Interior design questions, answered

Question 1

Can AI replace interior designers?

Accepted Answer

No. AI is very good at producing images of rooms and very poor at everything that happens between a brief and a finished house. It cannot stand in a space, read a slab, hold a supplier to a lead time, or tell you that the render you love will not survive contact with your western sun.

Question 2

How do you choose stone for a kitchen island?

Accepted Answer

By standing in front of the actual slab, not by choosing a name from a sample chip. Natural stone varies block to block, and the piece that becomes your island is the piece you reserved. The decisions that matter are material, slab selection, edge profile and finish, roughly in that order.

Question 3

How many light sources does a room need?

Accepted Answer

At least three, on separate switches. A single ceiling light flattens a room because every surface receives the same flat wash from the same angle. Designers layer light instead: ambient for overall level, task for what you are doing, and accent for the things worth looking at.

Question 4

What does a high-end interior designer actually do?

Accepted Answer

Most of the work is invisible in the finished room. A high-end designer sets the brief, resolves the plan, documents every surface and junction so trades can build it, specifies and procures the pieces, and stays on site while it goes in. Selecting cushions is not the job. It is roughly the last two per cent of it.

Question 5

What is a design brief?

Accepted Answer

A design brief is the written statement of what a project has to achieve: how the house will be used, what it must contain, what it must cost, and when it has to be finished. It describes the problem. It is not the solution, and a brief that already specifies finishes has skipped a step.

Question 6

What is book-matched stone?

Accepted Answer

Book-matching is cutting a stone block into slabs and opening consecutive slabs like the pages of a book, so the veining mirrors across the join. Done well the seam disappears into a symmetrical pattern. It only works if the slabs come from the same block, in sequence, and are kept together from the quarry onward.

Question 7

What is joinery in interior design?

Accepted Answer

Joinery is the built-in timber and cabinetry in a house: kitchens, wardrobes, vanities, libraries, window seats, panelling, anything made to fit a specific opening rather than bought as furniture. In Australian practice the word covers both the cabinetmaking and the drawings that describe it.

Question 8

What is the 3-5-7 rule in interior design?

Accepted Answer

Group objects in odd numbers, three or five or seven, rather than even ones. An odd group has a centre, so the eye enters it, moves across it and settles. An even group splits into pairs and the eye stops at the division. It is a rule of thumb about how people look at things, not a law.

The things people ask before they call.

Working with a studio3

Materials and making3

Design craft2

Your home, next.