On April 3rd the Washington Post had a VERY interesting article on licensing for designers – I’d be interested in what YOU think!
You can find it HERE as well as below:
Watch Out for That Pillow
April 1, 2008; Page A17
Imagine you were a state legislator and some folks
asked you to pass a law making it a crime to give advice about paint
colors and throw pillows without a license. And imagine they told you
that the only people qualified to place large pieces of furniture in a
room are those who have gotten a college degree in interior design,
completed a two-year apprenticeship, and passed a national licensing
exam. And by the way, it is criminally misleading for people who
practice interior design to use that term without government permission.
You might stare at them incredulously for a moment,
then look down at your calendar and say, "Oh, I get it — April Fool!"
Right? Wrong.
These folks represent the American Society of Interior
Designers (ASID), an industry group whose members have waged a 30-year,
multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to legislate their competitors
out of business. And those absurd restrictions on advice about paint
selection, throw pillows and furniture placement represent the actual
fruits of lobbying in places like Alabama, Nevada and Illinois, where
ASID and its local affiliates have peddled their snake-oil mantra that
"Every decision an interior designer makes affects life safety and
quality of life."
Legislative analysis by a half-dozen states that
rebuffed ASID’s attempts to cartelize interior design — including
Colorado, Washington and South Carolina — has failed to support ASID’s
claim that the location of your couch or the color of your bedroom
walls is literally a matter of life and death. As the Colorado
Department of Regulatory Agencies put it, there is "no evidence of
physical or financial harm being caused to . . . consumers by the
unregulated practice of interior designers."
Lacking any factual support for its sweeping public
welfare claims, ASID and its supporters often resort to fear-mongering.
For example, licensing proponents frequently say the tragic fire at the
MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas that killed 87 people in 1980 was the
result of inappropriate fixtures and furnishings.
The fire was actually caused by an electrical fault
and allowed to spread by a grossly inadequate sprinkler system.
Investigators later identified 83 different building code violations.
Another favorite is the 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in Rhode
Island, in which 100 people perished. Again, that tragedy had nothing
to with substandard interior design services. It was caused by an
illegal indoor fireworks display and the absence of a code-mandated
sprinkler system.
If there were any credible evidence that unregulated
interior design presents a genuine risk to consumers, ASID would
certainly have found it by now. They have had plenty of time (more than
three decades), resources (dues for ASID’s 40,000 members average
several hundred dollars per year), and incentive. Furthermore, despite
ASID’s best efforts, only three states regulate the practice of
interior design. That leaves 47 (including California and New York)
where the ravages of unlicensed interior design could be easily
documented — if there were any.
So what is really behind ASID’s relentless push for more regulation? Simple: naked economic protectionism.
It is no accident that the credentials required for
licensure in ASID-backed occupational licensing bills are the same
credentials required for membership in ASID itself. This includes a
four-year degree from an accredited interior design college, a two-year
apprenticeship, and a two-day, thousand-dollar licensing exam so
irrelevant to the actual practice of interior design that many ASID
members have never bothered to pass it themselves and simply get a
waiver instead.
In vetoing interior design legislation last May,
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels explained that the "principal effect" of the
law would have been "to restrain competition and limit new entrants
into the occupation." Mr. Daniels noted that interior designers were
"hardly the only profession" seeking government protection from
potential competitors.
The numbers certainly bear him out. Fifty years ago,
only 5% of the American workforce was licensed; today it is nearly 30%.
We’re not talking about brain surgeons or airline pilots, either.
Louisiana requires florists to be licensed (yes, florists), and in
several states — including Louisiana, Oklahoma and Virginia — only
licensed funeral directors may sell caskets, a state-sanctioned
monopoly they use to jack up prices anywhere from 400% to 600%, a fact
established in litigation by the Institute for Justice in Tennessee and
Oklahoma.
Until it was struck down by the state supreme court
last year, Alabama’s interior design law made it a crime to offer
advice about throw pillows and paint colors without a license. To
anyone who thinks that law — or others like it currently being pushed
by interest groups like ASID in state capitols around the nation — was
motivated by a genuine concern for public health and welfare, I can
only say this: It’s going to be a rough day.
Mr. Neily is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice.
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5 Responses
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I have asked before. Who died and left ASID in God status over designers? Please explain how they can govern people not in their “group” or association? I am all about certification and giving designers credibility, but I am not for mandates of exactly what that should be.
Last I checked this the land of the FREE. Free to pursue our dreams and businesses. Free to design homes without the big ASID breathing down our necks.
I have a bad taste about ASID, because they took a good friend of mine through agony over her title in publications and on her website saying she was an interior designer. They wanted to fine her $25,000. She did not have the 4 yr qualification or testing required. Yet she has decorated multi-million dollar homes. She was no small time girl working from her home, doing a job here and there. She is a serious designer, who works hard for her clients. Talent doesn’t need a license to paint walls, make pillows and drapes, and point where to put the furniture.
We are not endagering the lives of clients if we put there furniture in an odd place, or tell them to paint a wild color on the walls. However, they are endagering our ability to make money doing something we love, by making crazy requirements.
I have been a designer for nearly 30 years and have come up against the licensing/ASID designation several times during my career but I have not let it get in my way.
I can hardly count the times that I have been hired by a client to come fix the previous designer’s mistakes. Those previously employed designers were licensed by the state of Texas and members of ASID and yet their work product did not please their client, they pushed their own agenda into the project and charged the client outrageously while doing so.
As a young designer, this revelation really affected my perception of the importance of being state licensed as well as the validity and importance of achieving an ASID designation.
Originally, I believed ASID to be an organization that promoted interior design as a profession and held forth high standards for its members. However, after some time and observation, I changed my mind to believe it to be more of a social/status club for designers…like an elite country club membership that separated them from the ‘riff raff’.
Eventually, I lost interest in pursuing membership and after almost 3 decades of working with my clients I have concluded that an interior design degree and state licensing to be completely unnecessary in my design business.
To acknowledge the difference in my training from the degreed interior designers, I politely referred to myself as an interior decorator as opposed to a designer. I realized that a degreed, certified designer has been trained in more technical aspects that prepares them to remove walls, apply building codes to their designs, etc.
Even doing so, my clients still call me a designer and they are happy with my work and our time together. It really is a relationship & results business. Degrees and titles are not the principle focus.
There are enough design projects for everyone…with all types of skill sets. If all the players would ‘play nice’ and respect each other for what we individually bring to the profession instead of swiping at each other it would lift the entire profession up to a new level…which is what the ASID claimed to be about in the first place. Instead they seem to be vying to remain relevant in changing times.
The most important thing for any designer to do is to take responsibility for their own actions, access realistically what they can and can’t do and don’t presume to know more than they actually do. Subscribing to that thought, when my project involves areas beyond my expertise, I consult experts on the subject.
I don’t design for my ego. I design for my client’s long-term satisfaction.
BTW Mary, thanks for writing your book. It is well written and full of applicable information…even for someone that has been been a decorator/designer for a very long time.
Warmly,
Janel Jones
Dolan Jones Design
I studied fabric and design 35 years ago and lacked the confidence to practice the trade. I was young and my parents couraged me to take a job with a lot of security and benefits for a very large company. They really didn’t understand someone with artistic talent. After working for 25 years in humane relations and hating it. I opened my own interior decorating business. The last thing on my mind was to pay dues to ASID. I was more interested in putting my design skills and interpersonal relations skills to work and developing a customer base. Ten years have passed since I opened my business and I truly love it! Yes, I have had interins and they feel it is necessary to join ASID – I never have. I truly think it is a waste of money. I have never had a client that asked if I was a member of ASID.
I do not side with the ASID by any means, however I have to say that here in Colorado Home Stagers and Designers throw around some bogus certification and really rip the public off in a big way. Realtors here do not love stagers the way they do in other states because affordability is practically nonexistent. I think some kind of legitimate, standardized certification program is needed. Here in Denver I have seen a stager with less than a month’s experience offering classes that cost in the thousands to realtors and others and then she gives them a certificate than means no more than her minimum education.
Perhaps licensing could be granted for an associates degree. At least then the public would know that their stager has some verifiable training.
Continuing the Discussion