Safety Matters
People spend about 90% of their time indoors. NCIDQ Certified interior designers create safe, functional spaces where we live, work, and gather—offices, restaurants, libraries, hospitals, entertainment venues, and more. Qualified through education, experience, and examination, they go beyond aesthetics to protect public health, safety, and welfare. From applying building and fire codes, calculating occupancy loads, identifying load-bearing vs. non-load-bearing walls and components (which can collapse), designing adequate pathways to exit a building in an emergency, ensuring that appropriate materials are used to reduce slip and fall risk, or which minimize the release of toxic fumes in the event of a fire, and that spaces are accessible for persons with disabilities to name several examples.
Interior design is not regulated everywhere in the U.S. and Canada. Reasonable regulation ensures only qualified designers practice independently in code-regulated spaces, protects the public from unqualified or unethical practitioners, and expands consumer choice.
The rigorous NCIDQ Exam ensures interior designers are qualified to protect public health, safety, and welfare. CIDQ supports policies that let designers practice fully and be held accountable—just like architects and engineers.
About CIDQ
Since 1974, the Council for Interior Design Qualification’s (CIDQ) mission has been to create, test, and promote guidelines for determining competency in the practice of interior design. NCIDQ Certification has been the standard for interior design professionals for 50 years.
CIDQ’s membership is comprised of jurisdictional regulatory boards, which oversee interior design practice across the U.S. and Canada. NCIDQ Certification is part of the standard for regulated interior design practice in the majority of states and Canadian provinces.