Tracy Nwara, a creative director and C.E.O of Interior Culture by Obiageli outlines her journey as an interior designer and the features of interior designing in an exclusive interview on Ladies Talking Business at Plus TV Africa.
For Tracy Nwara, Interior designing had always been a profession she enjoyed engaging in. As a young adult she would design her home and help out in designing other people’s homes nevertheless, career-wise she started out as a broadcast journalist until a job opening in an oil company for an interior designer to help renovate the office space came up and her design ideas won the pitch. This for her was a start point in interior designing.
Before now, interior designing was a numerate business in the country, people only concerned themselves with specific furniture needed for space. Furniture: like chair, table, cabinets, e.t.c. people were never really informed about the style and forms interiors can take in space.
According to her, having flair for interior design is vital in the life of any interior designer or an aspiring designer because passion helps to grow the business. An intense passion for a particular thing helps to sustain a person, for challenges come with every profession and when these challenges surface it’s only one’s passion that can help to encourage.
She also mentioned that one major challenge that interior designers faced in Nigeria was the unavailability of certain materials for designing, most of these materials had to be imported from other countries into Nigeria which, incurred more cost and little profit.
It also affected quick service delivery because work could only commence when the materials are available which could possibly take longer than expected. Presently, there have been more interior material productions in Nigeria industries, and there are also more vendors who deal in mainly interior materials with outlets here in Nigeria, who can supply various foreign materials.
Interior design is a visual business and people now understand that in Nigeria. In creating office spaces and homes people are now concerned with style and aesthetically pleasing environment. Also, In terms of Interior design in her interview on plus TV Africa, Tracy Nwara believes that ’’ Nigeria is headed in the right direction’’.