Dear Dakota: How Do I Garner More Interior Design Clients?
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An interior designer asked a question we get often, but the wording she used stopped me in my tracks.
“How do I garner more interior design clients?”
The word garner literally means “to acquire by effort.”
But getting clients shouldn’t feel like hard work. Everything I teach and share is meant to make your business (and life) easier. Which means more dream clients, fewer nightmare ones.
If you’ve developed a clear process and you’re marketing in a way that speaks to your clients’ goals and pain points (not just talking about yourself), then 80% of the selling is done before someone ever fills out your contact form.
Getting clients isn’t the hard part.
Sticking to a process is hard.
Marketing consistently is hard.
Delivering an exceptional experience is hard.
Following up quickly with new leads and current clients? Also hard.
So what actually makes getting clients easier?
Creating a client experience that removes friction from day one and makes it easier to do all of the above ^^^.
When you have a solid process in place, when you set boundaries, when you communicate proactively and in layman’s terms (no more jargon, please!), and when potential clients can see that you run a tight ship (via your website, your messaging, your marketing, etc.), that’s when things shift.
You don’t need to convince someone to hire you or slash prices out of desperation. You can simply show them what it’s like to work with you and make sure they know their project is one you want.
This gives people the confidence to reach out in the first place.
And a good process is what gets the right clients to say yes, without hesitation.
(And yes, this is exactly what my Client Experience Templates are built to help with.)
So, put in the effort ONCE (by creating templates and implementing a well-defined process) and then let it make the rest of your business e.a.s.y. xo
Looking for more? Keep reading:
When it comes to wood, there is simply a LOT that an interior designer needs to know! Of all materials used in interior spaces, wood dominates as the most widely used material. Unlike materials that might be used for a specific function (like stone for countertops or metal for fixtures), wood is used across nearly every interior component:
Framing: Most residential projects use wood as the primary framing material for walls, floors, ceilings, and staircases.
Architectural Features: Wood is the primary material used for doors, window and door casings, baseboards, and ceiling beams.
Cabinetry & Millwork: Wood, or wood by-products are used for kitchen, bath, and office cabinetry, built-in storage, shelving, and wall paneling.
Furniture: Solid wood or wood derivatives are used to construct tables, chairs, and occasional pieces
In separate posts, we have explored both common and exotic wood species used primarily for flooring and cabinetry. But there are other wood applications that designers must be familiar with. In this blog, we will define specialty applications of wood and wood by-products.
Projects and project budgets that align with these specialized and costly wood species are extremely rare. When a generous budget allows, and for clients seeking an interior that tells a richer story, exotic woods offer an immediate injection of drama, deep texture, and undeniable tactile luxury that standard domestic woods simply cannot replicate. Let’s explore a few of these specialized species.
This article provides an overview of the most commonly used wood species used for flooring and cabinetry, including oak, maple, cherry, poplar, and walnut. With all the wood options available on the market, it is important for interior designers to be well-informed and knowledgeable!
We have covered the design elements—I liken these to the ingredients in a recipe—Line, Shape and Form, Pattern and Texture, Light, and Color in previous posts.
And we have explored the design principles—the strategies for carefully and effectively combining the elements—by utilizing Balance, Rhythm, Scale and Proportion, and Emphasis and Focal Points—more recently.
I have left the final design principle: UNITY for the final post in this series. Why? Because Unity is the overriding and cumulative way in which the contents of a room are woven together into a cohesive whole, transforming a collection of beautiful pieces into a singular, intentional experience. Without it, a room is merely a showroom of disparate items; with it, a space feels resolved, harmonious, and complete.UNITY DefinedIf an interior space is unified, that means that a congruity or agreement exists among the elements in the room; they look as though they belong with one another, as though some visual connection beyond mere chance has brought them together.
UNITY is synonymous with HARMONY. If various elements appear separate or unrelated, the composition falls apart and lacks both UNITY and Harmony.
Unity (or Harmony) in a composition is the agreement of the parts to each other and to the whole. Unity results in a composition in which all the pieces seem to belong together and work to reinforce the overall design theme.
How is Unity Achieved?There are many tactics to unify a space, several of which we will cover here. The key is that the selection and placement of items in a room be strategic and well considered, not haphazard.
Homeowners often agonize over why their rooms are not as pleasing as they would like them to be, like the rooms in magazines and on designers’ websites. They have purchased or collected items they like and arranged them into a room setting, but why isn’t the whole thing beautiful?!?!?
If they are able to do so financially, this is hopefully the time that they reach out to a professional residential interior designer to engage their services.
