Keeping it Real

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the BIID Interior Design Awards at Drapers’ Hall in London, celebrating some of the very best talent in our industry. As project after project was recognised, it's impossible not to think about all the work that goes into the finished images. The ideas, certainly, but also the expertise, conversations, collaborations, and relationships that turn those ideas into something real. Because the real work behind great design is rarely visible in the final photograph.

In Interior design creativity is only part of the story. It takes judgement and experience to develop an idea, interpret a brief, and bring together the right combination of people, materials, and skills to deliver it. And perhaps that is one of the things worth celebrating about our industry right now. Great interiors are inherently collaborative! They depend on relationships between designers and clients, architects and contractors, makers, craft people, suppliers, manufacturers, and specialist trades. They draw on knowledge accumulated over years, knowing what works, what doesn't, where to source something unusual, who can make something beautifully, and who to trust when a project inevitably presents a problem that was not in the plan.

There is an enormous amount of human expertise behind an apparently effortless interior. That feels particularly relevant at a time when so much of the conversation across the creative industries is about AI. There is no question that technology will change the way we work. Used well, AI can make processes more efficient, support research and systems, and give us new ways to explore and communicate ideas. But perhaps its rise also makes us more conscious of the things we value precisely because they are real.

Real ideas, real judgement, real materials and craftsmanship, real relationships between people who understand their field, and ultimately real spaces created for real people. A beautiful image can now be generated in seconds. A beautiful interior cannot. The projects celebrated at the BIID Awards last night were a wonderful reminder of that.

Behind every finished space sits an extraordinary combination of creative thinking, specialist knowledge, collaboration, and craft, much of which the person eventually experiencing that interior may never see. Perhaps they don't need to. They simply experience the result. And in an increasingly digital world, there is something rather wonderful about being part of an industry that still has to make ideas real.

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