Featured Scholar:
Rachael Horowitz
2003 - 2004 University Scholar
Mentor: Helena Moussatche
College of Design, Construction and Planning
Interior design senior Rachael Horowitz says home decorating
shows like Trading Spaces and Surprise by Design are giving the public
a vast misconception of what it is that professional interior designers
do. “I like to watch those shows, because they have some good ideas,
but they aren’t the greatest for the industry,” she says.
“When I tell people I’m in interior design they think I must
have so much fun making floral arrangements and hanging photos, but there
is really so much more to it that that. I can do those things, and I enjoy
them, but as a professional designer I am never going to make my own lamps.”
Tired of being thought of as hot glue gun-wielding crafts-makers with
a penchant for covering everything that will sit still with lace, Horowitz
says many in the design field are moving to be called interior architects.
“To be an interior designer you have to take a test and get licensed,
otherwise you can’t practice in most states, and a lot of people
don’t know that,” she says. “I will have to take continuing
education courses for the rest of my life to stay certified. I have taken
architecture courses for three semesters and I understand the concepts
and plan to use them in my designs. So interior designers now prefer to
be called interior architects, but it is not as common as I think it will
be in the very near future. It will become necessary because of these
shows and the growing trends.”
UF interior design students in the College of Design, Construction and Planning take courses in architecture, applied physics, 3-D computer applications,
materials and estimating, technical writing, communication, and interior
design history—a far cry from the stereotypical wallpapering and
drapes-hanging courses in the public mindset. “People do not understand
what interior designers do,” Horowitz says. “They often think
we are decorators, and we just choose colors or textures and fabrics.
That is a part of it, but it is so much more. We study the psychology
of how people feel in the space, how they interact with the environment
and how it makes them feel. I am particularly interested in color, because
I love how it makes me feel.”
For her USP project, Horowitz decided to research how color is affected
by light. Though she has taken a lighting course, she says it focused
on the physics of lighting, instead of the way it affects color. So as
a University Scholar, Horowitz decided to study how two different lighting
sources affect color. Using the color spectrum—red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, violet—she wanted to see how light changes color, so
she constructed a white box, one foot square, to simulate a white interior
environment and attached an aperture to the top where true light or incandescent
light was installed to test the effects on color.
Horowitz tested 30 people in the design field—including students
and design professionals—and had them view color under true and
incandescent lighting and try to match up the color they believed they
were looking at with a color swatch. “They didn’t know what
the purpose was, I would just tell them to please tell me which color
they think is in the box,” Horowitz says. “I wanted to see
if there was a commonality—either they all chose the same correct
one or the same wrong one.”
Horowitz found that red and orange shades held true under both light,
but blues, greens, violets and yellows changed randomly. There was no
pattern in the sampling, participants perceived a drastic variation of
colors—confusing, for example, a very light blue for a dark blue.
“I polled designers and you would think we would have a trained
eye, but the light changes the color so drastically they were choosing
what they thought was in there, but when you took it out it was a totally
different color. They all wanted to know if they chose the right color
and were really interested in what I was doing because, though there is
a lot of information about the physics and psychology of color, we don’t
know a lot about how people perceive color and how it is changed by lighting.”
Horowitz says that designers need to be more aware of how the color they
choose for a room will be affected by light, otherwise they may not get
the desired effect. “As a designer going into the field very soon,
I will do these types of things on my own just so I can know how things
are going to really look. It’s important for the designer to understand
because the desired effect that you want may not actually happen.”
Horowitz is graduating this semester and is looking for an interior design
job in the Northeast, preferably in the hospitality design area. She is
secretary of the American Society of Interior Designers at UF and received
a scholarship in 2003 from the Network of Executive Women in Hospitality.
She interned during the summer of 2003 at Hillier, one of the top design
firms in the US, and worked in south Florida during the summer of 2002
in the F. Schumacher and Company showroom. She says she believes the USP
will help her land a job in her field.
“I am not the type of person to just go out and do research, but
when I heard about this program and the opportunity to get published in
the JUR, I felt it was something I wanted to do,” she says. “I
wanted to represent my college and other designers and I think it will
be a valuable tool to bring to a future employer. This turned out to be
really great experience, and I am really glad I had the opportunity.”
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