My Hotcourse: Interior Design
Name: Peter Suksakorn
My hotcourse: Interior Design
Institution: City Lit

Here at Hotcourses we’re passionate about learning and every member of the team takes a ‘hot course’ – either to improve their skills, enjoy a new hobby or just to try something completely different. Peter Suksakorn, Hotcourses’ QA Test Manager,  tells us about his interior design course.

I bought a brand new flat not so long ago and it’s a nice place but lacks character. Staring at magnolia paint just wasn’t inspiring me or adding any real colour to my life. After all, this is the place I come back from work to and is considered an extension of me. Making your home feel the way you want it to feel isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I decided that an interior design course would help me discover what my own style was.
 
Space to learn
I searched and discovered that City Lit ran a one-week taster course in the evening. The course was perfect as the venue was located in Covent Garden and started at 6pm. I could get there quite easily from work and it was really easy to tack it on to the end of my working day. The classroom set-up reminded me of an art room from my old school days, with the tables organised into a rectangle. The class consisted mainly of women – there were only two men in a class of 20. The tutor was a lovely lady called Angela, who is an interior designer with a considerable amount of design experience under her belt. She had a lovely relaxed manner and exuded passion for design and interiors. Angela explained that we would be touching upon the foundations of interior design, and learning skills to develop our spatial awareness and design ideas. She also explained that it could be a springboard to a more serious course.

The whole picture
Initially, we talked a lot about styles and looked through various style magazines, then went on to develop some mood boards that would explain our ideas. Then Angela taught us about colours, making a colour board scheme for our room and offering constructive criticism. During the final part of the week the class was introduced to technical drawing and at this point I started to feel a bit like an architect. Designing and planning a room and its furniture using measurements brought another dimension to my project. I started to understand that in order to be an interior designer, you have to have more than a good eye for style; you have to understand furniture placing, how to use space, and how man-made and natural light affects a room. By the end of the week we had just managed to design one example of our floor plan on a computer. We managed to do just enough to get a feel for CAD software, but this was where the class stopped. I found it really useful and at the end of the week, I wanted more. It boosted my creativity and confidence, and was a great introductory course. My flat certainly benefitted from my new skills!