Matt Lorenz won Bravo?s “Top Design,” a reality-show competition featuring aspiring interior designers in April. Since then, the 10-year veteran of the design industry has opened his own firm and works as a spokesman for the American Society of Interior Designers. Lorenz will be in Baltimore today and Thursday attending NeoCon East, the premier commercial design conference in the mid-Atlantic region.
How did you get on the show?
A friend of mine who?s an actor in Chicago, his agent was looking for people to be on the show. I had no interest on being on TV, but after 10 times of saying no I finally did it. I figured I would get a couple clients out of it at the end of the day.
The experience was the most challenging thing I?ve done, mentally, physically. We were sleep-deprived, food-deprived, we were put under a lot of stress and had to produce the best work possible under those conditions.
How has the interior design industry changed with shows like “Top Design”?
These shows sometime give clients a false impression of the time it takes to do these things. For the people who don?t understand our industry, it gives them a false impression. People watch these shows, and think they can do it themselves, and we get a call six months later saying “I made some mistakes.”
It?s helped people realize interior design is a profession, but it?s an extremely difficult profession to make a living in. The shows give them the impression we have this fluffy job. Ten percent is the fluffy part, the rest is dealing with business and contractors.
What advice do you have for an aspiring interior designer?
If you think you can do it, call some local design firms and see if you can sit in for a week and see what it?s really like. The industry is much different than people?s expectations and what it looks like from the outside. You really have to have a passion to do it.
