Contrary to popular opinion, the purpose and process of interior designing is not just about enhancing the aesthetic appeal of a room or building, it is about utilising the space in the best way possible, in order to ensure functionality without having to compromise on the aesthetic appeal of the space.
To give you a better understanding of what interior designing is all about and why it is important, we have compiled a list of more than 100 quotes from the best designers around the world.
The Philosophy Behind Interior Designing
“Don’t design your lifestyle for comfort, design it for passion. Don’t design it for functionality, design it for sensuality.” – Lebo Grand
“The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live. It is about the realities of what makes for an attractive, civilized, meaningful environment, not about fashion or what’s in or what’s out.” – Albert Hadley
“Be faithful to your own taste, because nothing you really like is ever out of style.” – Billy Baldwin
“The best rooms have something to say about the people who live in them.” –David Hicks
“Serious is a word that should be entirely avoided when it comes to decorations.” – Kathryn Ireland
“The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live. It is about the realities of what makes for an attractive, civilized, meaningful environment, not about fashion or what’s in or what’s out.” – Albert Hadley
“The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live. It is about the realities of what makes for an attractive, civilized, meaningful environment, not about fashion or what’s in or what’s out. This is not an easy job.” – Albert Hadley
“I like an interior that defies labelling. I don’t really want someone to walk into a room and know that I did it.” – Bunny Williams
“The details are not the details. They make the design.” – Charles Eames
“There are two things that make a room timeless: a sense of history and a piece of the future.” – Charlotte Moss
“The best rooms have something to say about the people who live in them.” – David Hicks
“I always put in one controversial item. It makes people talk.” – Dorothy Draper
“I am going to make everything around me beautiful—that will be my life.” – Elise de Wolfe
“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.” – Frank Gehry
“Design should never say, “Look at me!” It should always say, “Look at this!” – David Craib
“It is just as disastrous to have the wrong accessories in your room, as it is to wear sport shoes with an evening dress.” – Dorothy Draper
“Innovation is often the ability to reach into the past and bring back what is good, what is beautiful, what is useful, what is lasting.” – Dorothy May Kinnicutt
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context – a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” – Eliel Saarinen
“There never has been a house so bad that it couldn’t be made over into something worthwhile.” – Elsie de Wolfe
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.” – Jeffrey Zeldman
“Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” – Joe Sparano
“Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasured.” – Louis Kahn
“The life of a designer is one of fight: fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.” – Massimo Vignelli
“I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That’s art to me.” – Maya Lin
“Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.” – Tate Linden
“Our opportunity, as designers, is to learn how to handle the complexity, rather than shy away from it, and to realize that the big art of design is to make complicated things simple.” – Tim Parsey
“Form follows function—that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
“A room should never allow the eye to settle in one place. It should smile at you and create fantasy.” – Juan Montoya
“As an architect, you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.” – Norman Foster
“Innovation is often the ability to reach into the past and bring back what is good, what is beautiful, what is useful, what is lasting.” – Sister Parish
“Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space.” – Zaha Hadid
“Your Home should tell the story of who you are, and be a Collection of what you Love.” – Nate Berkus
“Understanding the person or people living in a home is a far greater need in design than focusing purely on the aesthetics. The home is designed around emotional needs.” – Amanda Talbot
“Our interiors are an insight into our brains. It is a collaboration of design, art, humor, irony, functionality, and the street.” – Amanda Talbot
“Every design choice we make has a sensual effect on us.” – Lebo Grand
“Decorating is not about making stage sets, it’s not about making pretty pictures for the magazines, it’s really about creating a quality of life, a beauty that nourishes the soul.” – Albert Hadley
“Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.” – Arthur Erickson
“Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.” – Charles M. Schulz
“Decorating is like music. Harmony is what we constantly strive for. At home, we want a peaceful atmosphere where the objects are the notes and nothing is off-key.” – Charlotte Moss
“Optimistic design isn’t a particular look; it is a movement of residential anarchy. It goes much deeper than using bright colors – it’s an attitude displaying self-empowerment, nurturing a more upbeat approach to living. It is about doing things differently, to kick against what is currently on-trend. The only guiding principle is that there is no guiding principle.
