How to Know When You Can Start a New Interior Design Project
Many designers we talk to say the interior design process can feel very “up in the air” or “loose,” and that’s why they never know when they can actually start new projects - so they just say yes and start them all right away.
Not a good plan!
While interior designers clearly know the “design” part of the process, the timing of onboarding a new client and actually starting the project can be confusing. So today, we’re sharing a few tips for figuring out when you can begin new interior design projects and how to schedule them so you’re not burning the candle at both ends.
Today, we’re sharing a few high-level tips for figuring out when you can begin new interior design projects and how to think about scheduling them so you’re not burning the candle at both ends.
If you want help applying this to your real services, pricing, team, and workload, we help interior designers do this inside our signature group program, The Designed to Scale® Method. But first, let’s walk through the foundational pieces every designer needs to understand.
Taking on new projects always feels right (if it’s a good-fit client, of course!). But overscheduling yourself or juggling too many projects at once is one of the fastest ways to create burnout, mistakes, and constant overwhelm in this business.
Been there? Yeah. It’s miserable.
This is why your workload and the work allocated to your team has to be manageable day in and day out.
In order to build a true word-of-mouth referral business and collect sincere testimonials, you need to create an elevated, low-stress experience for your clients. And that starts with scheduling projects in a way that allows you to properly allocate your time, attention, and resources.
Expectations are everything in this industry. Clients are investing in something that doesn’t exist yet, and often waiting months to see the final result. When timelines feel unclear, anxiety creeps in. When you put structure around the experience, clients feel informed, confident, and taken care of.
So let’s talk about how to better manage your capacity and project timing without running yourself into the ground
01 | Know how long each phase of your interior design process takes.
This means you have to know how long it takes between each key milestone phase - the first new client meeting to design presentation to revisions to orders to management to installation.
This common-sense approach to time management is not (no offense) so common but is the starting point to establish appropriate timing for new business acquisition. It may be easier for designers who bill hourly to put hourly quantities to the various phases of the process. But, I always say that ALL designers should track and understand hours per phase and the full scope of work, no matter their billing method. This information gives you the critical data you need to analyze your availability and resources for incoming project work.
If you don’t have that data, estimate time commitments based on your experience. But keep in mind that we always tend to underestimate time spent. I recommend tracking/estimating per these phases of the process:
Inquiry phase and discovery call
Consultation of initial meeting
Producing contract and scope-of-work document
Onboarding a new client
Project launch and information gathering
Design development and documentation (a very big phase and dependent on the project type)
Design presentation to the client
Approvals and revisions/re-design
Project management/construction management
Implementation and install
Project closeout and offboarding
02 | Have a general idea of how long tasks take.
Here, you’ll be working at a micro level of analysis. Within Design Development, do floor plans take you a month or a week? Is it 8 days to process revisions or 4 hours? These timelines will be different for each service you offer.
Having this micro-level analysis of time/days needed for specific task completion is very valuable, not only for the broader evaluation of taking on new project work but also for your day-to-day task planning and for assigning work to team members.
03 | Know how many hours you and your team have available each week.
If you’re booking full home designs that will take at least 150 hours of design work, and you only work 20 hours and have other things to do in your business, well, the math doesn’t lie.
How many hours per week is each staff member available? How many hours per week can you count on from anyone who works with you on a contractor basis? Do your contracted team members have other commitments where you have to wait for their availability? Don’t forget to account for an occasional sick day or time off.
What is your availability to devote to project work??? Often, business owners will respond to this question, “Well, at least 40 hours per week.” But wait, you need to remember that designer is only one of the many hats you wear. This leads to the need to analyze the following point: the demands business ownership itself places on your time.
This also means if you WANT to take two vacations a year or you NEED to be unplugged during the holidays, YOU NEED TO BLOCK THAT TIME OFF IN YOUR PROJECT CALENDAR RIGHT THIS MINUTE. No active project phases should span that time.
**The key to my annual summer slowdown (where my team and I greatly reduce our capacity) is scheduling clients so their projects wrap BEFORE we move into the summer months. We don’t just book people in and cross our fingers that we’ll be able to work less over the summer. We know how long each phase of our process takes, what each of our availability is, and what else we have going on at the company - and THEN we schedule new clients.
04 | Know how much time you allocate (or should allocate) each week to business development, marketing, admin, team management, etc.
Here again, do not underestimate the time needed for these vital tasks — they are the lifeblood of your business.
Sidenote: you (or someone) must ALWAYS.BE.MARKETING your business. Even when you’re slammed. Even when you’re about to burst. Even when you’ve hit your goals for the year. A.B.M.
So, with the computation of how many hours you and your team have available each week to work on project execution, compared to a good estimate (based on your historical hourly billing data or tracking of hourly expenditures per project) of time needed to get each project to completion — you will have a fairly accurate idea of the commitment of weeks (or months) needed to complete current client work.
I would say even in the most streamlined businesses, you should still be allocating at least five hours per week to administrative, management, and business development tasks. Typically, the non-billable (back-end) vs. billable (client work) is a 25/75 split.
NOW you can see what you have available for client projects.
Once you have the data from steps 1-4 above, you should be able to see very clearly if you currently have availability for new client projects or when you can begin work on a new project.
Some designers want to document this analysis graphically as an aid to scheduling. A Gantt chart is the typical way this can be done most effectively. A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart that displays the start date, duration, and projected end date for each task in a project with all key milestones mapped. Charting all of your active projects can help you plan every week’s activities for you and your team, and you can easily find online Gantt chart templates.
05 | Choose intentional project start dates (instead of defaulting to “now”)
Once you have a realistic understanding of your capacity, the next step is choosing intentional start dates for new clients.
This doesn’t mean squeezing projects in wherever there’s a tiny opening. It means looking at your workload as a whole and identifying when you can actually give a new project the attention it deserves, especially in the early stages, when direction, momentum, and client confidence are set and workload is heaviest but still completely within your control.
Starting a project when you’re already stretched thin almost always creates stress on both sides. Clients can feel when they’re being fit in around other work, even if you’re doing your best to hide it.
If you communicate to a new client that there will be a delay before starting their project, they’ll understand and will appreciate your candid communication and effective planning skills. Plus, “while they wait” is a great opportunity to support them and prepare them for a seamless experience with your company (check out our Waitlist Email templates that do just that).
06 | Map key milestones so expectations stay aligned
Once a project start date is established, it’s helpful to think in terms of key milestones, rather than vague phases or open-ended timelines.
At a high level, this means identifying:
When design work begins and how long it typically takes
When client presentations happen
When revisions, ordering, and implementation occur
When the project realistically wraps
Documenting these milestones (whether in a project management tool, a spreadsheet, or a shared internal calendar) helps you and your team stay aligned and gives you a clear way to evaluate whether timelines are realistic and how you can schedule new projects coming into your pipeline so everyone gets the attention they deserve.
When something starts to take longer than expected, that’s your cue to reassess:
timelines
communication
expectations
and sometimes even pricing or scope
Making adjustments in real time is a normal part of running a design business. What matters most is noticing them early and communicating clearly so clients don’t feel forgotten or ignored.
Still feeling unsure about how to translate all of this into decisions for your business?
Understanding capacity is one thing but applying it across your services, pricing, timelines, and life outside of work is where a lot of interior designers get stuck.
Inside The Designed to Scale® Method, we help you define your true capacity, pressure-test your services and pricing, and build a realistic plan for scheduling projects without burning yourself out or constantly feeling behind.
If you want support implementing this in a way that works for your business, learn more about The Designed to Scale® Method here.
