How To Start An Interior Design Business [10 Key Steps]
[This post contains affiliate links. Click here to read my full disclosure.]
Post #1 - DIY Your Interior Design Website Series
HOW TO START A DESIGN BUSINESS
Why You Should DIY Your Interior Design Website
Why Squarespace Beats WordPress For Interior Design Websites
Best Interior Design Websites On Squarespace
Best Squarespace Template For Interior Design
Choosing An Interior Design Domain Name
8 Interior Design Website Must-Haves
Interior Design Website Mistakes To Avoid
Why Blogging Is Important for Interior Designers
9 Tips For Writing An Interior Design Blog Post
Planning to start your own interior design business? Congratulations! I couldn’t be more excited for you, and I’m so glad you’re going after your dreams.
Perhaps you’ve had a goal of ditching the 9-5 and the cubicle for something much more fulfilling. Perhaps you’ve had a passion project for a while now and want to finally take it beyond the hobby level.
What I do know is that after the initial rush and excitement of making your decision (and making this decision is a HUGE step, so again, congratulations!) the overwhelm can kick in fast.
Feeling daunted about mapping it all out, setting priorities, and taking action? I absolutely get it since I’ve been there myself, and that’s why I’m here with this post. My goal is to break this process down into bite-size steps for you, so you have a manageable roadmap.
But first I want to say, I believe in you. You’ve got this. So let’s get going.
1 - Find Your Design Niche
2 - Who Is Your Ideal Client
3 - Choose Your Business Name
4 - Strategize How To Get Clients
5 - The Importance Of Quality Imagery
6 - Website - Your Most Important Marketing Tool
7 - Set Up Your Contracts
8 - Open A Business Bank Account
9 - Build Your Email List
10 - Build Your Brand
Define Your Interior Design Niche
Ever heard the phrase “the riches are in the niches”? Defining your design niche is important because it brings clarity to your marketing efforts by defining who your ideal client is.
Especially when your business is new, it’s so tempting to try for a broad base because you don’t want to exclude anyone. (100% the struggle is real!)
But once you narrow it down, you may find you’re a happier designer and entrepreneur. The relief from no longer having to keep your marketing efforts generic so they “appeal to everyone” (when in reality, they may appeal to no one because they’re non-specific) is real too!
Every business is different. Even if two designers appear to offer similar services, each business has it’s own unique focus, model, and clientele that sets it apart. Simply put - there’s no one else on the planet who will do things in the unique way you do.
Let’s look at a few interior design niche possibilities:
Local service provider vs. e-designer and home décor blogger
New build specialist vs. period home renovator
Interior stylist vs. interior decorator vs. interior designer
Kitchen and bath specialist vs full services interior design
Homing in your niche and the services you offer is a critical first step so you can tailor your marketing message to that audience.
Who Is Your Ideal Interior Design Client Community? (Who Do You Want To Work For?)
After deciding what interior or architectural niche you want to work in, you need to get crystal clear on who your Ideal Client Community is for your niche.
Rather than marketing to anyone and everyone, drilling down on the values, habits, pain-points, and aspirations of a particular client profile will help you customize your offers and marketing messages to exactly what your Ideal Client Community needs and wants.
A great way to do that is to go through my detailed Ideal Client Avatar Workbook:
Sidebar: Ideal Interior Design Clients & Budgets
Be realistic too about who you plan to serve and also, how that client group will serve your business. After all, you want to build a business that will serve you both financially and in terms of lifestyle over time.
For example, building a business based on serving clients who only have low budget projects through traditional fee-for-service work isn’t the road to sustainable success. It’s a fantastic way to get your FIRST clients and build up some portfolio pieces that can be incorporated into your client-getting strategy, but it’s not going to work long term.
Trust me. The work you do for your clients doesn’t change much whether their budget is $2,500 or $25,000. In fact, the bigger-budget clients are often easier to work with because they aren’t asking you to perform magic and create a champagne project on a shoestring budget. Fact check this with other interior designers in Facebook groups - they will back me up.
You still have to put time and resources into meetings, site visits, design and drafting work, and sourcing whatever the project scope entails. Plus, if you’re constantly having to work around their budgetary restrictions, you’ll quickly find out just how time consuming that is.
Yes I’ve been there with the almost-no-budget-having landscape design client who wants miracles worked for their front garden, and the web design client who has a luxury niche business but isn’t willing to spend $50 for quality stock imagery, just for starters.
Let me also unequivocally state that you CAN serve that budget niche - it’s absolutely possible! It’s called an interior edesign business, where you offer consultations and simple projects without an in-person site visit for clients who will then take your guidance and complete the project themselves. Pair your design services with a home and garden blog where you show people how to get great design on a budget and inspire them to go out and do it themselves, and you have a winning combo.
