Colour planning in the interior design process

Colour is a crucial element in any interior; interior designers desire to achieve appealing and effective colour schemes in their designed spaces. Many studies have been published in the areas of colour applications in interior design; in this paper we are concerned with the initial design process, colour scheming and choices form an important step that any interior designer must pass through whether it is placed at their very early stages or later. Fifteen interior designers with varied professional backgrounds, but based in the Middle East (mainly the Arabian Gulf region), were interviewed. The results showed that the interior design process commonly involve a number of non-sequential steps including: meeting clients, visiting sites, programming, researching, sketching, building concepts, getting inspired, drawing (digitally and manually), and choosing colours and materials. In terms of colour, fourteen out of fifteen participants stated that colour thinking and its decision making take place at the early stages of their design processes; eight of fifteen believe that colour takes place in the first step when meeting clients and starting the project. In addition, the study documented 137 terms these designers use while brainstorming a design project; subsequent analysis of these terms could form a basis for understanding how designers communicate the abstract properties of colour as part of their design processes. Furthermore, designers were asked to choose the most frequent steps that occur during thinking of colour schemes for their designs and score them by importance. The results indicated that "satisfying stated clients requirements" was the most important consideration when thinking of colour schemes.