31st March 2021
What is an interior render without an inspired interior design scheme?
I don’t have a particularly clever answer to this, it just seemed like an interesting question to start with. The truth is that interior design can make or break any interior render. A small box room can be brought to life with the right design choices much like an architecturally impressive atrium can be uninspiring because of poor decisions.
Without a cohesive and interesting design scheme, an interior render will look dull, unimaginative or disjointed.
If you solely base your design schemes on previous work or ideas in your mind, you run the risk of producing unoriginal or repetitive work. By simply spending some time collecting references and observing the world around you, you can become familiarised with current trends and gain different perspectives to bring to your work.
There are more places you can draw inspiration from than you might think. Today we're going to provide you with a list of 7 places where you can extract the best influence from.
Let’s start with the most obvious one. We live in a world where we are fortunate enough to be able to browse work from creatives and draw inspiration from other styles using a couple of taps of our fingers, on our tablets, smartphones or desktops.
Plus, we are lucky to have free access to many excellent interior design websites that showcase various forms of design and styles that would not be easily accessible offline.
Take, for instance, blogs like Read Cereal which features aspects of design fused with travel. Similarly, Soho Home, a British interiors collection from Soho House, has a frequently updated inspiration page full of design ideas on interiors.
Likewise, ArchDaily allows you to draw inspiration and filter through countless projects on their website by location, materials, architect and even colours.
Nowadays, a lot of interior designers and big companies are putting their portfolios on Instagram. You can search for relevant hashtags such as #interiordesign.
You can even go more niche like #minimalismdesign to draw inspiration for a particular design aspect and keep you in the loop with the latest colour schemes, architecture, furniture and decor. If you're looking for some new accounts to check out @cleoscheulderman, @interiormilk and @houzoslo are definitely worth a follow.
Pinterest is a platform where creatives can post, share and seek inspiration for fashion, cooking, travel and, of course, interior design. You can quickly see other ideas and design schemes others have used for their projects.
It also has a fantastic feature, called "more like this" that recommends other images, similar to those you're looking at. This feature can be a great way to help your research similar objects and find elements that work together.
If you want to use Pinterest, we recommend taking a look at accounts like Alyssa Kapito Interiors, Yatzer and Architectural Digest to gain a few ideas.
Restaurants, hotels and other hospitality venues employ talented interior designers to portray their brand and reinforce their story through design. They closely work together and dedicate a significant amount of time and money to developing their unique image.
Because of this, it can be great to go out and visit restaurants, hotels and even coffee shops to draw some inspiration. Think about your local coffee spot or favourite place to have dinner, why do you like it so much there? Is it the great coffee they make? Or perhaps that when you go there you feel relaxed, inspired or something else.
To give you an idea, here are some of our favourite hospitality designs:
While we do have access to the internet at our fingertips, it is hard to beat the feeling of browsing through physical media, letting the pages flick through your fingers with a great cup of coffee. Editors spend a large amount of time and energy selecting specific shots, staging different arrangements and lighting them to best show-off their products. This makes book, magazine, and other printed formats a great source of inspiration for your next interior renders.
If you're looking for some ideas, Vogue Living, Elle Decoration and Openhouse have excellent editions and are a great place to start.
When you're travelling, you are often bombarded with inspiration from various interiors, surrounding cultures and places that differ from what you experience in day-to-day life. While it is a more expensive and impractical option than browsing the web or through a magazine, it does have its benefits.
You can find out online about various cultures around the world, however, we guarantee that there are still many wonders that are worth seeing in person and that are not documented on any website. For instance, colours and textiles native to a particular country that you can feel and view with your own eyes. Likewise, unique types of furniture you didn't even know existed and artwork native to a country.
Plus, when you experience different design styles while travelling, there could be opportunities to speak first hand with the creators or locals about their culture and heritage - giving you additional inspiration and significance tied to your travel experience to take home and implement in your designs.
You can often save time and instead of looking at individual pieces of furniture, you can look at design schemes put together in one place. Interior design and furniture stores curate room sets that best promote their products.
This is often with the help of a designer who's taken time to think about how the colours, lighting and decorations complement each other. Similarly, these shops are good at keeping up with all the up-and-coming trends.
All you need to do is go to a local interior design store and have a wander around. There are some great ones out there, such as:
Large real estate companies hire interior designers to furnish show homes to help market their properties. They work closely together to ensure that they deliver the right message and showcase the desired lifestyle for potential buyers. This shares many of the same goals as interior renders that are used for property marketing.
The designers have a meticulous eye, as they aim to create an atmosphere and a feeling that excites prospective buyers and helps them feel at home. By highlighting the attention to detail and high-quality work, it helps people fully understand the value of the home.
This is a difficult one to do in person at the minute but virtual viewings are available that provide a similar experience and things should hopefully open up again later in the year.
Design trends in every industry are cyclical, no trend will last forever and styles that were popular in the past will no doubt come back in. Because of this, it can be a good idea to take a step back in time to find inspiration. Look at vintage interior photographs, old fashioned movies or pay a visit to a local antiques market or reclamation centre.
Another great way to take in history is by visiting museums, stately homes or historic mansions that are accessible to the public. Here you can pick elements you like and draw inspiration to help give your interior renders a distinctive look.
When it comes to interior design and 3D rendering, it's essential that you have a diverse amount of inspiration to draw from. If you repeat previous designs or opt for dull colour schemes, decorations or lighting, you could end up creating boring designs that don't do your skills justice.
There are many ways to draw inspiration for interior design, such as visiting blogs or websites online. Similarly, platforms like Instagram and Pinterest where interior designers upload their portfolios.
You can seek out inspiration from restaurants, hotels and even during travel. Allowing you to see designs first hand. This is also the case with show homes and department stores where designers have spent time effectively curating sets to elicit a specific reaction.
You can, of course, look into the past at antiques, stately homes or vintage furniture to help give your interior renders a unique look. Finally, when you have downtime, you can sit back, have a cup of coffee and flick through pages of magazines, catalogues and books to help inspire you.
If you're still looking for more inspiration amongst all of this, our portfolio features recent interior visualisation work and an interactive interior walkthrough. Why don't you have a browse and see if any of our projects can help?
Let us know what you think! Would you like to see more content like this? Or have you got a question for us? Either way, we look forward to hearing your thoughts and continuing the discussion.
Alternatively, if you want to talk about career opportunities, discuss an upcoming project, or just say hi, we would love to hear from you too!