Creating your favorite spaces: Darcy McGrath

​By Hania Raza '24

Darcy McGrath’s “Creating Your Favorite Spaces” taught students how an architect and interior designer has to think differently about a space. 
The session started out with a presentation, explaining how, in order to please a client, interior designers have to think about what the space will be used for, how to make it visually pleasing and think about safety or building code. Then, McGrath showed some of the spaces she designed as well as some photos of what those buildings looked like before she designed their interior for comparison. Next, students chose from a selection of pictures and color palettes. To practice how to make a room aesthetically pleasing and appropriate for the setting, each student also chose some paint colors as well as textures to add into their space. 
Kinsley Alcorn ‘23 enjoyed learning about interior design as well. “My favorite part of the interior design session was seeing the effect of color on spaces,” Alcorn said, “Learning how different wall paints can drastically change the feeling of a room was amazing.” 
At the end of the session, McGrath showed some of the spaces she has worked on in a program that converted the room into virtual reality. She uses this often in order to help the client envision what she will be creating. She explained that an architect or interior designer has to be completely certain of what the client wants before they start the process because, if the space is 80 percent done and the client realizes it is not what they had in mind, it will be very difficult to start from scratch again. 
“The most challenging part of my job is getting enough information out of our clients to be able to give them the building that they’re looking for, that functions for everything they need and that is also aesthetically pleasing,” McGrath said. “They are spending a lot of money on a building, and you want it to work for them, you want it to be easy to maintain, and you want it to look great.”