Big Huge Labs has created a neat color palette generator that is super easy to use. I chose a photo that I shot on my recent trip to Yosemite to show you how it works. The palette generator took my photo of a pine tree and created a palette that is warm, rich and surprising right on trend for fall.

It's an excellent tool for someone who needs help creating a pleasing color palette for their home and would also be useful when developing a color scheme for a blog theme or website. This is not the only color palette generator out there but I like this one because it allows you to link directly to facebook or flickr as well as upload photos from your computer so it is really versatile. The program also creates a .ASE file of your palette that you can download and use with Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.

Once my color palette was created I pulled together examples of some interiors that display the palette nicely. A quick tip: if you are having trouble creating a color scheme for your home stick with colors that appear in nature. Nature always gets it right. If the colors appear together outside they are going to look great inside.



Hope you enjoy that long holiday weekend and I will see you back here Tuesday.

Photo Credits: Home of David Deflin, Joanna Henderson, Douglas Freidman, New York Magazine, Lonny Magazine

The Wallpaper Collective

In case you are new here, I should let you know that I often write posts about fabulous wallpaper . I'm madly in love with wallpaper but unfortunately have none hanging in my home. I own a condo and only intend on staying in it a few more years so it's hard to justify spending the dough on fab wallpaper knowing I will have to leave it behind. Plus, it would break my heart to know that the future owner would move in and tear it down. So until the day comes when I find the home that I intend on living in for the long haul I'll continue to share my fabulous wallpaper finds with all of you.


Today's dose of wallpaper fabulousness is from Wallpaper Collective. Wallpaper Collective carries clever, hip, and beautiful papers by designers like Aimee Wilder, Hygge & West, and Mod Green Pod. Their website is well organized and simple to navigate. I consider this a big plus as I often find fabric and wallpaper sites clumsy places that leave you spending hours clicking through fug to find very little fab.


Wallpaper Collective also carries the much adored ostrich wallpaper spotted in Michelle Adams's apartment in the April/May 2010 issue of Lonny Magazine that everyone was buzzing about.


That wonderfully quirky pattern is also available in chocolate brown with the ostrich print in gold foil. Could you die? I'm completely in love with it.


Live in an apartment and your landlord won't let you wallpaper? Check out this post for a quick and easy solution.

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