Spark For Interior Design

Interior design is a passion and at the same time, a responsibility to the public. For us at Liquid Interiors, we believe that the home is a sanctuary designed to promote wellness, relaxation, and unite loved ones. To be able to perfectly tailor homes to the needs of our clients, we carefully listen to our clients’ needs and actively execute strategies to bring the ultimate healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

To bring about the dream space of clients, interior design is not a career that is fueled with passion alone. It requires persistence, grit, critical thinking, compassion and many more skills to truly bring a space to life. Viki Li, an interior designer of Liquid Interiors with nine years of experience in the industry, sat down with us to share her story and experiences in the field of interior design.

To Li, interior design was a passion she learned to fall in love with. She shared with us how she ventured into textile and fashion design during her first year at university. “I liked designing dresses and I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer.” With a reminiscent chuckle when recounting her one year as a fashion design student, she continued to share how her interest in spatial design started at a young age. 

“I realized that I had more passion in designing spaces.” She explained that later as she transferred to study interior design at the same university, she realized that the course she pursued could derive inspiration from so many aspects of life, including fashion. “Inspiration comes from everything, and so this is why I would say that designing a space that [people] would live in just seemed way more influential and satisfying to me, instead of just designing a gown to wear to a specific event.”

A Designer of Space and Lifestyle

When asked what interior design is to her, Li explained how it is “all-rounded”. She enumerated the general scope of the technical tasks performed in the design process, which includes creating the concept of the space that fits the clients’ needs, planning, coordination and consultations, design, and construction. “Interior design [itself] is done just maybe 20% of the time.” Li laughed as she recounted projects that required more critical thinking and problem-solving skills than designing the space itself. 

Aside from the technicalities, Li also talked about how the personal experiences of the designer themselves play a big role in how they proceed to build the dream spaces of other people. “I think we can get our inspiration from our daily lives because we look at design [everywhere], and I think that’s the lovely part of doing interior design.”

In any design process, the first and most important stage is all about getting to know the client, their habits, the dynamic of the home (if they are a single resident, a couple, or a family), and many more. At Liquid Interiors, we also take into consideration the healthy and sustainable lifestyle habits our clients want to either maintain or improve as we design their sanctuary. “Especially for residential projects, we will interview clients to get to know their priorities,” Li told us, “like for instance, if a client wants to improve their sleep quality, we try not to design outlet plugs near the bed because we want to reduce the electrical magnetic fields that affect the human body.” She also shared how this is a habit she herself is trying to integrate into her own lifestyle.

Motivation For Design

A healthy lifestyle, particularly one that specializes in wellness and sustainability, is a vital part of a designer’s work experience. Just the experiences of people are vast and diverse, Li shared that this is what makes the nature of the industry so vibrant and exciting for her. In this field, the experience of design in both space and lifestyle is very personal to both herself and to her clients. “I think the challenge in interior design is how you can transform this kind of experience, this intangible thing into something that is [functional], durable, and something people can enjoy.”

When asked what her motivation is when practising interior design, Li focuses on the diversity of design and what there is to explore. She shared that there’s always an exciting and different design to explore with each unique client. “There is no textbook mould to a design, and so basically each design to me is like a new start even if it integrates familiar design concepts.”

Personal Design

To get to know her more, we asked Li what her favourite design style/concept was so far. She smiled as she described how all of the uniquely beautiful design styles she has been able to see and design herself never run out of elements to explore, which is what makes her career in interior design “more interesting and joyful”. She then went on to share that she had felt drawn to eclectic home and decor, a mix of modern design with vintage touches, “a chemical reaction with contemporary and traditional styles.” Her curiosity to try new things blended well with this style as she explained how eclectic designs can stimulate curiosity while managing to “strike a balance between practicality and eclectic design”. 

We then asked Li a bit more about what the design of her personal life is like. She shared with us that she is currently focusing on building wellness and sustainability habits in her own home, such as exercising, integrating healthy eating habits, and is even trying to go zero waste. “Focusing on wellness in [one’s] personal life reflects how it is applied in design,” she said. It is in these practices in personal lifestyles that we are able to provide solutions to help clients create the ultimate healthy and sustainable lifestyle.