Dear Dakota: Should I Share Pricing During the Design Presentation or After?

Aug 29

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The single biggest painpoint interior designers have is pricing. Anything related to pricing. Design fees. Retainers. Markup. Install days. Accessories. PM fees. Travel. All of it.

So when we received this question from an interior designer during our Live Design Presentation Training, I realized this is an entire NEW subset of pricing challenges:

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

Here’s my take: the price is part of the design, and it has a huge impact on approval.

If you’ve done the work of setting a clear project budget up front and you’re presenting within that range, sure, you could wait and send invoices after the client gives a conditional yes during their presentation.

But from a client experience and sales standpoint, I lean the other way and believe you should present pricing once you’ve presented the design. So all in the same meeting.

Here’s why:

01 | Pricing is a HUGE factor in decision-making.

Approvals without pricing are conditional on pricing. For example, yes, I love that car, but I can’t say yes to it until I know all the bells and whistles I added are within my budget. Same goes for your interior design clients. If they love the design but don’t know the price, they’re only tentatively agreeing until the final number comes in. That’s when second-guessing and revisions start to come in.

02 | Handling objections live is always best.

Based on that, YES, I am saying when clients see pricing, they might have an objection. BUT, as a business owner it is ALWAYS best practice to handle objections live, in real time.

When you share pricing during the client presentation, if they push back or don’t see the value in something, you have an opportunity to explain your reasoning right there on the spot. You can show where you splurged and where you saved. You can highlight why a piece is important to the overall design or point out it’s “the thing” they showed you in 8 out of ten of their inspiration images. Clients can ask questions on the spot, and you can address concerns before they spiral into “maybe we should change the whole thing” email a week later.

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03 | Sending pricing after the fact creates unnecessary mystery.

The normal shopping experience for most people is that they go to a store, see an item, look at the price, and then decide if they want to buy it or not. NOT sharing pricing creates a new shopping experience for clients and because of that, it automatically creates friction.

It is a best practice to mirror the normal shopping experience and if you’re deviating from it, there has to be clear, proactive communication that explains this new way of doing things and why it’s beneficial to the client and the project. This means your screening process, contract, and onboarding process have to be very buttoned up so people know what they’re getting.

At a minimum, share a per-room price in the presentation. That way, the client can evaluate the design and the price together. Think of it like buying a car. You might love the make, model, and features, but if you find out later that it’s $20K over budget, suddenly it’s not as appealing and you have to back pedal.

04 | You’re unnecessarily touching things too much.

Why do you not already have the pricing? When you sourced the item and added it to your product management software, you should have input ALL the information for that item into the product library. Even if you don’t present that item, you’re still building out your product library, and you can pull that item quickly if the client does request a revision.

Every time you touch something, edit something, go back and look at something - it eats up precious time. It’s best to have everything ready to present when your clients are in your office, excited about their design, and have all their attention on their project.

05 | This adds extra time to the project.

If you present and then a few days or a week later, you send them the pricing, and then they have time for revisions, we have now added at least a week onto the project length. One week that eats into your profit margins. One week more your client has to wait until their room is finished. One more week until you make the sale. And lots of time for prices to go up, tariffs to hit, items to go out of stock or delay, etc.

No sense in adding extra time to the project that the client will need to wait for after they’ve already waited weeks or months for their final design. Do the work before presentation, then present the design + pricing all at once. Don’t create more work and more waiting time for your clients who hired you to save them time and reduce stress.

Final Notes

This is not to say you can’t send pricing to the client after the fact. You’lll still send detailed invoices after presentation to show the breakdown and items in detail and to get approval and payment. But the approval moment happens best when pricing and the design are presented together, with you in the room to guide the conversation.

Your client experience should be seamless, not suspenseful. Present the design and the price together so your clients can say yes with confidence and clarity!