It is a crusade where a new breed of self-curating, design-smart amateurs who blog about their rebellious design have led the way. They have coined the world ‘undecorate’.” – Amanda Talbot
“Decorating is a completely personal expression (much like fashion). If I am lucky enough to have a flourishing career based on my taste and skill, I would advise my clients as I do myself: rules are to be understood, then judiciously broken.” – Alexandra Meyn
“Using the human spirit as a starting point for architecture, design, and interiors is the mantra for this movement. Those successfully creating holistic homes put the human being in the center of the design process for the home.” – Amanda Talbot
“Don’t be afraid to experiment – not everything has to match. A house that is 100% perfect is rarely full of charm.” – Rebecca de Ravenel
“The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.” – Marie Kondo
“Less is more. Texture is essential, as well as scale.” – Trip Haenisch
“Great design answers a question, offers a solution and solves a problem.”-Dana Hughes
“What is quality? Quality design must have a sense of authenticity. My work is not cutting edge, it is not supposed to be, but sometimes, the middle of the road is the most dangerous place to walk.” – David Collins
“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris
“For a house to be successful, the objects in it must communicate with one another, respond and balance one another.”- Andree Putman
“Form follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
“Designers and people in general are too attracted by ‘new’, but nothing ages more quickly than ‘newness’. All my objects reflect [a] marriage between past and present.” – Marcel Wanders
“The home should be the treasure chest of living.” – Le Corbusier
“A designer has a duty to create timeless design. To be timeless you have to think really far into the future, not next year, not in two years but in 20 years minimum.” – Phillip Starck
“Underneath all I design lies the solid belief that beauty is a positive force.” – Barbara Barry
“Learn to look not just with your eyes but with your heart. Find the things that connect with you. How else will you know how to design your home?” – Kelly Hoppen
“Good design doesn’t date.” – Harry Seidler
“Architecture is inhabited sculpture.” – Constantin Brancusi
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs
“Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There is begins.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
“Good buildings come from good people and all problems are solved by good design.” – Stephen Gardiner
“We shape our homes and then our homes shape us.” – Winston Churchill
“One should never be the oldest thing in one’s house.” – Patsy Stone
“Real comfort, visual and physical, is vital to every room.” – Mark Hampton
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
“A house is much more than a mere shelter—it should lift us emotionally and spiritually.” – John Saldino
“Architecture is a visual art and the buildings speak for themselves.” – Julia Morgan
“Interior decoration partly thrives on being social.” – Nicholas Haslam
“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.” – Charles Eames
“A room should never allow the eye to settle in one place. It should smile at you and create fantasy.” – Juan Montoya
“When you’re building a room, you’re building character, and character is the strength and wisdom of a home.” – Rose Tarlow
“The principle of the design – the harmony, rhythm and balance are all the same with interior design.” – Venus Williams
“Tonal and subtle color combinations allow us to mix furniture and pieces from different eras together to create a cohesive narrative.” – Rafael de Cárdenas
“It has to be a subtle, un-strident mix, and the key, of course, is getting the personality of both house and those living in it right.” – Nicky Haslam
“The best traditional houses are anchored by a low-key sophistication—elegance and refinement balanced by understatement and an abundance of comfort.” – Gil Schafer
“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris
“I want to create a place, like a little island, where you can have all your things around you and be comfortable and read a book and even sleep overnight.” – Patricia Urquiola
“In the case of not obeying the rules of design, something becomes incredibly personal. It becomes your own, and it becomes also something that nobody else shares because it’s your own eye.” – Robert Couturier
Classicism and Neo-classicism
“There is a real sense of perfection of scale in the neoclassical period. When mastered, it becomes easy to adapt to any kind of style.” – Jean-Louis Deniot
“Classicism is about remembering instead of forgetting. I’m interested in making the old new and seeing what is modern in historical things.” – Thomas O’Brien
“Classicism is not to say it is staid—quite the contrary, as it is rooted in the classic elements that write the rules and then allow you to reinterpret them.” – Brian McCarthy
Modernism
“In modernism there’s a certain openness, transparency, and relationship to context, how it deals with the pragmatics of the situation—all of these things are part of it.” – Richard Meier