The issue of a room—full of owned items that are quite nice—that remains visually dull, is often a lack of select points of exceptional visual interest.
Yes, every item may have been carefully chosen, or not. But if the compilation of those items still appears as a hodgepodge, the issue is a lack of emphasis and focal points.
Establishing a focal point, or several points of high interest, is the difference between a room that feels like a curated experience and one that just feels like a collection of furnishings.
Most designers understand how to use emphasis and focal points to create visual interest. If you’ve already mastered this skill, this post may provide vocabulary to help you articulate to clients why these 'anchors' (select points of exceptional visual interest) are essential. If you’re looking to sharpen your skills at creating impact and emphasis, read on.
Here we will explore the very important concepts of scale and proportion in design. Together, they are one of the key design principles. Other posts have covered the design elements of Line, Shape and Form, Pattern and Texture, Light, and Color.
And, we have explored the design principles of Rhythm, and Balance in previous posts.
I always like to say that the design elements are like the ingredients used in a recipe. But the design principles are the means of combining those ingredients artfully and skillfully to arrive at a highly pleasing aesthetic.
Why are SCALE and PROPORTION important?
Scale and proportion is a design principle that homeowners often have difficulty getting correct. How many times have we gone into homes that have small pieces of wall art hung above a sizable sofa? Or, the end table is really petite and looks ill-proportioned?
The homeowner was likely at a store, found a piece they liked, and bought it without considering the scale and proportion relative to their room or their other pieces. The price was right (probably because it was fairly small-scale!), so they made the purchase. They don’t have the luxury of an AutoCAD wall elevation to check the proportion of a wall art piece relative to the furnishings that will be against that wall, or the ability to draw out how a 5’ x 8’ rug would look on their living room floor plan relative to existing furnishings. So, it's no wonder they get it wrong a lot. Getting scale and proportion right takes some consideration.
As a long-time interior design educator, I have many thoughts on how AI will reshape our industry. My feelings are a mix of cautious trepidation and genuine optimism—specifically regarding the potential to eliminate the cumbersome "grunt work" of procurement, digital drafting, and rendering.
Interestingly, when I ask my students (generally ages 18 to 25) about their outlook on the impact of AI, they seem undaunted. Unlike those of us with decades invested in tried-and-true methods, these students, and people of their generation, are naturally agile. They are in a perpetual state of learning and absorbing. And they have never known a world without "whip-quick" technological shifts.
Certainly, they are concerned with the elimination of jobs and opportunities. That has always been the main focus of all college students: willI be able to get a good-paying job that fulfills me? Nothing new there. But they view AI as just another tool in their kit.
From "Dumb Lines" to Dynamic Models
I have taught Revit for fifteen years. Every semester, I begin by explaining that AutoCAD, while revolutionary in the 1980s, is essentially just a digital version of manual drafting. An AutoCAD drawing is a large collection of “dumb lines”—digital marks on a workplane that require manual manipulation. You need to modify the lines as you draw, just as you erase and re-draw with a pencil.
Along came Revit in the early 2000s, changing the game by making those lines "smart." Place a door in a wall, and the software automatically splits the wall lines. Programs like Revit, SketchUp, and Chief Architect possess the true power of parametric modeling: the ability to automatically project a two-dimensional plan into a three-dimensional rendering.
The Cost of Realism
As I write this, my students are agonizing over a deadline for a 10,000-square-foot warehouse conversion workspace. Some are working until the wee hours of the morning just to finalize their Revit models and produce photorealistic Enscape renderings. Despite the power of the software, it remains painstakingly time-consuming to input all the details and produce all the digital elements within a Revit model file. It takes loads and loads of human hours to produce those lifelike renderings of a space.
Yet, here is the marvel…
The topic everyone is talking about or thinking about: AI and its impact on business. There is endless information you can find on the topic, and it changes daily, because the technology and tools are improving and expanding so quickly. We’re finding out in real time the effects AI has on our work, our clients, our brains, the world, etc.
When I think about the interior design industry specifically, not just what I’m seeing as a business consultant to interior designers but also as a homeowner who hires interior designers (we are currently working with a designer on a massive renovation + addition + furnishing project), there are a LOT of thoughts flying around.
Creativity can't be replicated.
Relationships are king.
Human touch is where the value is.
And I agree with this. The results I’ve gotten in my own homes from working with interior designers could never have been achieved by AI. It is night and day.
But there are also large parts of business that are changing or going away, in part because the client base is changing (interior design clients are now ones who grew up with access to the internet so they have very different expectations than the older client base who grew up in an analog world with fax machines and magazines or mail order catalogs) and also in part because AI has removed the ‘elusiveness’ of some parts of the process.
