“I’m an interior designer in a small town and have been doing it for two years now, and I cannot get a client to buy into the furniture and styling phase of my design process. They either say ‘I already have everything from our current home’ or ‘I can do that myself later, we ran out of money.’ I really want to start building a high-end portfolio, but I can’t do that if clients won’t let me install and style. What am I doing wrong? HELP!!”

If you’re struggling to  get clients to invest in furnishings and styling, there’s a deeper issue at play. Inside, I’m sharing what’s actually going on and how to fix it. 

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We received a great question from an interior designer. 

“When a potential client is working with a builder or GC, how can I compete for that project if the GC offers design services through their company?”

Many larger home-building companies DO employ an interior designer so they can provide design services directly to their home-building clients. Whether it’s for a new build or a remodel, having access to an in-house designer through the builder CAN be a great convenience for clients. 

But typically, the in-house designer's services extend only to items that are part of the build: flooring, paint, light fixtures, cabinets, hardware, plumbing fixtures, etc. By employing an in-house designer, a builder can ensure timely selections and procurement for the items that need to be installed during the build. However, in some rarer cases, these in-house designers may also offer services to assist homeowners in selecting furniture, window treatments, wall coverings, and decorative accessories—the items added to the home after construction is complete. 

In either case, but particularly the latter one, it may be difficult for an independent interior designer to compete for that client’s business. But, it just may be the case that a home-building or home-remodeling client can get a wider and more complete range of design services if they hire their own interior designer rather than work with the GC’s in-house designer. And, an independent interior designer may be better positioned to provide greater scrutiny, oversight, and personal attention to the client’s project than one aligned with the builder. 

But how can an interior designer communicate those benefits to the client?

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How to price your interior design services is probably the NUMBER ONE question we get from interior designers. Now, I get that pricing can feel hard to do, but this particular question has a very (in my opinion) specific solution because of the circumstances. That circumstance being that this sweet designer is brand new. Here’s what they shared:

“I am struggling figuring out how much to charge using a flat fee. I am not sure how many hours to assume a service will take when creating a fee.”

I recorded my response to this designer in the video below, and I’m sharing a few tips for figuring out how to determine what to charge and how to charge as a new designer. I also reference my Pricing & Proposals Workshop, where I walk you through pricing and per-room fees across the United States based on my work with hundreds of interior designers since 2017.

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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.

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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.

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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.

What do you do when the worst contractor you’ve ever worked with sends you a dream client? Take the job? Run for the hills? Here's how to protect your business, your boundaries, and your bottom line.

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