Browsing by Author "Kalaniemi, Emmi"

Objectives: This thesis is about interior designer and interior design. In this thesis, I interviewed seven people who had had their home designed by an interior designer. My main goal was to find out if the interior design or the interior designer had any influence on dwelling or how the inhabitants felt about their home or if they even called their apartment as home. The terms "apartment" and "home" are often used as a synonym for each other but in my mind, there is a clear difference between those concepts. My goal was also to find out if the interior design had an influence on how the people define those two concepts. Methods: My method in this thesis was theme interview. Of the seven people interviewed, four were women and three were men. Five of the interviewees lived in the Helsinki metropolitan area and two in the inner Finland. The interviews have been transcribed and the answers have been categorized into themes. I also requested my interviewees to take pictures from their homes and those pictures have also been analyzed in this thesis. Results and conclusions: The interior designer had a little influence on how well the inhabitants dwelled in their homes but the apartments had been called homes without the designer, as well. The interior designer did not either have any influence on the inhabitants' favorite places. However, the co-operation between the interior designer and the inhabitants had been successful excluding some minor exceptions. The inhabitants trusted especially in the designers' expertise in the major changes such as bringing down a wall etc. and in the color choices. Based on the interviews, the functionality of the apartment is essential for the inhabitants in their everyday life.