The terms designer and decorator are generally confusing when looking for help with a home improvement project. Home design and home decorating may appear to be identical phrases for the same work — and there is some overlap: both deal with the internal part of a home, making it appealing, functional, and livable.

There are, nevertheless, major differences between the two. In a word, interior designers deal with structural concerns, whereas decorators deal with aesthetic issues.

Defining an Interior Designer

Interior designers determine space requirements and pick critical and decorative things to make living spaces workable, comfortable, and beautiful.

A practitioner skilled in developing harmonious, useable rooms and sections through a building — the architect of its interiors, if you will — is known as an interior designer. Interior designers examine a space holistically and structurally.

They are assigned to work with both visible and invisible elements, such as the shape, size, and arrangement of rooms, as well as the positioning of HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and other functional systems, as well as associated equipment and fixtures. Those are good features to hire an interior designer.

Defining an Interior Decorator

Property stylists seem more like interior decorators. They can decorate and furnish spaces, but they aren’t authorized to build, design, or alter their structure.

Becoming an interior decorator, no special qualification, exam, or formal schooling is required; it is a field linked with actual training and knowledge, but other decorators may have studied architecture, art, or design.