So, here are some predictions I’m exploring about the future of interior design.
NOTE: I say ‘exploring’ because I’m not a research analyst or futures strategist or economist or political know-it-all. These are loose ideas based on my specific experiences and what I’m seeing in my tiny corner of the world.
AI is not going to destroy interior design. Far from it in fact. But it is going to eliminate a specific tier of interior design, and that tier is where a significant portion of working designers currently live.
😩
The middle.
The generalist who does good work for a reasonable fee, who sources from the same vendors everyone else has access to, who relies mostly on non-custom trade items or retail, who bills hourly for research and procurement.
That designer is in real trouble. Not eventually. But likely they are already seeing it/feeling it in their pipelines.
The designers who come out on top over the next decade are going to look very different from the average successful designer of the last one. And the gap between those two business types is going to be wider than it is now.
As you’ve surely heard the phrase, “AI has lowered the floor but raised the bar.”
Meaning, anyone can get into interior design now (heck, even some of your clients think they’re designers because they know how to get ChatGPT to make them a moodboard 🫠🫠🫠) but this means the bar for what is valuable has gone way up.
The Interior Design Services & Business Models That Will Go Away
01 | RETAIL ONLY FURNISHINGS DESIGN GOES TO AI & RETAILERS
Retail-only furnishings design is the most obvious casualty. If your value proposition is helping someone pick pieces from Pottery Barn and arrange a room, AI can do that now, and it will do it better and cheaper by the month. Imagine in a few years. So if you charge a design fee to source retail, it’s time to learn how to sell custom.
02 | HOURLY BILLING FOR RESEARCH & SOURCING GOES AWAY
Hourly billing for research and sourcing will get even more scrutiny from clients and will likely go away entirely. Here's my thinking:
This billing model was built on information asymmetry. You as an interior designer knew things your client didn't. The vendors, the lead times, what was available at trade and what wasn't. That knowledge gap was real, and it justified the billable hour. You were charging for access to information clients could not get anywhere else.
But that gap is closing.
A client can now go to ChatGPT, describe exactly what they want, and get a reasonable starting list in about 45 seconds. They can search Houzz, online showrooms that sell a variety of vendor lines, and 1stDibs in ways that used to require industry access and insider knowledge. So this “new client type” is arriving at your first meeting having already done a version of the research. Not an experienced interior designer’s version, but a version, nonetheless.
So when they then get your invoice and there are multiple hours billed for sourcing and they know it only took them 10 minutes to find something, even if your work is better, there’s friction because the math will feel wrong to them. And when there’s friction, there’s pushback and loss of trust which can derail an entire project.
03 | PRODUCT MARKUP AS THE ONLY REVENUE SOURCE IS EVEN MORE OUT THAN NORMAL
If you’ve been here more than a minute, you know I do not recommend markup as your only revenue source. But there are still some designers who will give away their expertise for free in the hopes of making the sale.
😮💨😮💨😮💨
But product markup as a primary revenue model is even LESS sustainable than it was before AI. As procurement becomes more transparent and clients become more sophisticated, the margin-on-furniture model alone becomes harder to defend.
04 | JUNIOR DESIGNERS & DESIGN ASSISTANTS HAVE A DIFFERENT PATH
The original path for a junior designer or design assistant has them finishing school then spending a few years at a firm doing research, sourcing, preliminary drawings, and admin. With AI tools taking over those tasks, that traditional path becomes more compressed which changes hiring, training, and the number of people working at firms.
I think this will impact what is being taught in design school - almost a specific course teaching designers how to utilize AI throughout certain parts of the process. Or perhaps there is an opening for a new business → post design school, pre-client facing AI training. Almost creating AI experts out of up and coming designers. Something to explore more with Gloria (a tenured professor) from my team.
05 | THE GENERALIST GETS SQUEEZED OUT
And the generalist … oh, the generalist. The interior designer who does anything for anyone, residential and commercial, new builds and pillow fluffs, high-end and middle market, full service or only floor plans. This interior designer gets squeezed from both sides. If you fit here, you’re likely already seeing this in your pipeline.
This interior designer isn’t distinct enough to command premium fees from clients who want a specialist but they’re also not cheap enough to compete against AI-assisted firms working with higher volume at a low price.
This has never been a good place to be in business, but it’s especially tough right now and we’re seeing these firms close their doors.
So what business models will stay? What new business models and niches will emerge?
So many. And again, I say this not just thinking about how AI will shape our future, but also how people, human behavior, and expectations are changing overall. Some due to what’s happening in the world right now, some due to money, some due to the new generations of homeowners who have had internet access since the day they were born.
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