What should be included in an interior design portfolio? Get the Answer

What to include in your portfolio? How many projects should be? What if you have not had any completed projects? How to make an interior design portfolio and deal with many other issues read in this article?

These tips are suitable not only if you want to collect and complete your projects for the first time, but also if you plan to be included in an interior design portfolio.

Portfolio of a novice interior designer

Only a graduated designer, usually starting to create his portfolio, makes it somewhat abstract and general, “all in a heap,” as they say, including various projects and design directions. This is a good option to start, the main thing is to select the best and clean out the unnecessary.

Such a portfolio may include the following blocks

To create a good interior design portfolio, make the first block which is training projects that contain high-quality working drawings (which is very appreciated when applying for vacancies in design studios), 3D renderings, interior sketches.

This will demonstrate your professionalism. In this block, it will be good to show the development of an idea from a concept to a final visualization. This section can be divided into residential and public buildings;

The second block is to be competitive projects, not everyone can boast of them, but which show your ambitiousness, creativity and courage of the idea;

The third block is private projects, if they have already been and you consider them successful (perhaps this is the project of your studio or apartment of friends).

As a rule, newcomers do not have “live” projects yet, or they have not been implemented (this often happens in interior design: the client orders the project, the designer prepares everything: the idea, drawings and pictures, and then, for example, the client runs out of money and the project “Freezes” or is implemented without author supervision with all the ensuing consequences; sometimes the initial project simply cannot be found out in what happened).

In any case, if there is experience of real practice, it is useful to include it, as they say, “for one beaten they give two unbeaten “;

The fourth block is academic work, a hobby.

Here you can place your paintings and drawings, or professional photographs if you are fond of shooting; perhaps your hobby is graphic design or logo design, I propose to include several examples of such “pure creativity” in your portfolio, it will better reveal you as a person, individuality for the employer or client.

Who are we showing the portfolio to?

Filling the portfolio of a novice designer depends on who it will be shown to: a potential employer or a future client.

Consider the popular option – when a novice designer wants to work for himself, on private projects, and not get a job in a company (sometimes they are called a “private interior designer”).

First of all, it is important to decide which projects you most want to work on. What exactly is it? Options:

• Small apartments of economy option (the most common topic to start with)

• Beauty Salons
• Cafes, restaurants
• Country houses
• Kindergartens

Hotels, water parks, some large public spaces (so far from the field of science fiction for a beginner, it is unlikely that anyone will entrust such projects to the “freshly baked” designer alone; but if the design bureau team is here it is certainly possible).

It’s very easy to get stuck in this position for many years, especially if you are not too ambitious, and perhaps this is exactly what you wanted, in general, have a plan in mind and think about developing your career.

You can agree with yourself and work in such companies for a couple of years to gain experience, see how large projects are being conducted, rise to the level of a project manager, see all this “kitchen” from the inside, understand how the design industry works, its entire inside out.

After that, you can go free swimming, open your own design bureau, sometimes even taking some clients and colleagues away, often this is the reality in design firms.