In my early days in the furniture industry, I spent a lot of
effort educating ‘non-architects’ the difference between ‘Architects’, ‘Interior
Designers’ and ‘Interior Decorators’. It didn’t help when our technical partner
from Canada came in with a new term ‘Interior Architect’.
Why did I need to educate them, anyway? On the face of it,
because they were selling furniture to architects. But deep in my heart, because of this huge
pecking order in the industry, going back to Indian Education System, where intelligence=marks=degree=Architect. Interior design was a still a 3 year
diploma in the early ‘90s. In very crass terms, calling an architect an
interior designer, or, even worse, an interior decorator was, yes I'm gong to say this - belittling him.
It looks like the debate wasn’t limited to our own little ‘egosystem’. I recently read a British book titled ‘Drawing Out the Interior’ which preambled with this definition:
Interior Architect: Does more structural changes while designing the interior
Interior Designer: More to with planning, furniture and
mill-work (American for carpentry)
Interior Decorator: Colours, finish, upholstery and stuff
(I wish I had read thas book before this life defining
incident happened):
This goes to the period when I had my own design practice, and clients had been introducing me as ‘My Architect’, ‘Layout Designer’, ‘Interior Designer’ and even ‘General Interior Contractor’. Of course I corrected them each time, till a client gallantly and with pomp and show introduced me to his guest as,
“this is Sanjeev, my
interior.”
I felt like his you-know-what. 
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