Preface of Interior designing: Chapter-1

Our home is the shelter to our lives. And every little thing that we buy for ourselves, for example, a coffee mug or a shirt also takes us through hours of shortlisting and choosing. But when it comes to our own house, we don't even opt for a planner or designer. Most of us rely on the builder or contractor. In some projects, the architects do the initial plans and in reference to that the whole project is including interiors is executed without any objective or vision.

As people spend 50-60 per cent of their lives at their homes, they interact the most with the spaces, the furniture and the elements present there. Thus, it becomes too much important for any house to have a modelled and aesthetic appearance, positive functions and good vibes.

Interior Designing is the styling and organising of your living spaces into something emotional and appealing. All the elements of interior design are functional and carry a delightful presence with space-saving attitudes and appearances of one's own tastes and flavours in design. It is basically the art of creating innovative designs of a house based on a person's tastes, experiences and likes. The aim of interior designing is quite simple - to design a home that is in line with the residents living in it, that serves the purpose of every member of the house, that is eco friendly and

has every modern technology and aesthetic decors as per personal tastes - all in a specified budget. 

Interior designing, as a field, is in high demand today and there are multiple scopes in this field. Interior designing doesn't only include the modernised designs but also the old modelled designs, designs with French, Greek, Roman, English countryside tastes as well. There are wooden interior designs for nature lovers and there are fully framed metallic and stone elements for technology lovers. Starting from the walls, floors, rugs, curtains, shelves, ceilings, storage, doors, windows, decor - everything inside the house comes under the scope of interior designing.

This concept and course area is seen in the modern era. However, the origin of the ideas is purely ancient found among the people of Greek civilization as well as Indus valley civilization. The interior design is also found in the vedic text named as Antarika Vastu where positions, placements and orientations of each element inside the house are considered based on certain Vaastu principles. 

Elements of interior design are space, form, shapes, patterns, lines, light, colour and texture. Essentials of interior design are space saving ideas, easy to maintain layouts, smart solutions, minimalistic decor, comfort, technical utilization and stipulated budget. Interior design is often confused with interior decoration. Simply put, all interior designers are interior decorators but interior decorators are not interior designers. The main difference lies in the use of technicalities by interior designers which gives a huge value to the output. If we distinguish between the architects, civil engineers and interior designers, the architect comes first to give the external design, the civil engineer looks after the structural construction and the interior designer come at the last who designs the interior space. 

The work and workflow of an interior designer are very systematic and defined step by step backed by individual respective documents. Each step is the perfect successor of the next step making it very precise and pristine. Documents includes the GA drawings, Layout plans, elevation drawings, 3D visualizations of different partitions, etc, etc.

The work of an interior designer generally includes the following steps:

1. Plan a layout- It is the initial step where an interior designer is supposed to do a rough bubble drawing for space management of a built-up area with outside walls. In some good projects, a general space utilization would have already been provided by the architect or planner who plans the house and its structures. A 2D floor plan layout is created for each floor with proper measurements. Dimensions of each room, partition walls, other RCC entities are also provided in this drawing. 

2. Furniture Layout- This is the foundation of many of the successive steps, so major care is taken while finalizing this layout plan. Repetitive revisions may also occur during this process, making this process flexible and interactive. This layout is prepared using standard measurements for every piece of furniture. Best wall for putting bed/ wardrobe/ dressing/ study table/ sofa/ sanitarywares/ dining table/ utility shelves are also finalized in this step. 

3.  False ceiling layout- This layout view is just below the main ceiling wall. Framing drawings along with fasteners and clamps are also selected and placed as per the requirements and loading capacity in this drawing. False ceiling is mostly given for aesthetical purposes, to cover the wires, vent pipes, HVAC connections and plumbing pipes (conceal work). People do ceiling using gypsum boards, fibre sheets, wood & composite ply boards, glass, metal, synthetic leather, cloth, PVC, dust ply boards, etc. Different patterns can be used in single or multiple layers for a better aesthetic perspective. Multilayers mostly include 2 or 3 layers based on the demand, material, budget and other parameters. 

4. Electrical layout- MEP stands for mechanical, electrical and plumbing work which is done by an experienced engineer only. Mechanical drawings include the details related to ducts, AC, heater, etc. Electrical drawings include the positioning of lights, switchboards and fans, ceiling lights, spotlights, RGB connections, the complete wiring layout and details. While doing the electrical layout, the furniture layout is taken as a reference for proper positioning of switchboards and other electrical ammeninties. The positioning of MCB is a very technical and cost accounting task. With proper placement of MCB a huge differential value in economical aspect can be accounted, if planned properly by an interior designer. Therefore it is highly recommended to involve and interior designer while planning the electrical layouts of any building. 

5. Plumbing layout- Plumbing drawings includes the details of piping. water connections, sanitary wares, taps, inlets and outlets, etc. In most cases the builder or the contractor take up the plumbing works. But it is highly preffered to give the plumbing works to the interior designer for proper planning and execution. The interior designer will place and position all the inlet and outlet points based on utilities, comfort, aesthetics and requirements. Moreover, the whole process will involve more technical insights which will help the owner in the long run. Postioning of showers/ wash basins/ sink/ WC, dividing the bathroom into wet and dry zones along with proper sloping measurements to drain, proper concealing of pipe inside thick walls and use of two walls max for plumbing are some of the technical aspects taken into consideration while planning an electrical layout by a skilled interior designer. 

6. Flooring layout- Flooring is one of the most essential part in the interior designing. It is because, the flooring will be in line or in contrasting to all other elements can be decided properly by an interior designer only. Selections of materials/ tiles/ boards/ floor stickers, sizes, no of tiles/ boards, color scheme, textures or patterns, tints, etc. are all to be done in this process. A drawing is to be provided by the interior designer based many pre- made documents such as the furniture layout, electrical layout and plumbing layout. Different types of floorings includes marble flooring, ceramic or vitrified (silica) tile flooring, vinyl flooring, hardwood flooring, granite flooring, bamboo flooring, concrete flooring, laminate flooring, linoleum flooring, terrazzo flooring, brick flooring, redoxide flooring, etc, etc. 

7. Interior decoration- At last comes the interior decoration part where based on a client's requirements, aesthetics, emotions, ambience in totality color combination, furniture selection, fabric selection, curtain selection, glorification and plant selection, sculpture selections, decorative material selection, the luminousity of the light, the glossiness or reflectivity of different material, theme based selections,  etc. etc. are done. The factors taken into consideration are budget, quality, comfort requirement, residents' perspectives, aesthetics, ambience etc. 

Since the interior design topic is very vast, there will be a upcoming series of chapter describing all the points vividly. If you find this article or blog useful, kindly share your views in the comment box below. If it did any value addition to your information bar, then you can learn more of such content by flowing this website page. There is a follow button below, you can click on it and get instantaneous updates once I upload any new blog or article. In the next chapter I will be taking about the physical components of interior designs vividly. Keep in touch... 

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