Interior Design

Interior design is concerned with the shaping of enclosed space to serve human needs, evoke particular experiences and express individual and collective identity. It is a discipline that draws on spatial thinking, materials knowledge, lighting, colour theory, cultural history and the psychology of place, asking how designed environments affect the people who inhabit them and how the relationship between architecture and interior can be made more functional, beautiful and meaningful. Interior design sits within the broader creative industries but engages directly with social questions about wellbeing, accessibility and the quality of everyday life.

At Norwich University of the Arts, this four-year full-time programme fosters creative expression and critical thinking as ways of addressing social challenges and human needs. You will engage with the manipulation and crafting of interior environments as both a technical and a conceptual practice, developing your design skills alongside an understanding of how spaces connect to mental and physical wellbeing. The programme encourages you to think about your work in relation to social and cultural contexts, developing a practice that is intellectually engaged as well as aesthetically accomplished.

You will build a portfolio across a range of project briefs, working in specialist studios within an art and design institution that places creative practice at its centre.

Graduates from interior design programmes work as interior designers, space planners, set designers, hospitality designers, retail designers and exhibition designers. Many find roles in design studios, architectural practices, property development, retail and the hospitality sector. The skills developed through interior design, including spatial reasoning, project management, visual communication and creative problem-solving, are also valued in product design, furniture design, exhibition production and experience design.

Postgraduate study in interior design, sustainable design or spatial experience design is a route for those who want to develop their practice at a higher level or move into research and teaching.