What does it really mean to be an interior designer? Is it simply choosing beautiful colors, furniture, and finishes? Or is there something much deeper happening when we step into a client’s home and ask them to trust our professional judgment?
In this episode, I sit down with Tamera Gamble of Arranged Space, an interior designer, educator, mentor, and longtime design professional whose career has taken her from high-end residential design to commercial, municipal, retail, and residential projects. Her story is a wonderful reminder that interior design is both a creative career and a technical, human-centered profession.
I especially loved Tamera’s commitment to making good interior design accessible to real people, regardless of their budget. Whether you’re working on a luxury residential project, helping a client make a few changes with $1,000, creating construction documents in AutoCAD, or simply solving a difficult space-planning problem, the fundamentals still matter. Your job is to make the space work for the person living in it.
And sometimes, doing that means telling a client no
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
Why interior design requires technical expertise
How to confidently stand behind your recommendations
Why continuing education matters throughout your career
How to make good design accessible
Ways to build experience and your design portfolio
The Real Work of a Professional Interior Designer
Interior design is a creative career, but creativity is only one part of what makes someone a professional designer. Throughout my conversation with Tamera, we kept coming back to the importance of education, technical knowledge, professional judgment, and using our skills to make spaces genuinely work for people.
Here are some of the lessons I hope you take away from this conversation.
Treat Interior Design as a Serious, Technical Profession
One of the things I appreciated most about Tamera’s education at the New York School of Interior Design was how comprehensive and technical it was. She talked about studying everything from lighting calculations and foot candles to the many different aspects of residential, commercial, hospitality, and retail design.
That is such an important reminder for anyone considering a career in interior design. We aren’t simply making things pretty.
We need to understand space planning, dimensions, lighting, furniture clearances, construction, materials, color theory, building requirements, and how people actually move through and use a space. Tamera’s experience with AutoCAD and construction documents is a great example of the technical skills that can become incredibly valuable in your career.
A good designer learns to look beyond the photograph. We ask: Will this furniture fit? Is there enough circulation? Does the lighting work? Does the layout make sense? Are we respecting the architecture? Is the space functional for the person who will actually use it?
That technical foundation is what allows creative ideas to become successful real-world design.
Stand Firmly in Your Expertise—even When You Have to Say No
One of the hardest parts of being a designer is telling a client that their idea isn’t going to work.
Tamera shared a particularly difficult space-planning project where a client’s room was simply too narrow for the queen-size bed she wanted. Once Tamera had the dimensions, existing furniture measurements, and AutoCAD drawing, she could see the problem clearly. A closet would also interfere with the sliding door, and other proposed elements would create uncomfortable circulation.
The client didn’t want to hear no. And I completely understand that. When you’ve imagined your dream room, it’s hard to have someone tell you that your wish list doesn’t fit the physical reality of the space.
But that’s precisely why the client hired a professional.
Interior designers are there to provide professional advice, not simply confirm what someone already wants to do. When you tell a client no, explain why. Tamera creates diagrams with arrows and detailed explanations so her recommendations are based on something tangible rather than simply, “I don’t like that.”
That is professionalism.
You can be kind. You can listen. You can offer alternatives. But you also need to trust the education, experience, and expertise you’ve developed. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do for a client is prevent an expensive mistake.
Keep Learning—and Keep Teaching
Tamera’s career is also a wonderful example of why you never really stop learning in interior design.
Her experience has included historic preservation, commercial design, municipal projects, courtroom design, high-end retail, high-end residential design, and now her own residential design business. She’s also been teaching and mentoring students for years.
That variety matters because every project teaches you something.
Even if you specialize in residential design, exposure to commercial design, construction documentation, lighting, space planning, or other areas can strengthen the way you think. You don’t have to know everything on day one. But you do need to remain curious.
For designers who are just starting out, Tamera recommends continuing to educate yourself, reading, listening to other designers, researching, and looking for opportunities to build your portfolio. She suggests offering design services to friends and family or working on your own space as a way to begin developing real examples of your work.
And teaching can deepen that learning even further. When you have to explain why something works—or doesn’t—you often understand your own design principles more clearly.
Use Your Skills to Make Good Design Accessible
This may have been one of my favorite parts of our conversation.
Tamera has experience in high-end residential design, but she doesn’t believe good design should be reserved for people with enormous budgets. Her philosophy is essentially: your style, your budget. She works with different budgets and even helps clients find creative solutions using secondhand and found objects.
I love this because it brings us back to the real purpose of residential interior design.
A home is where people decompress. It’s where they live their everyday lives. It should support them.
And you don’t necessarily need a huge budget to make meaningful improvements. Tamera talked about relatively simple changes such as an area rug, lighting, accessories, or paint that can completely change how a room feels.
This is where interior design becomes incredibly human-centered. We’re not designing for an Instagram photograph. We’re designing for real people, real homes, real budgets, and real lives.
That means learning how to work creatively within constraints instead of assuming that good design requires unlimited resources.
Remember: Good Design Requires Observation, Not Guesswork
Another lesson I loved from Tamera is the importance of testing things in the actual space.
If a client isn’t sure whether a coffee table is too large, she suggests using something as simple as a cardboard box or painter’s tape to represent its footprint. Walk around it. See whether you’re kicking the sofa. Experience the circulation.
For a large light fixture, she suggested creating a temporary representation with string and other materials so you can actually understand its scale before making the decision.
This is such a practical lesson for both designers and clients: don’t guess when you can test.
The same principle applies to color. Tamera talked about using a fan deck, considering undertones, understanding the relationship between colors, and waiting until you understand the larger pieces and the lighting conditions before selecting paint.
That’s the difference between simply having good taste and practicing interior design as a profession.
Final Thoughts
Interior design requires both creative passion and professional responsibility. You need the courage to keep learning, the confidence to stand behind your expertise, and the humility to understand that not every client will follow your advice.
Most importantly, remember why you’re doing the work in the first place: to create spaces that function, support people, and make everyday life better.
Tamera’s advice to aspiring designers is simple but powerful: don’t give up, keep educating yourself, build your portfolio, research, listen to other designers, and believe in yourself.
Meet Tamera Gamble
Tamera Gamble is the founder of Arranged Space, an interior design business focused on creating thoughtful, functional spaces that reflect each client’s style and budget. Her career in interior design spans residential, commercial, municipal, retail, and historic preservation projects, including work with prominent firms such as Ralph Lauren, Gruzen Sampton, and Goldenstein Hill and West. Tamera earned her BFA from the New York School of Interior Design and has developed a particular passion for space planning, technical drawing, and using design to make everyday spaces work better for the people who live in them. In addition to practicing interior design, she teaches at the New York School of Interior Design and has spent years mentoring aspiring designers, helping them build their skills, confidence, and portfolios.
Connect With Tamera Gamble
Website: Arranged Space
Instagram: @arranged.space
Your Next Steps
If you’re serious about building your interior design career or growing your interior design business, you don’t have to figure everything out alone.
My Design Mentor is designed to give you the support, education, and community you need to keep moving forward. Inside, you’ll find 12 learning modules, a book club, special projects, a community of designers for feedback, and monthly one-on-one coaching calls with me where we can focus on the specific challenges you’re facing in your career.
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