Interior Designer Vanessa Brady, whose award-winning creations have appeared in everything from national papers to Homes and Gardens and idFX is the Chairman of the Society of British Interior Design, an internationally-reaching organisation aimed at promoting excellence in design and extending professional accreditation to designers to protect the profession of Interior Design in the UK. Currently preparing for the SBID official launch event, she spoke to Retail Floors about her vision for the future of Interior Design in the UK, the importance of education within the design profession and, of course, her vision on future trends in flooring.The Society of British Interior Design was conceived in Christmas 2008 after Vanessa had repeatedly found herself inundated with emails from associated trades within the design world calling for her to found an organisation to set a standard and represent the industry. Taking on this daunting but exciting task, Vanessa knew from the start that education would be the key to SBID because it formed the “absolute basis” of what she wanted to achieve.
“If you are promoting professionalism, you have to focus on how a professional is formed, said Vanessa, people were telling me ‘there needs to be an umbrella organisation, a body that represents designers and anyone associated with interior design, and which accredits us’”.
Currently many design schools are not adequately preparing students for the challenges and demands of the interior design market. So much focus is on the actual design process that little attention is paid to finance, business skills and learning about the technical specifications of individual products. Vanessa cites a particular incident that led her to this conclusion.
“I had an issue with a graduate intern once. I asked her to source a bed for a client and she went on Google and came up with six beds. The client can do that on his own, we have to offer them something more. We have to give clients options. It’s not just about budget, although that is very important, but there are so many other concerns that as a recent graduate, she didn’t think about. Besides deliveries, there are logistical issues: how will the couch get up the stairs, will it turn round the staircase? If you don’t consider these things you could end up with a lot of furniture sitting in the streets.”
“Graduates often don’t understand anything about finance. If you work in a company or for a business, you have to understand costs. Budget is everything it dictates your entire project. You cannot go sourcing things if you don’t know the value of your products. Graduates don’t seem to have a very good understanding of installation in terms of the product. If they don’t understand the facilities and the use of a product, then they’ll specify the wrong product. You buy things because they look beautiful, but every designer-looking item isn’t necessarily right for that environment or appropriate for that area. If you hold yourself out as an expert you have to stand by that, you need to know why you’re using a product, and you need to understand in a building all the mechanics of that building. Ultimately I would say that means electrical, plumbing and water - that affect everything else in the design.
Vanessa has worked a long time with interns from the US, whose internship schemes had strict monitoring procedures, a comprehensive program which allows them to learn all aspects of the job from creating a business plan, how to cost and pitch a project and marketing and measured feedback to ensure the student is getting a varied and intensive internship. This is the standard Vanessa wants to see in the UK where, she says, “many interns are simply used as cheap labour, cleaning cupboards, making coffee, faxing, etc. I don’t do that, I make sure they learn as much as possible about the job.”
An Interior Design Services design by Vanessa Brady...
“In the US, there’s a very different level of measuring. There’s an inspection, there’s health and safety, students complete feedback forms, it’s very much more professional. This is something I want to achieve with SBID and I want to address how graduates degree courses are preparing students for their career.”
Once the business plan was drawn up and Vanessa had a clear vision of her aims, she set off to Europe to talk to universities over there. “We said, SBID will incorporate the highest levels of qualification for an interior designer, which will make us the industry bearer. Whoever comes along after us cannot reach our standard, which is good for the consumer. If that person is looking for a designer in Italy, he would get the same measure of standard as they would here.” Which is where the second element of SBID’s goal comes into play, it is an internationally-reaching organisation, which already links to 17 other European countries.
“It’s good for competition: those countries get the benefit of the standard here in the UK, and when we our members go to Europe they automatically get the best intake. We delayed the launch until October because we wanted to have these connections in place.
“We’re a consumer organisation and not a trade association. We’re actually here to protect the interests of the public and therefore we can in that regard recruit across industry, whereas if we were a trade organisation we’d only be able to represent interior designers. In this regard we can now look after the interests of suppliers and that makes us hugely important. Our business model is protected so that we can’t be replicated. Our membership is predominantly architects, followed by professionals and we’ve got just a few affiliates and the student chapter. In terms of membership split, it’s roughly 50/50 in terms of designers and suppliers.”
Another concern for SBID is the “cowboy element” in the design world. The flooring industry, and all construction trades have accrediting bodies, governing bodies that protect them and help consumers make informed choices. So far, this has been missing for interior designers.
“Everybody who prints a business card nowadays is an interior designer. But there’s still no measure of that professionalism, which is why our standards are so important. Anybody can call themselves an organisation or an interior designer. Either of those two things would make a consumer think that they were hiring from a professional body. Now if I am a consumer and I need a plumber, I’ll go to the Institute of Plumbing, because the Institute of Plumbing has standards that are recognised and therefore you know what your getting.”
SBID aside, I couldn’t sit with such a talented designer and not get her viiews on flooring trends. Vanessa sees a return to what she calls the “Shephard’s Pie era”, a return to comforting, homely items brought on by the recession.
“You come home, you want a comfy sofa to crawl onto, luxury floorings, soft carpet underfoot as well as wood for cleaning and easy sweeping. There’s a lot of country furniture, cosiness and warmth, the security in yesterday. In terms of flooring we’re moving back to carpet. I think we’d moved away because of heat. I like wood flooring but I love to have rugs and insets, there’s nothing like getting out of bed and putting your feet into a squishy rug or carpet. I love tiles aswell in all the communal areas. Ground floor interiors are good for wood and sisals. “
Our clients nowadays are not driven by price but by source. Longevity. Sustainability. I remember going over the last ten years, people asking me, “How long will this tap last?”, “How long is this wood guaranteed for for this flooring?”. Now its also “Where is that wood from?”, How is it manufactured? Its a very important sales point from our perspective. We always need a certificate for wood flooring. Dampness and leaks are major issues in the UK because we have so many historic buildings. Crooked floors because England is built on clay. We’ve just used this woven vinyl in an old shed conversion that led into a house and the levels were different. We didn’t want a ridge so we used the vinyl flooring and floated it into the next room where it met the tiling and it worked wonderfully.”
The primary aim of the SBID is to champion the cause of Professional Interior Designers working throughout this Country. The Society will shed clarity, for potential clients, on the difference between experienced professionals and the ‘hobbyists’ or amateur designers and will, thus, enable British Home owners, Architects, Specifiers and the Managers of Commercial Buildings, to be better informed when making their decisions on new interior design commissions.
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