Why lifelong learning is important for an interior designer

As I may have mentioned, I trained as an economist and spent the first 15 years of my career teaching Economics and other social studies subjects at high school level. Later in my teaching career, after I gained my Masters in Education, I began to pursue a PhD in teaching methodology. I enjoyed teaching beginning teachers the principles behind teaching and learning. When I decided to change careers, I went back and started my undergraduate studies in Interior Design. I love learning in all its forms. We are lucky to live in an era where learning is so accessible and can fit into everyone’s lifestyle. You literally just have to google: “ I want to study….” and you will find someone who is teaching it.

As an interior designers, we spend a lot of time-consuming content in the form of magazines and blogs, trying to keep up with the new trends and adapting our designs around changes in technology. Remember when you only needed 1 or 2 GPOs per room? Now I would design GPO’s on every wall and possibly in the middle of a living room… As designers, it’s our responsibility to learn and be able to predict new trends. We live with the average interior for around 10 years. In today’s fast-paced world we need to be able to keep up.

Higher learning does wonders for our brains and keeps us young! In fact, there is a lot of evidence to show that it staves off the aging of the brain and can reduce the instance of diseases such as Alzheimers and dementia.

Here are a list of my favourite sources for courses in interior design.

Domestika- This is a Spanish-language based platform that is truly excellent. The courses are not particularly deep but they are extremely cheap. This does not mean that they are a waste of time- in fact, I have really enjoyed most of the courses that I have taken. They are introducing more and more courses in English which is great. You can study anything from Interior Design for Public Spaces to Making Concrete Furniture.

Skillshare- Another creative-based education site based on a membership model. Some courses are quite long and some are very short. I just completed a course by Emma Gannon who is a write and podcaster. She is truly amazing and I really got a lot out of her skillshare class. I particularly like to drawing classes using procreate.

Udemy - This course platform also has a lot of courses for creatives. However, I find the quality a little bit inconsistent. In some of the courses, the content can be a bit superficial. I have done a few of their course of digital drawing and rendering and they have been interesting but a bit disorganised.

I encourage all of you to try out these platforms first as they are cheap and not a great commitment. I will continue recommending some great courses that I have studied that was really worth the time that I spent.