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How You Can Become a Residential Planner
Residential planning can be a tricky moniker. Though urban planners and city planners frequently plan residential areas, residential planning involves the design and planning of interior spaces of homes, or residential spaces. Some residential planning education is more architecture-focused, while other programs have an interior design focus.
What Does a Residential Planner Do?
Residential planners focus on how residential spaces will be used and put together a design plan based on a client's needs, lifestyle, and budget. As part of your residential planning curriculum, you'll likely study space planning, with special attention given to bathroom and kitchen design. Most programs will teach you how to draw up plans and use computer software for drafting and design. Many programs also include education about styles of architecture and design, so you'll be able to make accurate recommendations for renovations and communicate with architects and other design professionals.
What You'll Learn About Residential Planning
Though both interior design and decorating schools teach aesthetic aspects of choosing materials, color palettes, and lighting, interior design is not to be confused with interior decorating. Interior designers are increasingly becoming more involved with architectural plans for new construction and renovations. As a residential planning student, you'll be introduced to the basics of interior design. Like interior design programs, residential planning programs may include lessons about textiles and choosing interior materials. In fact, part of an interior design education involves contract--or construction--documents.
Whether you attend an interior design school for your residential planning program or an architecture-focused program, you'll most likely learn about residential and commercial building codes and how to read blue prints. You may also learn how to accurately estimate costs for your clients, in addition to using technology to manipulate digital images and make client presentations.
Choosing a Residential Planning Program
Residential planning certificate and degree programs are offered through traditional campus-based colleges and through online schools. Some certificate programs recommend that you already have a bachelor's degree and some professional experience. If you're planning to parlay your residential planning education into an interior design or architecture degree, make sure your credits will be transferable.
Careers for Residential Planners
Residential planners can work for interior design or architectural firms, or they can work as independent consultants for building contractors or developers. Residential planners can also work as retail sales associates in construction supply stores or as representatives of a construction materials or product manufacturer, such as countertops. You could also work as a product specifier, a professional who recommends specific fixtures and products to achieve a particular goal, such as water efficiency or cost savings.
Earning Potential
Though the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't offer salary information specific to residential planners, it does note that residential designers who are self-employed or working in smaller firms earn a percentage of any design elements sold to a client, in addition to a per-hour consulting fee. In general, the 46,000 interior designers employed in the United States made a mean salary of around $52,000 in 2009. Around 2,000 of those interior designers worked in the residential building construction industry.
