5 Mistakes Designers Make While Sourcing Material, Furnishing & Products?
Learning how to improve your design by re-evaluating well-known common mistakes is paramount to the evolution of a designer’s prowess. Changes to interior spaces should avoid these basic errors without exception to create a strong foundation of good spatial design.
- Impractical budget
The importance of project’s budget, usually established by Clients or by project feasibility analyses by stakeholders, should be the most prominent guiding factor for a project. Impractical, unreasonable, or fantastical budgetary constraints remain the largest contributors to project delivery failures. A proper and feasible budget should be created and wholly vetted in order to avoid wasting money, time and resources throughout the project’s delivery and beyond. Project planning during the design process can maintain strict controls on budgets and prices through material selections and contractor requirements. Calculation of costs throughout the design process, be it schematic design(s) or detailed design(s) creates a multi-tier checks-and-balances system for budget and cost-control. A review of the budgetary costing at each stage with the clients or relevant stakeholders can allow for quick course correction on the associated design. Supplier prices and vendor catalogs should be regularly updated with the latest products and price lists. It is also prudent to maintain a contingency provision for overruns, exigent circumstances, or unexpected disruptions in availability or supply chains.
- Importance of Client feedback
Communication with the client is paramount during the designing process. This is a design purely for the client and not for anyone else’ personal preference. It’s important to ask the client the smallest detail possible even if it may sound silly at times. Any clarification early on can avoid expensive errors or implementations later on when a pivot or rework becomes impossible. Communicating with the client post design process for additional comments and feedback is also essential to confirm the client’s requirements and avoid further adjustments or changes that might delay the overall project. This period of constructive feedback should be a learning experience to grow and get better at designing.
- Unestablished Focal point
Every room needs a focal point.. Creating one such focal point per space draws our attention and attracts the eye almost instantaneously. A focal point also pulls elements together to create a holistic story of harmonious design. The layout of the space is built around the focal point as it slowly flows and blends into the remainder of the space. This focal point not nonly balances the room but pulls the attention away from a general monotony introduced by layouts that cannot be changed.
- Scale in Design
Designers often fail to properly integrate scale and proportion into a space by selecting the wrongly sized furniture and pieces. For a balanced and well laid out look, it is important that actual usable dimensions and the functional use of the areas are understood and implemented into the design when furniture and fixtures are chosen. Symmetry or asymmetry, whatever is the design style chosen, should remain consistent throughout the design story. Scale is the yet another source of common errors wherein designers ignore the effect of overly bulky or smaller items or fixtures on the overall thematic approach of the design. Although variety in design, and occasionally daring and experimental designs, is welcome, it should not be at the expense of functionality to the end-user.
- Overdoing design trends
Design has to have a personal approach. Whether it is a residence, hotel, café, or school, designs works towards playing with human emotions. Personalization based on the type of human interaction remains the pivotal concern towards any design approach. A good designer first-and-foremost asks what the space means to the client and what can be done to enhance that space. Overdoing design, be it through a variety of trends or ideologies, detracts from the personal and functional approach of the design intent. Trends also change from time to time and often from one generation to another. The personality of the client, his/her use, and prevalent trends should govern an astute designer’s approach to provide the client what he/she wants but may not be able to express.
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