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Interior designers are stylists. But they’re also spatial, budgetary, and lifestyle experts who can make a space sing. They create spaces beautifully by helping develop plans and choosing finishes that reflect your taste and lifestyle and that come together to create an aesthetically stunning space.
But they are also an integral part of your architectural design team. The questions they ask and the options they choose are woven into any solid, high-end custom architectural design, giving input is vital to the success of the final product.
What is interior design?
Let’s take a look at the professional definitions that guide the interior design industry. According to the Center for Interior Design Qualification (CIDQ),
Interior design is a distinct profession with specialized knowledge applied to the planning and design of interior environments that promote health, safety, and welfare while supporting and enhancing the human experience. Founded upon design and human behavior theories and research, interior designers apply evidence-based methodologies to identify, analyze, and synthesize information in generating holistic, technical, creative, and contextually-appropriate design solutions. [emphasis ours]
Here’s another definition, from the International Interior Design Association (IIDA):
Interior design is defined as the professional and comprehensive practice of creating an interior environment that addresses, protects, and responds to human need(s). It is the art, science, and business planning of a creative, technical, sustainable, and functional interior solution that corresponds to the architecture of a space, while incorporating process and strategy, a mandate for well-being, safety, and health, with informed decisions about style and aesthetics.” [emphasis ours]
In other words, interior design is a series of style choices that goes far beyond aesthetics. It’s an integrated part of the entire architectural process with goals that center around all the ways that humans interact with a space.
If you use an interior designer merely as someone who can help choose beautiful finishes, you aren’t taking advantage of their full breadth of knowledge.
What exactly does an interior designer do?
By definition, a custom space is not cobbled together but conceived of and created with care and intention.
An interior designer works with an architectural team to realize the vision for your new space. They listen to your ideas, learn about your lifestyle, and choose key finishes that function as part of the design, integrating as much information as they can about how you live, what you need, and what you prefer.
Some questions they might ask include:
Are you left-handed or right-handed?
Are you an early riser?
What hours do you work? Do you work from home? Outdoors? From an office?
Will children be sharing the space?
Do you have any disabilities?
Are you color blind?
Are you planning to age in place?
Questions like these help an interior designer conceptualize the space and inform the architectural team about ways to customize the architectural plan to reflect who you are and what you need.
They use this information to help make decisions about elements of the design that might not seem style related, like window placement, the flow of the space, and various ways to capture light. All of that before they ever show you tile samples.
An integrated interior designer can save you hours, and headaches
An interior designer who works alongside your architects can use their full range of knowledge to not only make the design more functional but to save you time and money down the road.
In contract, when an interior designer joins a project once it’s already been designed, the process can be less productive. And more expensive. That’s because certain elements might need to be redesigned in order to style the space the way you and your interior designer want it.
For instance, if your design has a staircase, it’s imperative to get it right from the start. “Changing one single thing about a set of stairs can release a number of issues if not properly addressed early on,” Emma says. If you decide late in the process that you want part of the staircase to be made of a different material, the whole thing might need to be redesigned. This takes extra time, costing you extra money.
The lesson? If you treat an interior designer as an add-on, you could end up spending more time and money than you would have if they were involved from the get-go.
Often, interior design is included in bids for larger projects
For this reason, we (and other architectural firms) will include the cost of an interior designer in our bids for larger projects. Our architects need an interiors perspective to make sure every detail is right.
Having an interior designer on your architectural design team also means you have a budgeting brain on board. An interior designer knows the cost of finishes off the top of their head, which means less research for you.
Interiors can be a standalone service, of course, if there are no structural elements on a project. If you’re replacing finishes without any structural changes (like new countertops on existing cabinetry), an interior designer can assist, without architectural input.
But if you’re creating a completely new addition, adding major elements to a room, or moving walls, architecture and interiors work best together to make sure the whole comes together right the first time.
Architects, contractors, and clients are not interior designers
Sometimes, a client tells us they’d like to act as the interior designer on their own project. By this they mean that they would like to choose their own tile, flooring, fixtures, paint colors, and other finishes.
What they might not be aware of is that the particular finishes they choose, especially if they choose them after the design is complete, might slow the whole process down.
“Moving something an inch can have a domino effect all the way down,” says AGAP interior designer Emma Gomez. “It forces afterthoughts. In the end, it can make it look halfway done. Which isn’t great to live with and is especially noticeable if you go to sell.”
When a client makes decisions about finishes without knowing how the materials behave, it can also have an unfortunate side effect: leaning on the architect or contractor to make interior design choices. This can slow down the process by adding time to the building process or time to the design process. Worse, it can result in poor execution or unavoidable compromises.
A professional interior designer will get it right
Because each person is emotionally tied to the way the final space will look, it can be very difficult to make interiors decisions that are doable in the real world of building.
“If there are too many things you want that aren’t possible,” Emma says, “you need someone to say no, an outside perspective. Designing your own space can be extremely challenging.”
Instead of taking it on yourself, work with a full architectural team. They can design a space that will fit who you are and how you live and render it beautifully.
Posted on September 15, 2026
