The Un­sung Ma­jors of Maryville: In­te­rior De­sign

Maryville has a lot of ma­jors, in­clud­ing some that you may have never heard of. Did you know that Maryville has an in­te­rior de­sign pro­gram?

I’m on a mis­sion to meet some of the peo­ple who chose a lesser-known ma­jor at Maryville and get to know their story and their goals. This week, I sat down with Kaylee Franke, a third-year in­te­rior de­sign stu­dent, to learn about her Maryville jour­ney. 

Kaylee has known she wanted to pur­sue a ca­reer in in­te­rior de­sign since the fifth grade. She got to do a home de­sign pro­ject with some class­mates and re­ally en­joyed it. She also took an in­te­rior de­sign class in high school, which so­lid­i­fied her in­ter­est in the field and ul­ti­mately led her to choose in­te­rior de­sign as her ma­jor. “I’m fairly lucky that I’ve known for a while what I wanted to do.”

What is in­te­rior de­sign?

Most peo­ple think of what they see on HGTV shows when they think of in­te­rior de­sign. How­ever, Kaylee ex­plained that it in­volves much more than dec­o­rat­ing and mak­ing a space look pretty. “In­te­rior de­sign is kind of an art and a sci­ence in the sense that when you’re de­sign­ing in­te­rior spaces, you’re look­ing at the safety of the space for who­ev­er’s in it. You’re look­ing at the func­tion­al­ity and what peo­ple are us­ing the space for, as well as the aes­thetic qual­i­ties and how pretty it may look. It’s a com­bi­na­tion of mak­ing a space that is beau­ti­ful to look at, but is also go­ing to serve the needs of what­ever the user may be do­ing in that space.”

Af­ter ask­ing Kaylee about dif­fer­ent jobs peo­ple can do with an in­te­rior de­sign de­gree, she ex­plained that there are two main paths to choose from: res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial de­sign. Res­i­den­tial de­sign fo­cuses on peo­ple’s homes, while com­mer­cial de­sign fo­cuses more on pub­lic spaces. Within each area, there are many dif­fer­ent jobs, such as work­ing for a de­sign firm, a man­u­fac­turer, or even de­sign­ing sets for TV and movies!

Kaylee is hop­ing to go into the res­i­den­tial side of in­te­rior de­sign af­ter she grad­u­ates. She would pre­fer to de­sign a home for a per­son rather than a big com­pany. “I’m very much a home­body, so I un­der­stand the im­por­tance of hav­ing a home base that’s com­fort­able in your style and just a place that you love. I want to be a part of cre­at­ing that for peo­ple.”

What are you work­ing on right now?

Kaylee’s fa­vorite class at Maryville has been a Kitchen and Bath De­sign class. In most of her classes, she uses draft­ing pro­grams on the com­puter to de­sign floor plans. How­ever, this class is dif­fer­ent be­cause all of the floor plans are hand-drawn on pa­per. “We get out the pa­per and we grab our scales and we draw out the walls and the doors and the win­dows and the cab­i­netry.”

She is cur­rently work­ing on a bath­room pro­ject, and she en­joys the process of see­ing her draw­ing come to­gether and mak­ing sure every­thing is to scale. “Draw­ing it out by hand kind of helps you have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what you’re draw­ing and what you’re look­ing at,” she ex­plains.

Learn­ing on and off cam­pus

Maryville Uni­ver­sity was ranked a Top In­te­rior De­sign School by In­te­rior De­sign Guide. 

Maryville’s in­te­rior de­sign pro­gram was ranked No. 2 in the Mid­west Re­gion by De­sign­In­tel­li­gence.

Kaylee has got­ten many op­por­tu­ni­ties for hands-on learn­ing through client pro­jects on cam­pus and site vis­its off cam­pus. “We’ll do field trips and vis­its to de­sign firms,” she de­scribes. Re­cently, she got to meet a de­signer who spe­cial­izes in se­nior liv­ing and learn about what their job looks like. She vis­ited a se­nior liv­ing fa­cil­ity with her class to walk through it and see how the de­sign­er’s vi­sions were brought to life.

She also had the op­por­tu­nity to study abroad in Lon­don dur­ing the sum­mer af­ter her sopho­more year. Dur­ing the trip, she got to work with an ar­chi­tec­ture com­pany to de­sign a pavil­ion. The group also vis­ited de­sign mu­se­ums and other his­toric land­marks around Lon­don. “It was so much fun and def­i­nitely one of the best ex­pe­ri­ences in col­lege so far,” she says. 

Kaylee also told me about a re­cent mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ence she had over spring break. She trav­eled to Pen­sacola, Florida with nine other Maryville stu­dents and two staff mem­bers to vol­un­teer with Pen­sacola Habi­tat for Hu­man­ity. The team spent four days putting up the frames of a house and in­stalling some of the ex­te­rior pan­el­ing. Be­ing a part of a pro­ject like this was es­pe­cially im­pact­ful for her. She en­joyed con­nect­ing with team mem­bers and work­ing with them to­wards a great cause.

“Hammering nails into studs and getting walls built, it was just a really cool opportunity to kind of apply some of my knowledge and expand my knowledge in the field that I want to work in while getting to serve and make a difference.”

A new per­spec­tive

Dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, Kaylee helped me learn so much about in­te­rior de­sign. It re­ally is so much more than just dec­o­rat­ing a room. Kaylee stated, “I re­ally en­joy see­ing how good de­sign im­pacts peo­ple both through their health, their well-be­ing, their safety, just see­ing how de­sign can af­fect peo­ple’s moods, their pro­duc­tiv­ity, how they op­er­ate in a space.” I en­joyed talk­ing with Kaylee and wish her all the best in the fu­ture!

What ma­jor should I dive into next?

Kaylee highly rec­om­mends study­ing abroad! To learn more about Maryville’s study abroad pro­grams, visit the link be­low.

https://​www.maryville.edu/​study-abroad