How to Become an Interior Designer in Ghana

Have you been receiving compliments on your interior design taste? Do you love decorating rooms and furniture? If yes, then you can consider a career in interior design. In this guide, I’ll be showing you tips on how to become a successful interior designer in Ghana.

However, before you venture into this career path, there are some things you should know about interior design. Interior designers face challenges every day; some of these may not appeal to you, while others may excite you and open doors to a career that you never thought was possible.

What Does an Interior Designer Do?

Interior design is the art of enhancing interiors. Interior designers take a space and make it more attractive, functional, and safe.

Basically, interior designers are saddled with many responsibilities including space planning and product research, coordinating with project stakeholders (home and business owners, contractors, stores) and establishing timelines, and finally overseeing construction and executing the design.

Compared to most other jobs for creatives, an interior design career can offer more job stability and higher salary potential.

How to Become an Interior Designer in Ghana

To become a successful interior designer, there are some steps that you must take. Some of these steps are highlighted below.

1. Education and Training

To be an interior designer attending an interior design school is important because this would give you a great insight into what interior design is all about. It is a good idea for an individual to be a member of a national council or society for interior designers to backup her education and experience in the field.

2. Good Communication Skills

Interior designers often work one on one with clients, service providers and contractors or as part of a team. Therefore, a designer must have the ability to work with different personality types, be good listeners and communicate clearly.

When there is a clash of opinions, a designer may have to act as a negotiator or mediator to help find a resolution, as well as have the ability to help a client understand why his idea may not be effective or safe.

3. Management Skills

Deadlines are a natural part of the professional interior design world. Clients may have specific deadlines for a designer to meet or a designer may impose her own deadline so she can move on to other clients.

Sometimes, an interior designer may have to work on multiple projects at once, so project management skills are essential to maintaining order and meeting deadlines. If a designer runs her own business, she may also need to market herself to new clients while working on other projects, all while maintaining good relationships with everyone involved.

With good time and project management skills, a designer can meet her clients’ needs and her business without looking unprepared or unprofessional.

4. Planning Skills and Design Know-How

In the world of interior designers, it’s important to plan a space according to a client’s needs. In addition, an interior designer in Ghana must know how to visually render his plan with drawings, computer-aided design software or scaled models so a client can see the designer’s ideas.

Interior designers must know how to create the desired look and feel through the use of colours, lights, furniture, flooring and fabrics, as well as how to artfully arrange these elements.

5. Believe in Yourself

Not because you did it wrong the first time doesn’t mean you won’t get it right, and then. To be an interior designer, it is so important to believe in yourself, and tell yourself that it is going to be ok.

6. Attend a good Interior Design School

Acquire skills that would give you the boldness to strive in this field. I always loved designing things. With anything in life that you want to do, if it interests you and you spend enough time doing it, you will learn it. You just have to care enough about it to try.

7. Don’t blow the budget

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to make a room look and feel good. Time frames and budget constraints are probably the most difficult thing to manage as an interior designer. People don’t want to spend too much money and if you go over budget, then people understandably get upset.

Make suggestions and put together a mood board using images from books and magazines. Try and get all your ideas in one place visually, from bits of fabric to tiles to floor finishes, put all the bits you might want to use together and see if they work together on paper that is always a good place to start.

8. Don’t Aim for Perfection

Things don’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. If you go into a room and it’s all perfect, you don’t feel comfortable. A home interior is not an abstract thing, it is about people, it’s about the way you feel, the way you interact. It’s about family and friends; it’s the backdrop to your life.

The more you strive for perfection, the more it disappears. Don’t aim for perfection, try to create a relaxed environment.