Inside interior design

Sheridan Treadwell spends her time in a studio full of sketches, scales, and overly exhausted college students. She works strenuously, gluing together the pieces of her project. With each hour that goes on, she feels the coffee wearing off and the exhaustion pulling heavily on her eyelids.

6:57 a.m.: Sheridan heads home after a long night of laser cutting, wood shaving, and model building, hoping to finally get some sleep.

10:20 a.m.: Sheridan makes her way back to the studio to do it all over again.

Sheridan is a third-year interior design major at the University of Texas School of Architecture. When most people think of interior design, they think: HGTV, color palettes, and decorative pillows. They don’t realize that interior design is a whole lot more like architecture and a whole lot less like decorating. The National Council for Interior Design Qualification acknowledges that many people use the terms “interior design” and “interior decorating” interchangeably, but these professions differ in critical ways. “Interior design is the art and science of understanding people’s behavior to create functional spaces within a building. Decoration is the furnishing or adorning of a space with fashionable or beautiful things. In short, interior designers may decorate, but decorators do not design,” the Council says.

The University of Texas at Austin houses one of the most prestigious interior design programs in the nation. The description of the program states, “Curriculum courses tie together history, theory, construction, and computer applications in a way that parallels the architecture studio education while retaining a clear viewpoint on interior architecture and the other design arts.” However, the university should probably incorporate “little-to-no sleep” somewhere in that description. 

The average interior design student is scheduled for 15 hours of classes and 12 hours in the architecture studio. Aside from that, students spend every moment they can in the studio on campus. The design process involves several steps that require a vast attention to detail; it ends up consuming all of their time.

Kristin Miller, Sheridan’s roommate and fellow interior design major, can attest to the tiring hours of life as an interior design major. “I don’t know how to estimate how many hours we spend in studio because if I did, it would just be really sad,” Kristin says. They spend hours sketching and building physical, wooden models of their designs. They fight the drowsiness that comes in the late hours of the night, but sometimes they leave the studio with little progress on their designs.

“Time spent does not directly relate to design outcomes. Design is dependent on testing and iterations, and this takes longer than one might expect. As a result, time management is a constant battle for students and professionals alike,” Interior Design professor Tamie Glass says.

Pulling all-nighters comes around every once in a while for college students, but it is not an uncommon sleep schedule for Sheridan and Kristin. “The hours are really terrible. There was one week where I pulled three all-nighters in a row,” Sheridan recalls about the week of final review last semester. She designed the interior of a clothing store for a renowned fashion designer. The process leading up to final review involved several different levels of work. First, she graphically designed a wallpaper to put inside the store. Then, she had to design a pop-up shop for the designer. Finally, she had to incorporate the two into a small-scale model of an entire store for the fashion designer to display her work. During final review week, students must prepare a presentation that explains their design in detail, and they must present it before their class and professor. In that week, Sheridan says stress levels were high, and coffee runs were even higher.

Both Sheridan and Kristin’s sleep gets haunted by architecture. Kristin recently developed a habit of yelling in her sleep,

At 3:04 a.m. on a recent Thursday, Sheridan heard Kristin yelling about her deeply established fear of their professor and her elevated stress about their latest project. Kristin tousled in bed and cried out her professor’s name in aguish as she complained about how much work she had left on her design. Sheridan tried to fall back asleep, but was overcome with her bond in Kristin’s panic. Both of them still had many pieces left to laser cut and glue to their design before the end of the next day.

The typical interior design project requires intensive research on professional interior designers’ work. Students produce floor plans and elevation drawings on their sketchpads. Then, they take their ideas to the computer, where they develop 3-D digital models through software that allows them to virtually develop the design into a building in order to get the proper, real-life measurements. They create a few, simple physical models out of wood, Styrofoam, glass, or whatever they are choosing as their building element. These small models could be a staircase, a doorway, or any small scene from the inside of a building. From there it only gets more complex. They begin to put all of their ideas together into one large interior design; this could be in the form of something like a corporate building, a school building, or a clothing store. The process is extensive, so Sheridan spends her days in the studio where there are moments of mass chaos, but there are also moments of mass laughter with close friends. Students are able to laugh at each other’s design mishaps along the way; they know they share the same struggles. Sometimes walls end up lopsided or staircases crumble, but they are able to find humor amidst the panic. Because it is such a small program, the students get to know each other tremendously well. While Sheridan may spend countless hours in one room, she enjoys her time because she enjoys the people she gets to endure it with.  This program is where she found her best friends.

         It is September and the interior design crew works while singing along to Michael Buble’s Christmas album. There is something about the classic swing singer that brings motivation to the students. A piece of wood gets stuck to Kristin’s hand, and as she slowly lifts it, the entire model comes with it. The interior designers stare in disbelief. The lack of sleep makes moments like this hysterical for them. They all pause their own work to laugh at Kristin’s mishap. The ten minutes it takes for them to stop laughing is just the comic relief they needed from hours of design. They get the minute wood pieces glued to their designs, and they make sure to incorporate numerous snack breaks in between. The Chick-fil-A across the street gets most of their money, and the studio is full of empty fruit snack wrappers. Sheridan and Kristin leave the studio with innumerable stories to laugh about on their way home- from Kristin gluing her model to her hand to Sheridan tripping over her own computer cord. Regardless of the late nights spent in the studio, they must return to the classroom early the next day and sit through class like any other college student.

            Sheridan did not always believe interior design was the route she wanted to take. “I decided to apply to the UT School of Architecture because it was really hard to get in, and I just wanted to prove that I could get in,” Sheridan confesses. After an intensively, emerged learning experience her freshman year, Sheridan learned that interior design requires an entirely new level of dedication. Professor Glass says that there is a sharp learning curve for students at the beginning of the program. The interior design program, like the architecture program, is rigorous and demanding and may involve breaking down preconceived notions about the profession. Sheridan was involved in rigorous coursework in high school, but nothing came close to the hands-on, project-based workload she experienced her freshman year. She had to develop an entirely new set of skills, which involved learning accessibility, environmental, and sustainability guidelines for design concepts. She had to learn elements of construction because students must build their own models out of the building material they would use to actually construct it if they were to present it before a company. She had to learn how to use computer software to create diagrams and layouts, and there is still more to learn.

            While it is sleep depriving, life-consuming work, Sheridan believes interior design is the perfect path for her, and her mom could not agree more. “From a very young age, she was always very artistic and creative, so a career where she gets to utilize those gifts is perfect for her,” her mom says.

10:30 p.m.: Sheridan’s life is full of research, design, and building. It is not what people think when they hear “interior design”. She adds, “the stereotype we have to overcome is a big challenge because people assume we do really girly things, and people’s reaction is always that my major must be so fun. While it is really fun, I think it’s really difficult to get people to see this side of what we do…. Interior design is by far the hardest thing that I have ever done, but I wouldn’t change my major for anything in the world because there’s nothing I love more.”