Styling: Interior Design Short Course

In early May, after much um-ing and ah-ing and feeling lost after coming back from North America a lot earlier than originally planned, I decided to take a short course in interior design. I’ve been interested in it since I was about 13 and I felt like now was a great time to see if I liked it enough to take it further.

The short course I took was at the CAE in Melbourne (they are known for their great short courses), cheap mlb jerseys and I wasn’t disappointed. It was 4 classes on Tuesday evenings, and I loved it. In the first week they gave us a brief to be completed in class in the final lesson: create a mood board for a room that was a “parent’s retreat from their busy lives”.

Then we jumped straight into learning about colours, including tints, tones, shades, complimentary colours, etc. We got to play with paints, and for the first time I understood what no art teacher or website had ever managed before: colour theory. Sometimes I just need to hear it said in a practical way for me to understand why I need to know it before it sinks in.

By the end of the first lesson I was feeling energised and the exportar teacher gave us the floor plan we would look at in week 2 and the homework task of: finding a piece of artwork that we would base our colour scheme for the room on. I trawled cheap jerseys through some magazines a lovely friend gifted me from her collection and some I’d bought and found a lovely painting of a rural landscape. It was filled with greens, some browns, blacks and even just a touch of pastel pink. It was the perfect starting point for the room. The artwork is in the mood board middle bottom.

I also started searching pinterest and the internet for some furniture that I’d like in the room, there was no budget wholesale mlb jerseys on the room so we could allow our imagination to run wild. I made a pin board and looked for colours and designs that I loved. I went for a modern take on mid-century What design.

In week two we hurried through the elements and principles of design in around 40 minutes and then started to play with our floor plans with pieces of furniture cutouts (that were to scale). This is where I wholesale nfl jerseys first started to feel overwhelmed. Because the course is in such a short amount of time, I didn’t quite understand why things should go a certain way, and I didn’t really feel like I got an answer. I really struggle when I don’t understand why things should be a certain way without explanation. It’s like an 8 year old me in my head ‘but, why?’

The floor planning took up the majority of the class, but I felt I hadn’t made any progress with it and nothing was glued down, so the next day (after a good sleep), I got the measurements of Mini the furniture I had found the week before and drew them in, to scale, thinking about how someone would want to move and feel in that space and what it would be used for. Taking the time to really think about these things helped me to not feel so overwhelmed and made me feel like I’d be happy to be in that room. Doing the extra homework really helped me.

Week three was the reflective ceiling plan, materials and finishes and learning about some of the different styles that have been popular over the years. The ceiling plan is where you place the lights and what kind of lights and which switches you will use. I found this to be really confusing as I really struggled with how the lights would look and if there really were enough of them. The teacher said I had plenty, but it’s definitely something I’d like to do more research on, should I ever look at changing the lighting in a room. It made me realise that I’d prefer to work styling existing rooms to begin with rather than a new or complete redesign of a room. A good thing to realise early on, I think.

Homework for the week was to collect images for the mood board that we would complete in the final session. I printed out the ones I had cheap nfl jerseys found on the internet and then spent a few hours with my magazine stack looking for the perfect pieces that would match the style and colouring that I was going for. I had a spare A3 poster board that I used as I was finding the images so that I could see if I had enough.

I was really worried and anxious that what I had come up with wouldn’t to be enough, as none of my pieces overlapped. Collages always make me nervous, I’m just not confident with them. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that nothing needed to overlap at all! Yay!

In the final class we started putting together our mood boards, some people found this more difficult than others as it was more of a ‘what looks good’ than an explained theory. The teacher suggested that we try to group the images to help “the clients” get the concept of what the finished room would look like, which really helped me when I was choosing where to place the items. Because I had all of my images ready to go, it was just a matter of laying them out so they sat nicely and getting approval from the teacher to paste them down. She wanted to check that we understood the concepts before we went crazy with the glue – smart thinking!

In the end I loved the class, and I’m so glad that I took it. I learnt a whole heap Gardening (some that I hope to share with you soon) and it just gave me a bit more confidence to keep following this path to see where it leads me. It seemed too daunting at the beginning, but the little leap was worth it!

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