Dear Dakota: Should I Post My Design Fees on My Website?

Jul 28

Dear Dakota,
Should I post my fees on my website? And how do I do it if every project is different?

1000% yes. I believe in transparency in communicating fees. Being open and communicative about what you charge will lessen the potential for awkward conversations and decrease the chance of discovery calls with potential clients who may have an unrealistic perception of working with an interior designer.

I highly recommend listing starting prices or minimums for project sizes or project budgets on your website. If you would rather not include a lot of dollar amounts, at a minimum, include SOME sort of parameter/threshold for the investment the client should be expecting to make when working with you. You can be somewhat succinct and abbreviated on your website but include a more extensive description of your fee structure in your Investment Guide. This helps to screen out further potential clients who aren't anywhere near your price point and helps to provide them with some transparency into what they can expect.

If it's a productized service, like a Design Day, E-Design, or Consultation, where the fee is the same no matter what the scope is, then absolutely publish those prices on your website since the whole point of these smaller services is to allow people to book right away without doing a consultation or creating a custom scope of work.

Then, for your Full Service or custom services, you could say, “Design fees begin at $X,XXX,” “Now booking projects with two full rooms or more,” or “We work with furniture budgets beginning at $100,000”.

People who are interested in working with you just want, and need, to know these things, plain and simple. If you make the inquiry process simple and straightforward, you are communicating to a prospective client how things will go throughout your process: that you communicate well and are a straight shooter who doesn’t evade or flip-flop when it comes to key issues. Clients will very much appreciate that, and they will say so in the testimonials they provide!

Need help setting minimums and figuring out how to price your design services? Grab the Complete Guide to Pricing Your Design Services here.