Darren Palmer: Interior Designer

Businessman’s name: Darren Palmer
Job description: Interior Designer
Business name: Darren Palmer Interiors
Location: Sydney, NSW
Find him online: www.darrenpalmer.com

Give us a quick rundown of a typical work day for you?
Gee… well, it can range form driving around all day looking at couches and fabrics and decorator things, to sitting in the office and drawing plans for joinery, or putting together submissions for new businesses. It’s a nice, varied job I have.

What attracted you to interior design?
I wanted to be an architect, until someone told me they’re the lowest paid professionals. I’d say that’s debatable now because I know some very wealthy architects, but back then it drove me to become a designer, which I’m certain was meant to be. I can’t help but walk into a space and immediately start pulling down walls and changing things around in my head. It can be quite distracting.

So, you’re good at making interiors look nice; does that also mean you’re a clean, tidy male… as in “domestically”?
Lemon scented bleach is my best mate at home. I don’t think my bathroom is clean until it smells of bleach… does that make me sound weird? [laughs] But, yeah, I tend to design homes with a place for everything so all it takes is to put everything where it belongs and voila, a clean apartment!

Give us an example of interior decorating that makes your skin crawl…
Hmm… there are so many things when I start to think about it. I’m definitely not into anything “fru fru” or puffy. I suppose anything that is unknowingly in poor taste, like a bunch of extremely expensive items pieced together where nothing matches; they’ve just been chosen because they’re “very expensive”.

What has been the highlight of your business year?
I was featured in Belle Magazine for their renovation issue. It was a piece on the apartment I designed for myself so it was a real buzz to demonstrate the process of transforming what was a really nasty looking (picture orange, lime, red and purple used simultaneously) poorly laid-out apartment into my simple, modern and very functional dream home.
When I say dream home, I mean, it was a few months ago [laughs]. The pictures are on my site if you’d like to see the results but I’m working on a completely new-look apartment already. When it’s revamped in Feb/March 09 it will be brilliant; I’m doing raw tallow on the floors, with just China Oil, so it’s matte and textured. Then to offset that natural rawness, I’m finishing all my joinery (kitchen, robes etc) with high gloss black polyurethane. It’ll basically be the ultimate bachelor pad.

Do you know any dashing business gents we should interview?

Work It Baby is a great way for ‘the men folk’ to score some well-deserved (and free!) business promotion at SNOBS. Just look at the great archive of interviews we’ve done so far. If you know a fine fella in business, do him a favour and submit his details now!

Or, ask Darren a question!

Like to know more about his style of business management, or the industry he works in? Just leave your questions in the comment box and we’ll make sure he’s notified…