Our History

It started with a conviction: that interior design deserved a school as intentional as the spaces it teaches you to create. In 1984 Interior Designers Institute opened in Corona del Mar, California — a small, fiercely focused school where every student was known, every critique was personal, and the line between classroom and studio didn't exist.

By 1990, the Institute had outgrown its original home and moved to Newport Beach — right where it belongs. Nestled at 1061 Camelback Street, the campus sits in one of Southern California's richest design ecosystems: showrooms, design centers, and a community of architects and designers who still serve as guest critics, mentors, and employers for IDI students.

What began as a single certificate program has grown into four tiers of design education — Certificate, Associate of Arts, Bachelor of Arts, and Master of Interior Architecture — without ever losing the intimacy that made it work in the first place. Class sizes stayed small on purpose. Faculty stayed practicing professionals by design.

The accolades followed: institutional accreditation from ACCSC, CIDA accreditation for the BA program, Title IV federal financial aid approval. Not because IDI chased credentials, but because the education earned them.

Four decades in, thousands of graduates are shaping interiors across Southern California and beyond — in homes, hotels, hospitals, offices, and studios of their own. The mission hasn't changed. The talent pool keeps getting deeper.