No matter who you decide is your ideal client community, you need to get very clear on who they are, what they are about, what their interests are and where they hang out. When you truly understand who you're serving, it will inform how you execute your sales and marketing since your strategy will be built around your Ideal Client Community’s needs, desires, and habits.
Choose Your Design Business Name
Once you’ve nailed down your niche and ideal client, you’re in a good position to choose a name for your new design business. Brainstorm ideas without judgement. I’d recommend actually putting pen to paper.
Many architectural and interior designers use their own names or initials. If that’s how you want to go, then lucky you - it keeps things simple.
If not, here are a few points to ponder when considering business names:
How common is it? My first iteration of an interiors + landscape design business I named “Mission Design.” What I didn’t realize was just how many Mission Design and other “Mission” named businesses there were out there. It made my fledgling biz all the harder to be seen digitally and rank for in search, never mind finding an available version of a website domain name.
On the flip side, is it “too" unique?” What I mostly mean is, will it be challenging for others spell, pronounce, etc., potentially causing confusion or worst-case, lost leads? Another name flub-up on my part: Cultivar Design Group. Cultivar is a very familiar word for me due to my plant science background, but I discovered when doing some market research - not so much for others. Especially over the phone - you don’t want to have to spell things out for people endlessly, and they don’t want that either.
You may (or may not) want to choose a name that is neither too general nor too specific. This is a tough one, because it asks you to project your business into the future which is no easy feat.
Again using myself as an example, when I started my blog, I went with Greenhouse Studio. It doesn’t specify a particular type of service - neither web, landscape, or interior design etc. But it does imply a creative endeavor (studio) and greenhouse is about my interests in plants, which is not only a focus of my blog, but is also a word with general appeal.
Once you’ve settled on a name (or a couple name options), I’d recommend sitting on it for a bit and letting it percolate. See if the name still seems like a good fit after a few days or more. Test it out on friends, or better yet, your Ideal Clients.
Although I try not to obsess over this stuff much over this, in reality, I’m the worst (in case you didn’t guess). Even today while in the shower I thought of another tweak for my business name that kind of makes sense. Trust me though, I’m gonna sit on it for a while to hopefully save me from myself!
[Related Post : How To Choose A Domain Name For Your Interior Design Business.]
Finding Architectural & Design Clients
Finding clients is key to any successful business, whether it’s in the design field or not. So not surprisingly, this is a step that often causes a lot of angst for new business owners.
I’ve absolutely been there, lying in bed at night fretting about “How do I get my first clients if I don’t have a portfolio to show them?” Followed by, “Even if I had a portfolio, still, how would I find clients?”
Ultimately, how you approach getting clients depends a lot of your business model. Here are some ideas for getting those first clients when you don’t even have a portfolio yet:
Contact your contacts. Send out email blast to everyone on your contact list letting them know you're starting a new venture in design, and if they need any services, you'd love to help them out.
Emails - reach out to other businesses relevant to your field. Say something genuine you admire that's specific to their own work. (Do NOT do a generic cut/paste email - those get a one way trip to the virtual trash can, which I do on a daily basis.) Let them know you’re starting your business and to please keep you in mind if they have any need. For example, if you’re an interior decorator, reach out to contractors, realtors, stagers or other interior designers.
Social Media - post “portfolio project pieces” you’ve created. It doesn’t matter if they were for an actual client or not. The point is to show what you’re capable of and that you’re consistently showing up. Connect with other relevant accounts and interact with them to forge relationships.
Your strategy will depend a lot on who your Ideal Client Community is and where you’ve determined they hang out. If you didn’t grab it before, get my detailed Ideal Client Avatar exercise.
Invest In Quality Imagery
Once you have a bit of work under your belt, whether from clients or from your own projects, you need to invest in quality photos. I’m going to give you some tough love for a moment: quality imagery will make or break your website and social accounts.
Try this: think of the most inspiring websites and social feeds you know - beautiful, cohesive images across the board, am I right? Now mentally swap out those images for some fuzzy, mismatched and non-color coordinated photos and what do you have? A website or social feed that isn’t nearly as inspiring.
Design & Photography - Tina Huffman, Greenhouse Studio
As a designer and creative entrepreneur, your imagery is a brand ambassador. Not only your portfolio work, but also your brand identity images including headshots, lifestyle images, and other associated brand photos. So going the extra mile for quality imagery is important.
This doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton on professional photography at first. If that’s not in the cards, it does mean finding a way either with your phone camera or investing in a DSLR camera and learning to produce some quality photos, which is totally doable.
