Program Overview

BA (Hons) Interior Decoration & Styling

Overview

This course is available for applications into Year 2 or 3.

Understand, project, and anticipate interiors trends on this disruptive BA (Hons) Interior Decoration & Styling degree course that challenges you to change people’s perception of space.

Closely aligned with fashion industry practices, this degree, taught at UCA Canterbury, will appeal to students who are interested in fashion, trends, and popular ideas and want to follow and create markets as they focus on the whole aesthetic of a space, or the creation of images of spaces for traditional or digital media.

Your work will be strongly aligned to media in both its interest, as well as its output, all within a creative community that's challenging the norms and status quo of spatial design. If you want to become a confident designer able to articulate sophisticated, trendsetting ideas, this could be the degree for you.

Key Information

• Campus: Canterbury
• Start date(s): September 2025
• Duration: 2 years full-time

What You'll Study

Year Two

• Launch: Launch Week for your second year is all about getting you ready for your next year of study, and re-orientating after your first summer break.
• Design 03 – Fabricate and Form: You’ll enhance your approaches to design development and conceptualisation through the further refinement of sketching, model making and visualisation skills, with specific focus on digital representation methodologies, and material and manufacturing constrains and opportunities.
• Design for Equity 02: You’ll focus on how non-Western perspectives, culturally diverse contexts and vernacular practices can inform low-carbon approaches to spatial and product design. You will also critically explore the (contested) tools and practices that our industries use to assess ‘environmental’ concerns; developing a holistic understanding of embodied energy costs and the potential disposal or destruction, recycle, or reuse of the spaces and products that you design.
• Briefs and Positions 02: In this unit, you’ll prepare a developed set of briefing materials to guide your development of a medium-scale design proposal in a subsequent design unit.
• Opportunity: Opportunity Week is an intensive week of activity conceived and undertaken in collaboration with an external partner(s), and it’ll be driven by the partner’s external knowledge and area of practice – so it could cover anything from politics or law to sport and wellbeing.
• Design 04 – Context and Constraint: You’ll expand your conceptual approach to constraint-based design by undertaking a detailed design project which brings together your technical, conceptual ideation, iterative testing, and narrative production skills in a confident and holistic way.
• Pathways and Mentors: In Pathways and Mentors, you will reflect on the design skills, knowledge and techniques you are acquiring and identify potential alternative career paths that you might not yet have considered. In the course of this unit, all students will have the opportunity to engage with a design professional in a structured series of engagement and mentoring sessions.
• Critical Analysis 02: This unit builds on understandings from Critical Analysis 01, and issues introduced in the preceding Briefs and Positions unit, to consider how ideas are socially, historically, and culturally located.
• PLE Digital Outcomes: The PLE Digital Outcome is a purposefully edited, self-directed record of your constructive, level 4 engagement with and presence on, digital media platforms across the year.
• ATOM Activities: ATOM activities are tiny pieces of diverse individual learning that facilitate interdisciplinary exposure across the university’s curricular and beyond. They are chosen by you according to your personal interest.

Year Three

• Launch: For your final Launch week, you’ll be gearing up for your final year of study through a range of activities, which could include a multi-story guest lecture super session, an all staff pecha kucher, Canterbury and surroundings walking orientation tours or a studio launch collaborative making project.
• Design 05 – Pitch and Prototype: This unit challenges you to engage with exciting new technologies and to produce compelling digital and physical prototypes through the rapid acquisition and integration of new skills within your workflows. You’ll go on developing your individual and group working skills and start to experience the pace of work in practice as you move toward employment.
• Critical Analysis 03: This unit provides a framework for you to establish your own personalised research trajectory. You’ll produce a piece of self-directed research on a subject that is related to the historical, theoretical and critical concerns of your subject discipline. The subject matter will be informed by the specific interests that you have developed.
• Briefs and Positions 03: In the Briefs and Positions 03 unit you will prepare an advanced set of briefing materials that will inform and guide your development of a medium-scale design for your Final Major Project.
• Opportunity: Opportunity Week is an intensive week of activity conceived and undertaken in collaboration with an external partner(s), and it’ll be driven by the partner’s external knowledge and area of practice – so it could cover anything from politics or law to sport and wellbeing.
• Major Project: After defining your own brief and with the support of your tutor, you will develop and complete an expansive project that uses all your skills in design, making, research and project development. The finished work should reflect your deep understanding of contemporary practice.

Fees & Funding

• Tuition fees - 2025/26:
  • UK: £9,535
  • EU: £9,535 (see fee discount information)
  • International: £17,500

Facilities

• Open plan studio spaces for each year of the course, used for group tutorials and personal working.
• Facilities for the course include: laser cutters, 3D printers, a virtual reality lab, a 3D workshop with machines for working in wood, metals, plastics and ceramics, and fully-equipped computer studios with Macs and PCs running software for design and animation.

Career Opportunities

Graduates can expect to leave this course to progress within their career in many different roles, including:

• Interior designer
• Interior stylist
• Window designer
• Home design stylist
• Creative stylist
• Furniture/Product designer
• Interior design engineer
• Visual merchandiser.

You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.

Entry & Portfolio Requirements

• UK:
  • BSc (Hons) course - Year 2: 120 credits from a relevant degree (at level 4), Certificate of Higher Education (CertHE), Higher National Certificate in a relevant subject, and/or Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL).
  • BSc (Hons) course - Year 3: 240 credits from a relevant degree (120 credits at level 4 and 120 credits at level 5), with a minimum of 55% overall, Foundation Degree in a relevant subject, Higher National Diploma in a relevant subject, and/or Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL).
• International and EU:
  • BSc (Hons) course Year 2 / Year 3 entry: The entry requirements for these courses will depend on the country your qualifications are from, please contact our International Admissions team to discuss your application.
• Portfolio requirements: For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. Further information will be provided once you have applied. View more portfolio advice.

English Language Requirements

To study at UCA, you'll need to have a certain level of English language skill. And so, to make sure you meet the requirements of your course, we ask for evidence of your English language ability, please check the level of English language required.