About me
Hello, my name is Marguerite Thompson. I am an interior designer from Cork, Ireland. Interior design has been a huge passion of mine my entire life and I'm so happy I get to make it my career. From nature to travel I am constantly inspired by what's around me and I just adore creating spaces for people that they will love to live in just as much as I love to design them.
My childhood
My love for interior design was evident from a very young age. I grew up on a farm in the Irish countryside and this really inspired my love of nature which I now use in many of my designs in the form of biophilic interior design. My childhood consisted of playing in little forests and coming up with layouts of different houses within the trees which I could not wait to show my mom when she would come back the fields to check on me. Along with this I also loved to draw house plan in notebooks, going as far back as when I was only 5 years old. Obviously these plans were terrible but it showed my love for houses from as far back as I can remember. My love for interior design also came from my mother as growing up she would very often change mine and my sisters bedroom and I absolutely loved when she did this, getting to choose paint colours and new curtains was one of my favourite things to do as a child. As I grew older then, from the age of about 12 to 16, my parents decided to build a new home. I went with my mom to many meetings with kitchen companies and blind companies and I went with my parents when they went tile shopping and pretty much anywhere they went to look at things for the new house. Getting to design my own room in our new house was the first room I ever designed that I could have full creative freedom for. Granted I do not like what I came up with now but I was 12 and wanted a bright pink room with one wall green and one wall full of posters. Whatever way it looked it was still a starting point for me to know its what I wanted to do when I got older.
My education/work
At the age of 16 I did work experience for a class in secondary school in The Fabulous Fabric company. This company was near where I lived and I got to see first hand what it would be like to have a career in the industry. I learned a lot there as I was working one on one with the owner who gave me loads of advice for my future career. When I finished school I went to college in Cork Institute of Technology and started studying Interior Architecture. I decided to change courses after a year and a half so that I could focus more on the interior design of the buildings rather than the architecture. This year and a half has helped me still as I learned how to use many softwares I still use while I was there. It also thought me in depth about materials used in the construction of many of my designs which is very useful information for any interior designer to have to have. After this I went on to study Interior Design and Technology in Technological University of the Shannon. Covid hit while I was studying in Limerick and my years of college weren't easy but I knew I wanted my degree. I worked really hard to overcome set backs and I am very proud to say I achieved my goal and I got my Bachelor of Arts degree and I became a qualified Interior Designer. For my professional work placement in college I split it between Mairead Collier Interiors and Michelle Crichton from Boulevard Interiors. I was lucky enough to be offered my first full time job in the industry in the first month of my placement. I gladly accepted and worked in Boulevard Interiors for over a year. My commute to work was long so I then decided to look for work closer to home and I got a job in Killarney Carpet and Furniture Center. Since I finished there I am working from home part time while also working on my own client projects and progressing my business further.
