What Inspires Me as an Interior Designer

People ask me this a lot, usually expecting an answer like "Scandinavian minimalism" or "Japandi." My honest answer is less tidy than that: my inspiration comes from vibrant color combinations — the kind that hit you with a specific emotion the second you set foot into a space. And I don't find those combinations in design magazines nearly as often as I find them somewhere else entirely: a painting, a brand, a fashion collection.

Color First, Category Second

I didn't come into interior design through a design degree. My background is finance, marketing, and product management — I built systems and read data before I ever specified a material. So when people ask what "school of design" I belong to, the honest answer is: none of them, on purpose. What I trust instead is a much simpler question — does this combination of colors make me feel something the moment I see it?

That's the filter I run everything through. Not "is this on trend," not "will this photograph well" — but does this color story create an emotional reaction fast, the way a great painting does before you've even processed why you like it.

Why Painting, Brand, and Fashion — Not Other Interiors

I rarely start a mood board by looking at other restaurants or stores. If I did, I'd just end up recreating what's already out there, filtered through my own taste, which isn't inspiration — it's imitation with extra steps.

Painting teaches me about color relationships that have nothing to do with function — a color story that exists purely to create a feeling, with no client brief, no budget, no floor plan attached to it. Fashion teaches me how color moves with the body and with light, how a palette that works standing still can completely change under motion. And branding teaches me discipline — how a strong brand commits to two or three colors and repeats them with total confidence, instead of trying to say everything at once.

Put those three together, and you get color combinations that feel emotionally specific instead of generically "nice." That's the difference I'm always chasing.

From Inspiration to a Physical Space

The hard part isn't finding a color combination I love — it's translating something two-dimensional, or something worn on a body, into a three-dimensional commercial space that still has to function as a restaurant, a clinic, or a retail store. A palette that works in a painting doesn't automatically work at the scale of a dining room, under artificial lighting, on materials that need to survive years of daily use.

That translation is where the actual design work happens. The inspiration gives me the emotional target — what should someone feel the second they walk in. Everything after that — material choice, lighting, proportion, how much of a bold color to use and where — is about protecting that original feeling all the way through to the built space, without losing it in the process.

Why This Matters for the Spaces I Design

I think a lot of commercial interiors default to safe, neutral palettes because color feels risky — what if it dates quickly, what if it doesn't photograph well, what if it's polarizing. I'd rather build a space that makes someone feel something specific than one that's inoffensive to everyone and memorable to no one.

That's really what draws me to color as a starting point rather than layout or material: color is the fastest way to create an emotional reaction in a space, before someone has even had time to think about it logically. And that instant reaction — that's the same thing a painting, a fashion look, or a strong brand is doing to me when it stops me in my tracks. I'm just translating it into a room instead of a canvas.

Avina Kantaatmadja is the founder of Kita Design Co. (PT Kita Desain Bersama), a Jakarta-based commercial interior design and build studio working across F&B, retail, clinics, wellness, offices, and sports & fitness spaces.