Interior decorating is an amazing career for the right person.
Are you a great communicator and do you find it easy to understand other people’s needs and ideas? Do you have an eye for design and are you often complimented on your home style choices? Perhaps you currently work in a position that is unfulfilling, and you’d love to follow your dream to become an interior decorator.
It may not be as hard as you think to make your dreams a reality. A career in interior decorating is easily accessible.
Are you ready to get started? Then follow our 5 steps to becoming an interior decorator.
Be sure it’s what you really want
Starting out a new career is a big step, and your goals will only be achieved if you have the passion and drive to make things happen. While interior decorating can be a highly enjoyable and rewarding career, there will also be tough times and it can be a highly competitive career. Can you handle a demanding client with exacting requirements? Will you happily spend long hours researching suppliers and keeping on top of the latest trends?
If the answer is yes, then you’re good to go!
Work on your skills
If you’re interested in interior decorating, then you probably enjoy imagining the changes you’d make to properties. You may visit a friend’s home and be secretly redecorating it and rearranging the furniture in your mind. This is a great way to hone your skills, and to increase the speed at which you can imagine the perfect design in any situation. Spend time browsing estate agent websites, and imagine you’ve been hired as an interior decorator for each property. What would you do? What changes would you make? Try to pick out the design mistakes the owners have made. If you have friends who are amenable, you could offer to put together some design ideas for their homes. It’s all great practice and will help you boost your abilities.
Take an interior decorating course
Getting an interior decorating certification isn’t complicated, and some courses can be completed part time in just a few weeks from the comfort of your own home.
Taking on a course when you work full time or have family obligations can be daunting, but an interior decorating course can be easy to fit around your other commitments.
Once you have that certificate under your belt, it can work for you in two ways.
Firstly, you’ll have learned some very useful skills and techniques, which will boost your confidence as you start out in your new career, and secondly, potential clients will be reassured of your abilities when you have been awarded a qualification for your interior design skills.
Showcase your work
Pictures speak volumes when it comes to showing off your talents, so it’s vital to put together a portfolio of examples of your work to show to potential clients. In addition, you’ll need a well-designed website that will bring your services to the forefront, when people in your area are searching for interior decorators online.
If you’re new to the business, then you may not have photos of your past work yet, so this a good time to put your skills to use in your own home, or those of friends and family, in order to get some great images together.
Get the word out there
It doesn’t matter how fantastic your interior decorating skills are if no one has heard of your business and your website doesn’t show up in Google search results. Once your website is up and running and you have a great portfolio, it’s time to grasp any and all opportunities to market your new venture. In your everyday life, you should take every opportunity to showcase your abilities in your local area, perhaps building a relationship with local real estate agents, and of course, asking the people you know if they would kindly recommend you to others.
You mustn’t neglect the online world though. Put your efforts into creating and maintaining accounts on all social media channels, and keep them frequently updated. It may also be worth hiring an SEO company in order to get your website ranking high in search engine listings.
