Interior design career

[Chippychop]

There are so many courses out there! Where do I start? I'd like to study interior decoration and add some upholstery, curtain making and maybe floristry strings to my bow. Can you point me on the right direction?

I would talk to people who are already doing the things you are interested in and find out where they trained/studied. I would like to do bridal hair & makeup so I surfed around the websites of some local people doing this and had a look at where they trained - the same place kept coming up again and again and the best known people in the industry seem to have all trained there, so it's on my list for when I win the lottery!

My local community centre teaches upholstery and you can do floristry at two higher education colleges near me. You can do curtain making at a local fabric shop, or basic dressmaking at the sixth form college (which would teach you enough to make curtains - it's pretty easy). Check out your local adult education service.

I did a lot of evening classes when i was thinking about changing career - i really looked forward to the curtain making evening so that sort of decided it for me. I then did a one day a week City and Guilds whilst also working before launching my business.

You do need to narrow it down if you are going to do the work yourself - but if you want to work as a decorator you could do the classes to get some background info, useful when you come to deal with suppliers, and it may even give you some contacts - i do a bit or work for one of the girls i trained with who then set up in property management.

Check out your local adult ed provision - a lot of the classes run in the day too which may be easier for you

I am an interior designer but haven't done any courses my degree is in English Lit and Philosophy! I don't have any colleagues with formal qualifications either most are self taught although you can learn technical drawing which is useful.I started doing 'free' work and built from there but to be fair I don't make curtains etc but have done a lot of flowers over the years. It depends what you want to do in teh end really