From Concept to Completion in Interior Design: Navigating Each Project Phase Successfully

Let's continue. Now in the field of interior design, there are a variety of different project phases.

These are the main phases that I'm sharing here and the first phase is really the pre-project phase. It's understanding feasibility and discussion and looking at the project as far as understanding the scope and the budget. Now understanding the scope and budget will be very important so your client understands that they are working within the project parameters of what you've set.

And usually this pre-project phase is an opportunity for you to get to know your client, to get to ask questions, and to understand what the whole scope of the project is. This might mean feasibility studies, which means you go to the site, you check it out, you look at photos, you make sure that the project is feasible from your professional standpoint. Now the second phase is programming and research.

Now programming involves the interviews with the client and a lot of times these phases overlap. So you may have pre-project phasing overlapping with a little bit of programming and research because in the pre-project you may be doing some research as well. But the programming phase will allow you to interview the client, project discussion, site visit.

This is where you actually start doing the work, right? So you might be measuring the floor plan of the individual's house that you're going to be working on. You may be reviewing some of the existing plans that they have. You may work with design teams and meet with them to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

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Now the next phase is schematic design. And schematic design is when the designs start to come into fruition. So conceptual sketches and development plans, elevations, sections, which we will dive into a couple lessons from now.

I'll talk about what a plan is and what a section is and we'll talk about how these work together to communicate information to the client. We'll also talk about material boards and renderings and just understand that the schematic phase is a phase where you have an opportunity to really start playing with the design of the project and really start making something wonderful. Now we dive into design development.

Design development is when we plan and create elevations that detail with dimensions and specifications. FF&E, which is furnishers and fixtures, which is basically selecting all the various furnishings that we're using inside the project. So design development will fine-tune some of these details.

It may call out certain specifications of furniture, certain sizes of furniture, or various things that you think are important to go inside the project. And once this is developed, now by the way, each of these phases are approved by the client. When you finish with the schematic design phase, you want to give a presentation to the client and make sure that they're okay with you moving on to the design development phase.

Now once you get to the end of the design development phase, you will give another presentation to the client and we will move on to what's called construction documents. Now we have to think about construction documents as the construction drawings that the contractor is going to use to build the project. So what does this entail? Detailed floor plans, including all consultant specifications.

Schedules. When I say schedules, I'm referring to lighting schedule, material schedules. This is listing out every aspect of materials and lighting and other aspects of the interior space that you are specifying.

Once we have construction documents, the project is ready to build. And when the project starts the building process, you are now in construction administration phase. And you have to think of construction administration as you are on-site managing the project.

Furniture is being installed. Flooring is being installed. Wall panels are going up.

Light fixtures are coming into the site. And things are actually happening. And then lastly, we have POE or post-completion.

And this is your opportunity to kind of re-evaluate the whole project. Talk to the client. You may even have some referrals where you can be referred to a new client.

And this is an opportunity for you to kind of assess what's happened throughout the project and to see if there's anything that maybe you could do better on the next project. This is where you may send a thank you to the client, right? And all of these phases together work to communicate with the client so that we are working towards a common goal, which is the goal of the client and a goal to create functional and absolutely beautiful interior design for the project. Now, client questions in, let's say, the pre-project phase, right, right before the contract's signed, a client may ask you some questions.

And you have to be prepared to answer some of those questions. A client may ask you, what other projects have you completed? Do you have any examples of your previous work? And this is where a portfolio is extremely important. You're going to want a professional design portfolio that shows examples of your work.

How do you bill? What are your rates? You know, designers bill differently. As I mentioned earlier, you can bill on an hourly basis. And if you want to know what a professional interior designer charges, it could be anywhere from $100 to $250 an hour.

And it depends on your experience. So typically, I recommend to my students who you start off in the field billing hourly because if you bill hourly, you're always getting paid for the work that you're doing. The issue with billing a project, like a whole project fee that says, oh, I'll do this whole project package for $2,000, is that if you go over hours, you have to eat some of those hours potentially.

So charging by the hour, you're guaranteed to be, you know, creating or generating income off of every single hour that you work. Now, you also want to be efficient, of course, throughout this process. And another question might be, can you work with my limited budget, right? Like we talked about in the first couple lessons, is that not all projects are inexpensive, right? Not all projects are similar to what we see on TV where there's a budget in the background that we don't know about, and they're supplying resources to the designers.

We have to understand the quality of the project and what the end goal is for the client before we can even start to understand what the budget is going to entail. Now, obviously, it's really important for you to understand from a client what is your budget, right? Understanding the budget will allow you to select certain materials and furnishings that will be appropriate for that specific budget. Now, is it possible to design on a dime? Yes, it is.

It's very possible. It's also possible to be very efficient with how you design. But just remember, the larger the project, the more expensive it's going to be.

Now, just to show some visual samples, you know, the pre-project phase is that research kind of phase where you're talking to the client, you're finding out more. But schematic design, this is the exciting part of the project, in my opinion. This is where you actually start drawing, and you start working with ideas and concepts that the client may have shared with you as far as some of their inspirations, and you actually start creating the physical or the digital design of the project.

You can see here design. You can go through hundreds of iterations. In fact, you may design or draw 18 different boxes before you get the right box, and that's part of the process, right? So, schematic design is the phase that allows you to experiment and to work through these design problems.

Now, as we make our way through schematic design, we give a presentation to the client, the client's on board, they like what you're doing with your sketches, then we can move into design development. And you can see here, design development will literally start looking at the physical materials of the building or the interior, and we'll start to dimension out specifically what the spaces are going to look and feel like. Design development is our opportunity to develop the project before we get into construction documents, which we'll talk about in just a second.

Design development is imperative that you work with the client so you guys are on the same page, right? Understanding what the client's goals are, and understanding what the end goal for the project are, what the programmatic elements that are important or necessary for the project, and specifics as far as what you want to achieve with this project. At this phase, design development, you have a pretty good idea of what your concept is. You're just turning this into an actual design.

Now, construction documents is a series of drawings that we do as designers, and we will work with the architects and the mechanical engineers and the audiovisual technicians and everyone else. And these are very detailed drawings that specifically show all of the details in the project's precise dimensions, the size of the various flooring panels, the specifics of the lamps that you're going to use, what kind of countertops you've specified exactly, and where do they come from, right? Who's manufacturing them? What kind of supplies or interior furnishings are you using, and who's the manufacturer, and how long will it take for them to get there? By this phase, you are essentially detailing the entire project. Because remember, after this, you're going into construction administration, which is when you start building the project, which is our next phase.

And thinking about construction administration, again, as I mentioned earlier, things are happening at this point. The building is going up, right? And the design is starting to come together. Now, just because you're in construction administration doesn't mean that there may not be a design challenge that comes up through this phase.

We have something in the world of architecture and interior design that's called RFIs. It's a request for information. Now, this is when the contractor might say, hey, I'm working on this interior detail here, but the beam says it's supposed to be 12 feet, but the space itself is only 11.

How are we going to make this fit? Obviously, coordination is key, so it's possible that something could get missed. You may have to come up with the design detail and send it to the contractor during this phase. So just be open, because even though things are being installed, there are areas where you're going to have to problem solve, and there may be things—I've never been in a project for the 25 years that I've done this—that there isn't something that comes up in construction administration.

And it's not necessarily one consultant's fault or the other. It's the nature of the project. The project's dynamic.

There are so many variables. There's so many moving parts that create the project. So it makes sense that you're going to have to be ready to create a design solution if something comes up during the construction administration phase.

Thanks for watching. Let's keep the progress going, and I'll see you in the next video.