I have always been an architecture buff—and when I mean always, I mean I learned how to do architectural drawings in fourth grade and have been sitting around with my scale ruler for hours on end ever since. Things evolved a bit when I learned autocad many years later, but when I’m doing something small, like built-ins, or noodling a dream house for myself, I still sit down with a pencil, a ruler, and a good piece of paper. It was my first real hobby, and one of the reasons I became an art history major in college.

I worked summers as a docent at two different historic houses, Morven Park (in high school) and Mount Vernon (in college). I loved how Morven Park had been left largely intact, as the last owner had died in the 1960s and had no children, and also how Mount Vernon worked to create a different kind of time capsule, a snapshot of when the first owner, George Washington, had lived there.

Then, I thought seriously about entering the field of historic preservation or architectural history, and I have read oodles of books on the subject. Architectural scholarship ranges wildly from the reductive, e.g. N.J. Habraken’s The Structure of the Ordinary, which is in part about how humans choose wall configurations and room shapes, to the socially integrative work of Witold Rybczynski, for example in his book, Home.

I realized, eventually, that the study of style and decoration in Art History classes exists almost entirely apart from what people need from buildings. We did (of course) cover how the climate of New England and the South changed classical European architecture on this continent, and that was extremely interesting to me—chimney placements, for example, in the South were on the outside to keep the heat away from the living spaces, and in New England, at the beginning, were on the inside, to retain their warmth. But the typical academic look at architecture starts with studying eras and styles.

Ultimately, though, buildings exist in service to humans, not the other way around. There are many beautiful spaces that can exist for the sake of their beauty, but home is where we go to be our most authentic selves. I don’t like the idea that clients could feel their house was too nice to be used, and that has informed my design philosophy over the life of my career. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have chairs that my furniture repair guy told me that “nobody over 140 pounds can sit in these,” and that scene in Sid and Nancy where they spray-paint over a painting still gives me the shivers all these years later, but in most cases, houses are meant to be lived in and nothing should be too precious to use.

Interior designers think about things like where bathroom electrical outlets are most useful, where the family is going to eat dinner on an ordinary weeknight, what will be the light placement of a favorite reading chair—will the person be using it more during the day, and want natural light, or will the person be using it more at night, and need an outlet for a good lamp on a table close by, or both equally? Interior designers think very carefully about what a person is using the space for, not just any theoretical human, but this particular client.

Yes, I want my clients’ homes to be beautiful, and for the rooms to flow into each other seamlessly, but it’s not just about paint colors and fabric choices. We want to be at ease at home, and for our homes to be serviceable as well as pretty. Interior design exists to make you happier and more at ease in your home.

You know when you are uncomfortable; you don’t have to live with it. The building serves you, not the other way around.