Marine Design | Murat Yüksel — Cruise Ship Interior Design
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Marine Design
Since 2022, as Head of Design at Cita Design Studio, I have led interior design for leading European cruise ship projects. Marine design is a specialty that demands strict compliance with IMO/MED maritime regulations and a high level of technical discipline.
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Completed Marine Projects
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The Challenges of Marine Design
Shipboard interiors carry far stricter technical requirements than hotel design: weight constraints, fire-safety regulations (IMO/MED), materials resistant to saltwater and humidity, and maximizing comfort within limited volume.
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Related Services
- Yacht Design: My private yacht projects.
- Hotel Design: My hospitality design background.
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How IMO and MED Standards Shape the Design
On cruise and commercial vessel interiors, design freedom is exactly the room regulation leaves. The headings that matter most in practice:
- Fire subdivision (class A/B/C bulkheads). The class of cabin and corridor bulkheads directly limits which linings may be applied, and changing a bulkhead class later is effectively impossible.
- Material certification. A lining, textile or flooring without the MED "wheelmark" cannot enter the project. This narrows the palette markedly against land projects, and sourcing compliant alternatives is a specialism in itself.
- Escape routes and signage. Corridor width, door swing and low-location lighting are regulatory decisions, not design ones.
- Vibration and noise. Structure-borne vibration from machinery and propellers is the hardest component of cabin comfort to resolve, and the solution lies in connection detailing rather than surfaces.
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Repetition and Prototyping in Cabin Design
On a cruise ship the same cabin type is built hundreds of times. That produces two consequences absent from land projects:
- Every decision is multiplied. Gaining a few centimetres per cabin can mean an additional cabin at ship scale. Equally, a small cost difference per cabin becomes a major line item in total.
- A prototype cabin is mandatory. Before series production, ergonomics, assembly sequence and cleaning access are tested on a full-size mock-up. An error found at this stage is cheap; the same error found in production is very expensive.
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Industry Notes