This is what I did for my home and garden blog. I didn’t know anything about photography, so I invested in Rachel Pax’s Interior Photography course. She’s a successful interior décor blogger at Maison de Pax, and a photographer whose work has been featured on magazine covers. Plus she’s a former teacher, so her course is top notch.
It was heartbreaking to me when my web design client with a luxury niche business needed a new Squarespace website to replace her old WordPress site. I couldn’t convince her of the importance of investing in quality stock imagery and the impact it would have on her site. Especially for her niche where detail and aesthetics are key. She said she couldn’t afford to do it, and I kept thinking “you can’t afford NOT to do it.”
Needless to say, that site never made it into my web design portfolio page.
Don’t let imagery hold you back from launching - there are way too many free and paid resources available to DIY your own photography. With time your imagery will improve, whether you’re getting better at photographing your own work or have more of a budget to hire a pro.
Maison de Pax's Photographing Interiors course was key to getting my imagery up to speed for my home and garden blog. Rachel is a total pro and a wonderful teacher to boot! *
Your Architectural or Interior Design Business Needs A Website
No matter who you’re serving and what niche you work in, you need a great website. Your website is hands down, your number one online marketing tool.
You may be a social media queen, but in the end, all roads should lead back to your website where you can capture those leads and convert them into clients.
Remember - your website and your email list are the only online assets you actually own.
I repeat: your website and your email list are the only online assets you actually own.
If this is a new concept to you, what I mean is that while developing a large social following certainly has value, you’re at the mercy of that platform. So if Zuckerberg Inc. comes up with an algorithm change that doesn’t work in your favor, you have no control.
Plus, social platforms are naturally looking out for themselves. They don’t want users to click off the platform and onto your website, which is where most conversions happen. For example, If you’re a Pinterest user - look at how the algorithm has changed over the last couple years, greatly reducing the amount of traffic content creators get to their websites from click-throughs.
Benefits of DIYing Your Design Business Website
On top of that, a website is not just a glossy brochure, it’s your primary workhorse. So you need to be in control of your site, and not the other way around.
What do I mean by this? I mean it’s key you’re able to be responsive and agile where your site’s concerned. A website that sits collecting digital dust isn’t going to cut it, no matter how beautiful it is.
Just think about the years 2020-21. Who amongst us didn’t have to pivot?!
So thinking of your website as a “one and done” project once the initial site design is launched is NOT the path to thriving creative entrepreneurial success.
Being able to easily add to your portfolio, create new products and services, and change up your online marketing strategy is key to growth.
On-going experimentation and trying new things is what’s required to figure out what’s working for your business and what isn’t. You need to have a willingness to try and fail, to get back up and dust yourself off, and try again.
What you DON’T want is to be afraid of touching your site for fear of “breaking it.” In a nutshell, you need creative control. You need creative control over your website so you can better control the direction of your design business.
I strongly believe the best way to accomplish that is to DIY your own website. By DIYing your site, you’ll learn the back end of your web platform from the get-go so you NEVER have to rely upon an outside designer/developer to create and maintain your site.
Not to mention, you’ll never have to pay said designer/developer to create and maintain your site in perpetuity either.
“You need creative control over your website so you can better control the direction of your design business.”
I know this can sound daunting to those who haven’t everrrr touched a web site builder before. I totally get it, and I was there myself at one point. (I’ve had exactly ZERO formal web design training.)
That’s why I recommend choosing an all-in-one website platform that was built with YOU, the creative entrepreneur, in mind, which is Squarespace. Squarespace’s user-friendly, drag and drop design functionality coupled with exquisitely designed templates, was designed for creative entrepreneurs. There are no outside plugins to hassle with that can potentially break your site (unlike WordPress), and you’ll never need to worry about software or security updates (again, WordPress).
If you put in the effort up front to build your own site, that effort will pay dividends to you over and over again with being able to add to or change up whatever you need on your website. Plus, you’ll be surprised at how those same skills will then kick in to assist with various other marketing efforts as well. I’m telling you, the sky’s the limit!
New to Squarespace? You can sign up for a free trial, and I can even get you a discount! Use code GREENHOUSE10 to save 10% off your first year.
Set Up Your Design Business Contracts
In a nutshell, you need contracts in place to be legally legit and for your own protection and that of your clients, from your website to client work. Here’s a list of possible needs :
The Independent Contractor Agreement
Website - Privacy policy and Terms & Conditions. If you’re selling products - Terms & Conditions For Online Sales
Affiliate Agreement (if you create a digital product and have an affiliate program for it)
Single Member LLC Operating Agreement (if you form an LLC as I have)
Before you do any work for a client, you will need a contract. ALWAYS have a contract in place, even if you’re doing pro-bono work for that first job or two.
