Interior Design Business

If you have a good eye for home design, starting an interior design company can be an amazing way to do something you love and make a great living off it. In this section we will talk about how to start an interior design business from scratch and how you can scale it to something that allows you to live the life you always wanted.

The first step to starting an interior design business is to make sure you are truly an expert at home design. You should follow every top page you can on Instagram, Facebook, any magazine related to interior design and do research online of what the styles tend to be in your area. You may have a good eye for design, but you always will want to keep up with the times, because style changes frequently and understand what different styles all age groups, professions and areas will like. Younger people in tech will probably want more modern designs, older people that are retired may want a more classic feel and then there is everybody in between. Look at some of the work of top interior designers like Kelly Wearstler, Nate Berkus, Phillippe Starck, Kelly Hoppen, and anyone else you can find to get an idea of what professional work looks like at the highest level. Make sure you understand what styles are in right now and keep up with the changes in this industry.

The next thing you will want to do is become familiar with interior design software and what it takes to run an interior design project. You can use software like Sweet Home 3D, AutoCAD, Planner 5D, Sketchup, Cedreo or any other tool that allows you to create 2D designs and turn them into 3D renderings to show your clients. Take a day to research these softwares and find one that fits your budget and needs. The most important thing that your software should allow you to do is start with dimensions of a house and create 2D and 3D designs. Once you have found software that works for you, watch a video on how to use it on YouTube and play around with designing your own home to become comfortable with the software. You will also want to get a laser measuring tool on Amazon so that you can get the measurements for your clients’ houses, including the walls, windows and any other fixtures in their house that take up space. You will use these measurements to create a design with corresponding walls, so that you can start creating a design.

Now that you have learned how to use the home design software it is time to find some reliable manufacturers of home décor and furniture that you can use to design your homes. You will want to get a good idea of what companies you will use for each type of client you will find based on style, price point and variety. You will also find some sites that have such large varieties that you can use them for most clients. Wayfair.com is a great place to use for furniture and décor in general. Anthropologie.com, thecitizery.com, Pottery Barn, West Elm and Etsy.com are all great options for décor for high end clients. You would also be surprised how much you can find online on Target.com, and Walmart.com. Get a good list like this together of sources you can get products from for your home design business and keep searching for them as you go to find even better sources for individual clients. At this point you should also set up an LLC and business bank account which we teach you all about in our How to Start a Business section. This will allow you to create commercial accounts with sites like wayfair.com to get huge discounts on purchases. You can charge homeowners full price for these items and make a profit from the discounts you get.

You will also need to create a website that will show off your work, list your services and allow them to get in touch with you easily. You should check out other sites from top designers and get an idea of the layout that they use. Make sure that your site is elegant and shows off your fantastic eye for design just from the way your site is styled. You should have multiple buttons on your site that are calls to action, allowing them to book an appointment with you or fill out a form with their contact information so that you can reach out to them immediately. It should also clearly show your contact information so they can get in touch with you and link to all your social media pages. You can check out our section on how to create a professional site as well to get more details on creating a site for your brand.

The next thing you will want to do is get in front of some potential customers. Keep in mind that most of the people that have money for interior designers are high end clients and owners of businesses that need designing. One of the best ways to do this is to use the law of reciprocation by sending cookies or small gifts to luxury realtors in your area that work with high end clients along with a card that introduces yourself as a local interior designer that works with their target clients. You can also offer a good commission or incentive for getting you new business. Most people need home design services when they just purchase a property so connecting with as many realtors in your area as you can through mail, phone calls, and messages on social media platforms like Facebook can be an amazing way to get some business quickly and build a customer base.

You should also join luxury pages focused on your area on Facebook and Reddit that you feel passionate about, to get to know people with money in your area. You can also search for events in your area that will have potential customers for you to meet and always carry some business cards that you can have made on Vistaprint.com or staples.com. You should start focusing your social media profiles on the topic of home design. You should add interior designer and your area to your bios and start making content about interior design. You can even make use of our large-scale short form content marketing that we talk all about in our marketing sections for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. If you make a video or 2 per day about home design and projects you are working on, you can grow an amazing following that can lead to new customers as well. The goal is to build a name for yourself in this industry and get people thinking of you as the person for everyone’s design needs.

Another way you can get new customers for your interior design business is to go on Zillow and filter by sold homes in nice areas near you to find a list of properties that may need interior designing. You can also do this with commercial properties for businesses that have just sold to get big jobs near you that can pay a fortune. Once you come up with a big list of homes and businesses that may need your services, you can go to a skip tracing service like beenverified.com and you can enter these addresses to find the owners and their contact information. You can then call on these free leads and update your list each day to introduce yourself and tell them about your business. You can start with building rapport by congratulating them on their new home or property, complimenting the property and telling them how you have helped design properties just like theirs and how you have a great vision for their property. From here you can set up a time to meet up at the property, measure out the rooms for your software and talk about the ideas and style they have in mind. You can even offer to design a small room for them before making a financial commitment or recommend a piece of furniture or décor that you know will impress them. You will want to lead them from not knowing who you are, to viewing you as a design expert, to showing them what you can do for their property, to ultimately paying you for your services.

Now that you know how to find new clients, it is time to learn how to price your projects. The best way to do this is to call a few design companies and get a good idea of what they would charge to design your home interior and what the overall cost is that they charge per square foot. This will of course vary based on how full you want your rooms to be but get some quotes so that you understand how the pricing works and how you can price your projects. You will find that there are a few ways that you can charge for your interior design services. You can charge per hour which can start between $50-$150 per hour, you can charge a fixed fee based on the amount of hours you will put in with a 10-15% buffer to make sure you do not lose money on your time, you can charge by square foot which typically ranges from $10-$17 per square foot or you can charge based on the percentage of the total project cost. You will always want to start off by asking what your client’s budget is so that you can determine what type of furniture and décor that you can style with. If you are charging based on project cost you would add up all the costs of furnishings, finishes, installation, contractor fees and all the other project expenses and charge 30-45% on top of this total for your design services. Typically, when you are just starting out people will charge an hourly rate until they build up the experience to demand more for their services but find out what model works for you so that you can be confident pricing your projects.

Once you have landed your first few clients for your design business, you will want to take advantage of asking for referrals! This is the number one way that people get new business in this industry so be sure to ask often and provide incentives for people who find you new customers. When someone is happy with your work, you can offer them gift cards, money off a future project, a free small service or anything else that will incentivize them to find new clients for you. You can send them birthday cards, Christmas cards, and simple hellos now and then to remind them that you exist and ask them for referrals. If you do this consistently and put these events in your calendar, you can stay on top of it and see results over time. Make sure to keep good relationships with all your clients even after their work is complete so they will think of you whenever a friend is in need of the services you provide.

Once you have grown your business to where you are busy with work all the time, it is time to start charging more for your services and begin outsourcing some work so that you can focus on continuing to grow your business. You should reevaluate your pricing model at this point and maybe change it to one that is more profitable or simply up the rate you charge with your current model. You should also start outsourcing the design work to other designers that are familiar with the software that you use. You can find designers familiar with programs like AutoCAD on Fiverr or Upwork even or you can hire internally on sites like Indeed on free trials, so you don’t even have to pay to find employees! You can even check out our hiring and recruiting section to learn more about how to find new talent. You can have these workers create preliminary designs for your clients and then review them and edit them to show to your customers with much less time spent on design itself. From here you can scale your marketing plans and begin taking customers from all around the world potentially!