What Is The Concept, Theme & Style In Interior Design: Ideology, Motive & Inspiration

Interior designing is a highly professional & vast field, where the designer follows a particular process. Every designer has their own process of designing from conceptualization to the final finishing of the project. The beginning of the design process starts with Concept, Theme & then style. These two terms consider as main elements of each design like an example; how columns & beams are crucial for an architectural space & how floor & slab are essential for an interior space.

What Is The Concept In Interior Design?

In general, a Concept is an abstract idea, a set of design elements, or a story behind the formation of the design. A Design Concept is a foundational idea that gives a design its depth, meaning & directions. In interior designing basically, the concept is the solution to your site problems or challenges. Can be realistic or abstract, it can be influenced by any art form, tradition, history, and contemporary surroundings. Any idea born with its own special way of being executed or imagined. Ideas are tangible but there are also abstract concepts of nature such as philosophies or values.

There are two types of Concept

Visible –We may see the visible definition in the context of design, patterns, spatial planning, colors, structure, etc. They should come from the abstract part of the concept. They are focused more on how to convey the message.

Abstract – The abstract concept might be words that are used to describe the story of the design. For example, the concept might be sophisticated elegance, simplicity, blending, etc. which influence the invisible motifs. They are focused on the message the design is to communicate.

How to develop the Concept for Interior Design?

Developing a strong concept is not a hard thing but on other hand, it is not so easy for that you have really get to flex your creative muscles. After the initial meeting with the client, the next step is to develop the concept. So for that, you have to follow some steps to get it done. They are;

Defining the problem: As you can see above that concept is the solution to the problem so you have to find out the problem or challenge related to the site. Eg; before developing a concept for a commercial site you need to talk to your client and ask questions about the client’s brand, their customers, their general market, and their goals for the site. Also the same way for residential clients that you have to ask questions about their wishes, their requirements, their need & their vision for the site.

Research for the site: The client won’t be able to tell everything which you want to know. The Designer has to do their own research into the client industry looking at competing sites and trying to understand more about their market by way of askes indirect questions, listen actively, get to know your client as a person & speak their language. During this process, designers might see some design ideas or visual concepts that may be something in a form of colors, forms, shapes, etc. & these all led by the abstract words that have become a part of the verbal concept.

Create a story & make format: The above two things are the formation of the concept. Now the last step is to create the story for your concept which binds it strongly with the design. That story will come through the problem for which you are developing a concept. It could be related to the site, its climate, location, or even the vision of that site. After creating the concept it should be in a way of the discussion format, that you can be discussed with your client & share the complete formation of it, then the client will also share his thought about it & after all the final discussion you can proceed with the further design process.

The concept is an important element of interior design because each concept has its own story & that story gives the strengths to that space or design formation, while work in progress & finishing. Every design decision you make will fall back on your concept for direction & work will go on without confusion.

What is the Theme in Interior Design?

In general, the theme is a subpart of the concept. A theme is a unifying or dominant thought or pattern that passes around a given concept; more information on a thought. For any item like furniture, a theme is too detail & even for any space like even a bed.

The concept for that specific space provides unity, context & narrative. It can not be imposed or never can be forced because it emerges in the early design process or while developing the concept & it is only realized with User Experience or end-user. Being a tool of the design the process becomes the thing which in the selection of colors, textures, materials, forms, or even an abstract. Example style of color, delicate ambiance, feel of texture, patterns & shapes, composition, etc.

What is the Style in Interior Design?

Style is a crucial element while designing any interior space because the style will give you the final composition & look of the design. Design styles usually carry with them certain principles of what the objectives of design are & techniques for how to complete those objectives. Styles are the set of features, design elements, philosophy, harmony between all the characteristics & define a particular era.

Usually, the styles are not created while designing, they are supposed to be implemented. Because they are coming from a historic period, carry with objectives & motives from that era, so you need to take inspiration from it. Designers select the style according to their client's need, taste, wishes & requirements of how they want their space is to be with referring particular era or time. There are no limit that how many styles you have to take for one project, just remember one thing that design should be calm & inspiring without chaos. We blessed with various original design styles in Interior & architecture both: Minimalism, Classical Modernism, Contemporary, Scandinavian Style. It's not a full list of trends that have existed & continue for a long time to understand art & architecture.

Difference between concept, theme & style in interior design

There are many people who get confused in these three terms of designing i. e. concept, theme & style. But in reality, these are different from each other. All these are influential for any design process because they give intensity, meaning & story to the design & make that space liveable & inspirational forever. The difference between all three is;

The concept is an initial framework & solution for any design. It is a visual or an abstract idea which is coming from problems or challenges on site. It gives you direction throughout the project for a bigger picture.

A theme is an overlay to the concept that helps to tie all of the various spaces together. It is the subpart of the concept which is more detail-oriented than the concept.

A style is not that much harder like concept & theme, it is all about to take inspiration from the historic a golden era in the current living atmosphere.

The concept will teach you how to create ideology, the theme will give you a motive to design & style will inspire you to design. After all, this is your choice to design with these elements or not is your choice but if you want to grow your design efficiency & authenticity do the design with the help of concept, theme & style, they will give confidence in your imagination power & you will definitely make miracles out of it.