“A modernist seeks rigor and honesty beyond ‘form follows function,’ creating spaces that transcend enclosure and become an art form.” – Lee F. Mindel
“To be a modernist is a way of living, and how one approaches life. It’s not just about having the latest design from Milan, because if you know what you’re doing you can have an antique piece that feels very modern in an environment.” – Steven Volpe
“The basis of being a modernist and designing for one is clarity. Achieving the latter requires distilling an idea to its elements, and then carefully calibrating proportion, light, and materiality to most honestly reflect the way the client wants to live.” – Ron Radziner
“Modern design is about realigning your priorities to help keep you focused on the important things in life.”- Amanda Talbot
“True modernism always appears effortless but can only truly be achieved by exercising the utmost discipline.” – Waldo Fernandez
“The home of the future is not as sci-fi as we imagine. Instead of whizbang gadgetry and the bells and whistles reminiscent of The Jetsons, the home of the future is all about sustainability, energy-efficient design, an expression of the individual, and a hotbed of creativity and inspiration.” – Amanda Talbot
“The here and now defines modernity—being present in the moment while equally aware of past experiences and the likely future, thus able to synthesize this knowledge into a coherent and inimitable design.” – Alan Wanzenberg
Minimalism
“Minimalist design is deceptively complicated. Those clean lines and unbroken planes don’t come easily. Cornices, moldings, trim, and the like were invented to hide construction imperfections.” – Russell S. Groves
“Another word for minimalism is ‘elegance.’ Elegance is beautifully resolving an issue with minimal means.” – Tom Kundig
“Minimalism is designing to allow the art, the books, the view, the people—whatever matters most to the inhabitant—to be the soul of the space.” – Deborah Berke
The Luxe Approach
“Rawness and refinement are not opposite ends of a luxurious spectrum. They are two complementary features with which to populate a luxe environment.” – Kelly Wearstler
“Luxury is when it seems flawless, when you reach the right balance between all elements. Understated theatricality – that is what my luxury is all about.” – Jean-Louis Denoit
The Hygge Approach
“Integrating reclaimed materials into the architecture—among them, wood or stone flooring, rough-hewn beams, and parged walls—creates a very engaging and tactile environment.” – Darryl Carter
“We’ve found that bringing back objects from travels can add an almost totemic resonance to a space, invoking a different perspective and recalling that nomadic state of mind” – Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch
“A combination of texture, soft patinas, warm woods, and old stone mixed with down-filled furniture, graphic textiles, and ceramics creates spaces that are easy, comfortable, and warm.” – Mark Cunningham
“I like to try to achieve a calm serenity in my work. I want to create interiors that allow furniture, art, and, of course, architecture space to breathe—but there must always be a warmth in the atmosphere.” – Rose Uniacke
“I love creating rooms that are layered, cozy, and familiar—filled with deep overstuffed sofas, venerable brown furniture, a friendly mix of patterns, colors, collections, and paintings, and carpets that look better with age.” – Richard Keith Langham
“Nothing adds soul to a space like a distinctive wall covering. It envelops the room in such unique spirit. Designs that may read as too loud in larger quantities are a great choice to accentuate in moderation, such as on a ceiling or one wall. In smaller doses, they evoke just the right amount of drama.” – Kelly Weartsler
“Have you ever noticed how some rooms exude a certain energy, warmth, and a harmony of spirit? If you have, then you have experienced the language of the home. A language softly spoken, and universally understood. – Charlotte Moss
Important Elements
“Chairs are uniquely the best expression of design. They encompass more of the challenges by which I live and work than any other single component of furniture.” – Vladimir Kagan
Furniture is needed for practical reasons, and because it must be there, it may as well be as pleasant as possible to look at, and in a less definable psychological way, comforting to the spirit.” – Edward J Wormley
“Furniture that is too obviously designed is very interesting, but too often belongs only in museums.” – Milo Baughman
“A room is not a room without natural light.” – Louis Kahn
“The door handle is the handshake of the building.” – Juhani Pallasmaa
“No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.” – William Morris
“Kitchens should be designed around what’s really important: fun, food and life.” – David Boulud
“Every room needs a touch of black, just as it needs one antique piece.” – Jan Showers
“Chandeliers are the marvels of drop-dead showiness, the jewelry of architecture.” – Peter York
“Design is defined by light and shade, and appropriate lighting is enormously important.” – Albert Hadley
“Whether spare or elaborate, harmonious moldings are the mark of a successful classical interior.” – Peter Pennoyer
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