What programs and apps do you feel you can’t live without in your field? What about them is useful to you, and why would you recommend them?
CAD is an obvious “no brainer” – hand drawn floor plans and furniture layouts though beautiful are pretty much obsolete. The ease and time saving factor with CAD of laying in furniture and being able to move things around if the layout isn’t quite working, and being able to quickly share with the architect and client is invaluable. We don’t use Sketch Up, but architects we work with do. This is great for giving the client something that is 3-D that they can use to more easily visualize what a room is going to look like.
We use apps for some of our vendors so we can see product options quickly and then easily order actual samples. A good example of this is the app for Fortuny fabrics, a handprinted Venetian fabric line that we love. They offer hundreds of patterns and colorways of their exquisite fabrics all of which can be accessed with their app.
How do you feel like social media has changed your industry and career? How do you use social media to your advantage?
Social media has become very important in all aspects of life these days, and it has happened very quickly. For the interior design industry to have a presence on Facebook is a given. To have a presence on Houzz is also beneficial. Potential clients are looking at these websites to find interior designers and to get information about them. Designers who know how to use social media can definitely grow their business.
The growth of websites that offer ways for people to gather images of interiors and design ideas is huge. When we start a project these days, the client will most likely have collected images either on Houzz or Pinterest of looks that they like. To be able to quickly get an overview of what the client likes is very valuable to us as interior designers. It is also helpful for us to be able to find an image with one of these sites that might show the client what something looks like. Since vendors are also now jumping into the Pinterest “pond” we have access to their product images that way as well as via their company websites.
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