Interior Design or Home Staging: Which is Career Right for You?

Many women approaching their 40's write to me to ask my opinion about whether or not they should go to Interior Design school. It's an issue I struggled with myself many times over a twenty year period.

I interviewed a number of interior design schools at various points in my past career but never followed through on actually applying. I already had a BA, an MBA and years of experience. The thought of being a full time student for two to four more years with a bunch of kids twenty years younger than me was not very appealing. And the cost was huge considering the significant income I would be giving up over that period.

Over the past five years, I have been approached by a surprising number of interior design graduates that asking me to hire them for my home staging company, Six Elements, Inc. Most seem to be working as sales people in furniture stores and are looking for a way out.

Just this week, a woman called me who was working on 100% commission. I couldn't image working retail hours for a furniture store after studying interior design for four years and not even be earning a salary. If you are going to work on a commission-only basis, you should absolutely be in your own business. At least then all the sales come to you instead of a hefty percentage going to your employer.

Here's what I've learned over the past five years about being a Professional Home Stager instead of an "Interior designer":

* As a Home Stager you get many more projects to work on because each project is short-term in nature which translates to much more variety in the job.

* As a Home Stager your clients often give you complete creative control because they understand that they only have to live temporarily with the changes you make to their homes. So, you get to be creative AND make the decisions.

* As a Home Stager you get many referrals for interior redesign and color projects because your staging clients love what you do with the house they are selling and often ask you to work on the new home they are moving into.

* As a Home Stager you have a much larger pool of potential clients to work with because many people who would not normally hire an interior designer or decorator do hire a professional Home Stager when selling their home. As a designer fresh out of interior design school, I know I would not have been able to decorate hundreds of homes in so short a period.

Although I have never attended design school or a design course, the people who hire me never seem to care. They have usually visited my websites, heard about me from their neighbors or real estate agents or have read about Six Elements or Staging Diva in the media. They are not interested in whether or not I can tell them if their chair is Louis the XVI or if I can draw plans to build an addition to their house. They hire me because I'm an expert in decorating a house to sell.

Now that I've staged hundreds of homes, I'm so happy I followed my instincts and stayed out of Interior Design school, and it was a huge relief to finally let go of the stress I had about the decision. Once I had focused my creative energy and talent on my own Home Staging business, I knew I had made the right choice for me.

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Create A Welcoming Alcove With Country Home Interior Design

The country home is a cross-cultural symbol of cozy, simple living. In England, deep red and green enhance abundant floral patterns and thatched roofing. In France, the scent of lavender embraces guests from sachets, linens, and gardens. American country home interior design sports a cross of leather and ironware furnishings.

These styles all share a celebration of life's everyday activities and a friendly atmosphere. This is an easy design to implement, and having not attended interior design school shouldn't hold anyone back from attempting it.

Informality Leads the Way

No one room should be planned except for the basic placement of furniture. Country home interior design emphasizes a lived in feel where things are collected over time. Free from hints of time constraint or endless responsibilities, country design offers a refuge where we can appreciate the things that actually mean something to us.

Quilts from some of every family member's clothing or watercolor sketches by a friend who has passed warm the heart and bring moments of gratefulness during the busy day. These are the types of items that should be focal points when designing a country home interior.

Warm toned wood works well in country home interior design, and should be used generously. Wood trimming on the walls is a hallmark of country architecture but not a requirement. Floors that are lighter than the walls around them create the illusion of a larger room and vice versa. Soft worn fabrics and mixed textures should adorn the furniture in a country home interior design.

To achieve this, chairs and couches can be covered with blankets, and bare floors covered with latch work or braided rugs. Too many groups of small objects makes a room cluttered, so these items should put in one or two places for display. Multiple groupings of pictures are an exception to this rule if they have the same type of frame for each photo in a group. This causes them to be perceived as one object instead of many.

Importance of the Kitchen

Aesthetic and functionality are the ideals of decoration in country home interior design. No where is this more obvious than in the kitchen. The kitchen, where we nourish our bodies and souls, is the center of the country home.

Cloudy blue and sunshine yellow mingle to suggest warmth and sincerity. One of these colors should be a principal member of the color palette used here. Hanging cookware, window gardens, and hand painted stepping stools are suitable accessories for the country kitchen.

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Make a successful career in interior design with online interior design courses

When it comes to living place, giving an aesthetic appearance and making it out-of-the-box is an aspiration cherished by modern people. But, it is not always possible for everyone to give the exact look as per the desires. To meet that criterion nothing but one needs expert interior design services. Such services will be utmost fruitful to give your living place a truly exceptional look.

People of the contemporary age more emphasize on beauty aspect rather than other facets. In this regard, home is treated as the most concerned element of one’s life. That’s why more and more people are going for professional interior designers today. With the burgeoning demand of this service, the requirement of skilled professionals in this sector is rising. Thousands of students of the present times understand the recent and upcoming requirements of interior decoration and that’s why they are choosing it as a career.

An excellent interior decorating career requires brilliant education from good institutes. In this regard an aspirant can consider the interior design online courses. Several students from various countries have attended such courses and have obtained exceptional study experiences from there. The interior design classes online are taken by industry professionals and subject experts which is truly useful to gain in-depth subject knowledge.

It has been acknowledged by thousands of pupils that online courses in the Canada are highly beneficial to become a successful industry professional. The innovative teaching methods and experienced faculties help in gaining comprehensive knowledge on the subject.

So, if you or some of the near-dear ones of yours possess the desire to take interior decoration as career and become a successful interior designer then consider the online interior design school and go for a well-known online course.

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