Interior designer

By LIANE VOISEY

Name: Debbie Moon

Age: 38

Job title: Interior designer

Working hours: 40- to 45-hour week

Employer(s): Moon Design, any interior design service

Pay: $60-250 an hour


Qualifications needed: Certificate in interior design

Career prospects: Work for any company that involves interior design - kitchen design, furniture manufacturer, paint company, furniture retailer or interior design store. Ultimately work as a self-employed interior designer or work for a top interior design firm

Q. Describe what you do

A. I'm involved in everything from interior and exterior colour schemes to designing and completing full shop fitouts. Also, because of my background, I do the occasional paint finish work as well.

Most of my work is for residential or retail shop fitouts where somebody is setting up a new business and wants advice on layout and colour and what sort of feeling clients will have when they walk into the room.

Q. Why did you choose this line of work?

A. It started when I was in my 20s. I had always been interested in interior design and I used to like looking at magazines to do with it. From there it progressed to me doing up my own house. Friends would comment about it and suggest that I should go into interior design.

Then I decided to do the interior decorating course specialising in special paint finishes at Unitec. I just felt so inspired. I had previously been involved in a graphic design business but had lost interest in spending hours on a computer.

As an interior decorator, clients would often ask me for advice about how they should do up their kitchen, lay the furniture out or arrange the lighting, and at the time I hadn't the training.

I decided to do the two-year part-time course in interior design at Nanette Cameron at te-tuhi-the-mark, previously the Fisher Gallery, and because I was already working in the industry I began to apply what I'd learned in practice.

Q. What skills do you need?

A. You must be able to communicate well with people at all levels, from children and teenagers right through to professionals. My work involves a lot of interaction with tradespeople and other authorities. You must be creative and intuitive, perceive clients' requirements and be able to turn them into reality.

Q. What is the best part of the job?

A. Seeing the project through from initial visualised concept to completion is satisfying, and delighted customers are always the cherry on the top.

Q. What is the most challenging part of the job?

A. The part I find really difficult is breaking the budget news to the clients. People are not very aware of what prices are and how things add up on a job. And stress levels can get high when you have several projects on the go at once and you're dealing with various clients and tradespeople.

Q. Any exciting projects?

A. At the beauty therapy salon Bellisimo Beauty Therapy the client's corporate colours were cerise pink so I came up with the idea of a cerise pink carpet like a walkway down the middle of the salon.

I designed a front entrance column which I hand-gilded myself with approximately 800 pieces of imitation gold leaf, and I marbled the doors of the cabinetry. It really gave me the opportunity to put my decorative skills into the project.

Q. Hopes for the future?

A. I want to continue doing projects for clients because I really do enjoy working with people, but I also want to buy properties and transform them using the knowledge and experience I have.