Your next question might be “OK Tina I hear you, but where do I find a contract without hiring a suited-up lawyer?” I have the answer: The Creative Law Shop.
Attorney Paige Hulse specializes in law for creative small businesses. Paige is the contract template queen, and the Creative Law Shop is my go to for my business legal needs. Be sure to check out the Creative Law Shop Blog too - it’s a wealth of creative small business info!
Purchase her contract templates and they come with directions on where to change out the template information to your business specifics, and then you’re all set. All for a fraction of the cost of having an attorney draw up a contract for you personally. Plus you get lifetime updates. If changes are made to a contract you purchased, you’ll be notified.
Use code GREENHOUSE10 to save 10% at The Creative Law Shop!
Open A Business Bank Account
As soon as you get going, you’ll need to open a business bank account and business credit card. Setting up a separate bank account lets you easily track your business transactions so you can:
Keep your bookkeeping accurate and up to date.
Avoid tax time headaches where you spend hours sifting through months of statements and receipts to separate your business and personal expenses.
Just like having a strong contract as discussed above, keeping your personal and business accounts separate another way to demonstrate professionalism.
Using a separate business account helps build your business credit rating. A strong credit score can help you secure better terms for a business loan should you need one and reduce the cost of business insurance.
In fact, the IRS recommends keeping separate business and personal accounts for easier recordkeeping.
Attorney Paige Hulse who specializes in law for creative businesses, (jic you skipped the contract section) additionally recommends going one step further by opening your business account at a different bank than your personal accounts.
Business Credit Card
Like separate bank accounts, opening a credit card dedicated to your business will help keep business expenses separated from your personal expenditures, again making accounting easier.
Develop An Email List
Why develop an email list? Basically, nothing converts better than your email list and nothing belongs to you but your email list and website. Going back to the Build Your Website section above, your email list and website are the only two online assets you own.
It’s not the first thing you need to do when starting your creative business, but sooner rather than later, you should start a list.
For all the Instagram likes, most barely see any traffic move off of Insta onto their website where they have a chance for a conversion or sale. Instagram (and every other platform) wants to keep you on their platform.
Plus, any algorithm change, account upset, or hack, and you can see serious traffic loss or be shut down altogether. (How many have seen that happen on Pinterest the last two years?!) I recently heard about another interior design blogger whose Instagram account was hacked, and the hackers deleted all 65k of her followers. Heartbreaking and infuriating.
By sending out regular communication to your subscriber list, whether it’s a local group or all over the globe, you keep your business top of mind for that audience.
In case you need an email marketing service provider, here are my two favorites:
For Scaled Up Studio, I use ConvertKit.
ConvertKit is one of the most powerful email marketing service providers out there used by many top digital marketers and bloggers.
ConvertKit has everything you need for growing a large, conversion-driven subscriber list. Plus you can get started with
ConvertKit for FREE.- ConvertKit even has landing pages you can set up if you don't have a website yet.
For my home and garden blog, Greenhouse Studio, I use Flodesk.
- Flodesk is very affordable with a flat fee of $38 FOREVER, no matter how huge your list grows. (Trust me, this is a big deal.)
- Flodesk has the most beautiful email designs out there - no other provider comes close.
An image from one of my Flodesk emails. Flodesk has the most visually rich emails of any email marketing provider.
Build Your Interior & Architectural Design Brand
When you have these steps in place, the last big step is to continue to build your design brand, an on-going process.
Networking can take many forms, and where you prioritize your efforts depends on your business model. You know the saying “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” and your job is to keep your business top of mind with your Ideal Client Community.
So going back to figuring out your Ideal Client Community and where they hang out will determine where you spend the most brand-building time.
Are they scrolling through Instagram pouring over the latest trends in your niche? Showcase your work on your feed and let your audience connect with you through IG Stories.
Do you need to connect with other local business owners for collaboration or to meet potential clients? While that certainly may also involve Instagram, heading downtown for an in-person event might be key to building those contacts and relationships.
Are you an e-designer and blogger? You need organic traffic first and foremost, which happens primarily through strategic blogging and email list-building, and is supported by your other social channels. So get to posting my friend!
Do you need to create your visual branding - logos, colors, fonts etc? Start out with a no-holds-barred mood board to kick-start your creativity
So that’s my take on the 10 main steps for starting a interior or architectural design business. Which do you think are the most crucial steps and is it on this list? Leave a comment below and let me know!
Check out these other helpful business-building posts:
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If you have any questions or comments, please drop me a note below. Be sure to check back for my response (I always respond) since no notification is sent.
