Experience Of Interior Designing Over The Years : A Cross Mumbai

By Author: loknath123
Total Articles: 22
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The nature of interior designing has changed drastically over the last two decades. Taking a look at 15 – 20 years ago, prior to the India's Economy opening up, interior designing was limited to designing high–end homes in Mumbai, other big cities in India and a few public spaces here- which were also few and far between. There was hardly any interior designing to be done in offices. Offices turned out to be more of a space planning exercise. Taking a huge leap from 1990s to 2010 one can see that a lot of new avenues have opened up in this industry. Besides the existing home and office design, retail design which is relatively new in the country is also gaining ground.

Earlier on in Retail, operations were mostly carried out from mom and pop shops. However, today there are all sorts of retail formats across the country. From small Coffee Shops to Large Malls, Departmental Stores, Boutiques, Restaurants, Fast – Food Joints and Eating places, all of these have to be designed because the nature of the business is so competitive that each player in this industry needs to stand out. Besides good food or good product ...
... offering from the retailer, the ‘Experience’ of visiting a retail shop also makes a difference in the purchasing decision of the consumer. So this requires almost everyone who is in the organized retail market to have their places designed. This entails good scope for the interior designer who can offer a complete gamut of services to the Retailer.

Now, besides retail design, commercial offices also offer a huge scope to designers. Today it is expected that most private corporate offices have to be designed according to worldclass standards. Several multinationals have set up shop in the country and have opened their offices across India. Such organisations like their offices in India to be reflective of their offices in other parts of the world.

For example, if an organization has its headquarters in Singapore and wants to open its new office in Mumbai, they would like their new office in Mumbai to be a replica of their Singapore office, or atleast closely similar. The scenario was not the same in the 1990s, when the organization from Singapore would operate from its home country and other parts of the world but never out of India. This has led to the opening up of another new area: following the footsteps of multinationals, many Indian organizations have also started doing up their office interiors in tune to match the standards of multinational companies.

Corporate office interior designing is an industry which is growing at a good pace, opening up and fuelling new opportunities for architects across Mumbai.

The third aspect which is to be appreciated is home interior designing. Today almost everyone who buys a new house in Mumbai - thanks to financial institutions for lending easy money – the first thing which one seems to prioritize after getting a good job is to buy a new house, and when one purchases a new house 10 – 20% of the budget is kept for interior designing. This was not the case earlier as only a few rich people used to do this. Today almost anyone buying a new house would like to spend a little bit to design the house.This has opened up a completely new area of opportunity for the young interior designers.

The exposure of clients has increased as they travel outside India and see high standards of living in other parts of the world and like to replicate the same in their own homes. This is true across most classes in the city including the Middle income and High income groups.

Mumbai city as a region has also expanded. Earlier the scope for any interior designer was limited. Now the city and its suburbs have expanded on a tremendous scale. Places like Mira Road, Thane and Vashi, which are approximately 70 kilometres away from Nariman Point are also considered as a part of Mumbai. These areas were non – existent for interior designers and architects 20 years ago. Now suddenly there is an explosion of population and growth in these areas and this has exponentially opened up business opportunities and taken them to these new parts of the city as well.

Interior designing in Mumbai is not limited to Mumbai itself but has also expanded and explored to more areas which were not so known previously.

About Loknath Swain:

Loknath Swain is a Mumbai based writer. He writes on subjects related to architects in mumbai and interior designers in mumbai