Why Talk About Professional Ethics & the Interior Design Industry?

The topic of professional ethics—acting in ways that embrace accountability, responsibility, and fairness—can be a tough (and nuanced) one to wrap your head around. 

Yes, we all (hopefully!) recognize the need to act with integrity in all of our professional exchanges—with clients, colleagues, and industry partners—but there is limited and sometimes ambiguous guidance to tell us how to do that. 

This is a serious and important topic, so I thought, let’s try to tackle it.

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An interior designer recently reached out to us with a frustration. She was in the process of putting together a scope of work for a full-service design project that involved construction, and she was spending quite a bit of time researching the answers to several questions about what could/should be done in this home to meet the homeowner’s needs.

This interior designer didn’t go into a lot of detail about the nature of the questions she was trying to get answers to, but, yes, in a project that involves construction, often there are several considerations that need to be evaluated before the project direction and full scope of work can be developed. 

The interior designer indicated she was putting in a LOT of uncompensated work merely to get a reasonable and workable SOW developed for her client.

Unpaid work???? Uh, no!

In a situation like this, where the appropriate design direction needs to be investigated, and questions need to be answered (perhaps getting conceptual pricing from contractors) BEFORE a SOW for a project can be definitively determined, a designer should ….

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One of the questions interior designers ask us all the time is, “How should I help my client budget for their construction project?”

At Dakota Design Company, we're all about knowing your numbers and ensuring your clients have a full understanding of what their project will actually cost. 

Because let’s be real, there’s nothing worse than starting a project thinking it’ll be $40K, only to find out you’re actually looking at $150K by the time everything's done. 

No one wants to get hit with a surprise like that.

So, let’s dive into this: How do you help your clients budget for projects with construction?

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Dear Dakota,  

I am contemplating obtaining a 2-year interior design degree from a community college and would love your thoughts on whether the extra schooling would be worth my time. Although I am strong in many skills and have a Bachelor’s degree in another field, I do think I could benefit from the extra practice and knowledge that would be gained from school. How can I decide whether going back to school would be right for me?

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As an operations consultant who offers business consulting AND software implementation to interior designers, I can tell you, I’ve heard (and seen) a lot. 

Now, of course, my insight is a bit biased because the interior designers who come to me for help are those whose pricing, processes, software, and behind-the-scenes are simply not working for them. 

But, even before they come to me, I know there is a mindset shift that has to happen. There are SO many (let’s be honest) lies we tell ourselves as business owners and women and I’m here to shed some light (and truth) on what it really means to have effective business systems in place. 

So, if you’re out there doing your designs and feeling like your business is slowly taking the life out of you, it could be because you’ve fallen prey to one of these twenty common beliefs (that are wrong). 

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In The Weekly Install®, I recently shared I had decided to do a time audit. Over the summer, I had worked fewer hours, but still got everything done. As I returned to my regular full-time schedule, I wondered what exactly it was that fills my time during the rest of the year. Why do I typically work SO many hours, when over the summer months I could work less and still avoid things falling through the cracks?

I mentioned my time audit (which I’m wrapping up now) but didn’t explain what a time audit is, SO thank you to all the designers who asked for more info!

What Is A Time Audit for Business Owners?

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Job burnout among interior designers is a real thing. Burnout exists when you no longer feel engaged and interested in participating in your professional responsibilities, tasks, and obligations. Burnout can result in emotional exhaustion, cynicism about your work, and a reduced sense of personal fulfillment from that work. At the most extreme, it can cause a sense of hopelessness and despondency. That is pretty grim and should not be ignored. It can easily affect one’s mental health, but it can also affect the health and prosperity of a designer’s business. So it is a topic well worth exploring and understanding. 

We asked interior designers who subscribe to The Weekly Install® to weigh in on their own experiences of professional burnout. Taken together with what is already known about burnout among design professionals, the responses were very enlightening.

What Did Our Survey Uncover About Burnout Among Interior Designers?

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Dear Dakota, 

I am rebranding and restarting my practice. I have 15 years commercial and 15 years residential experience. I am promoting a modern european aesthetic. not quite caught on in my area.

In the meantime, I am teaming up/offering "as needed" services to fellow colleagues. This often means ghost-designing a project for another designer. Design services for $85/hour or admin ie. proposals and concept boards for $35/hour. 

However, in some cases, the designer is not tight on their process and it has made proposing a flat fee for my participation difficult. I am seeing a lot of shifts in scope. This has made it difficult to establish a starting deposit and billing process to ensure I have a stream of income. 

Ugggghhhhh! How do I wrangle fellow designers and manage consistent billing to them?

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