It’s critical for interior designers to have a basic understanding of historic furniture styles. If your client wants a French Country look (and this style will probably come around again in popularity at some point), you want to make sure you aren’t including a Chippendale-style chair (oh no!!!, that would be British!). Or, if your client wants you to work with an antique Biedermeier secretary desk they inherited from their grandmother, you’ll want to know what stylistic qualities to look for in pieces that accompany it. 

So, we’ve got you covered. In the upcoming weeks, in this HISTORY SERIES, we will cover French, British, Italian, German, Spanish, and American furniture and architectural styles.

A designer asked, “If I present pricing during the presentation, it brings up more revisions. Should I wait and send pricing later instead?”

This is an important question designers often face and it’s one you don’t want to mess up. In this article, I share why the timing of your pricing reveal matters more than you think and how it affects approvals, objections, and even profitability.

Join The DTS Files to read my advice. 

There’s a fear in the interior design industry (and in many creative service industries) that sending an Investment Guide will scare off potential clients or make you look uppity. Because of that, many designers default to just sharing their hourly rates or a flat fee per room. In this article, I show you how to share pricing in a way that communicates value and positions you as the expert.

Join The DTS Files to read my advice. 

Recently, we offered a brand new training on how to create and format construction documents and spec books. If you missed it, be sure to add your name to the waitlist here to know when we’re hosting it live again..

In the live training, we covered:

• Industry standards for formatting CD sheets, and numbering and sequencing sheets within a construction document set

• Utilizing recognized drafting symbology appropriately, and ways to format construction and fabrication notes on construction drawings

• Standard formatting for plans, elevations, sections, and detail drawings, and how to cross-reference related drawings between sheets in a CD set

• How to distribute appropriate materials and finish information between schedules on a CD sheet, and within a Spec book

• The most thorough and efficient ways to format information and links within a spec book

• How to document your process and standards for CD and spec production so you can more easily outsource that work

One designer who attended the training provided this feedback:

“The level of detail discussed in this training was 🔥. I had no idea an interior designer should be producing documents at the same level as an architect. I earned a certificate in interior design, so none of this was ever taught. I am thankful that my eyes have been opened to what I should really be doing.”

We thought this was a great opportunity to discuss the differentiation between an architect’s role and an interior designer’s role, and the competencies an interior designer should have regarding construction documentation. 

Join me inside The DTS Files for insights based on my work with hundreds of interior design businesses.

They’re not louder. Not flashier. But they’ve built businesses that back them up—and it shows.

In this new article, I’m breaking down the seven specific traits I see time and time again in the most confident interior designers (and how you can work your way toward having them). 

Quiet confidence? Sign.me.up!

Join me inside The DTS Files for insights based on my work with hundreds of interior design businesses.

Welcome to another edition of Dakota Design Company’s Guest Expert Interview series on the blog. We’re thrilled to share expertise from female business owners and leaders in the interior design industry, from interior photographers to marketers, financial advisors, branding experts, and beyond.

Each of our expert guests was selected because of their unique insights and perspectives on various topics that will help any interior design business owner take their business to the next level. These experts are Dakota Design Company insiders, and many have worked with us and our designer clients in the past. We hope you enjoy this series, and that it brings you new insights, tips, and tricks to add to your interior designer toolbox. 

We asked Emanuela Schneider, founder of Marketing Interiors by ES, a boutique marketing studio for interior designers & the home industry, to share the first steps interior designers should take on Pinterest to boost visibility and if she sees Pinterest driving more leads and new clients for interior designers. Here's what she said: