How Much Does an Interior Designer Cost?

An interior designer specializes in making your home beautiful, comfortable, safe, and well-suited to your lifestyle. This is achieved with an extensive knowledge of furniture, decorating, decor, and design principles.

Estimating Interior Design Costs

The total cost for retaining an interior designer's services is entierly up to you. By establishing a budget and adjusting your level of involvment, you can get great advice without breaking the bank. Figuring anywhere between 8% and 15% of your project's total cost should give you a realistic range for interior design services.

Interior designers call for payment in a few different ways. Here are a few of the methods you can expect to see and how they benefit you.

Cost Plus Interior Design

Cost plus, also known as surcharge, is a billing method that applies a certain percentage surcharge on all purchases and services associated with the project. While this seems like a comprehensive billing method, there are a few points to consider:

Retail Markup

The interior designer may or may not receive a discount off of retail, so it is impossible for you to know how much the designer is actually making on retail purchases.

Services

The interior designer will supply you with a cost for custom services supplied by them, such as custom fabrication and finishing. This translates to you paying a surcharge to the designer for money you already paid them to perform a service. Also consider that addition charges, like delivery and installation, may be included on the final bill and surcharged accordingly.

Some interior designers charge a flat hourly fee for services they perform, and only apply surcharges to subcontracted work and physical purchases. This may or may not be more advantageous than a well devised cost-plus billing method.

Hourly Interior Design

Interior designers that charge an hourly rate charge you on an as-needed basis for their design and consulting services. This is usually the most economical solution if you intend to do a majority of the work yourself. Expect to pay anywhere between $60 and $300 per hour.

Flat Rate Interior Design

Flat rate interior design services are typically carried out on a per job basis. This means that the interior designer will arrive at a round dollar figure based on the size of your project or estimated hours. This sum will be paid to the interior designer in increments over the life of the project. It is possible to grossly underpay an interior designer in this method, which usually results in unenthusiastic, substandard work.

A variant of flat rate service is pre-paid retainer. The designer will provide you with an itemized list of the most common tasks they perform for you, and how much you will be billed for each occurrence. You then deposit an up-front retainer, which is debited by the designer for services rendered. Once the retainer has been depleted, the designer will estimate what tasks they believe are needed to complete the next phase of the project and ask to you fill the retainer again.

While this is a fair solution, the itemized nature of the charges could make it seem like the designer nickle and dimes you for every task, such as phone calls, travel time, and design time. In reality, it is possible that overall you will pay a smaller fee than many other billing methods, but still end up at a final price that feels fair to the interior designer.

Commission-based Interior Design

Interior designers working on commissions make a flat percentage that is built into the purchases you make for the remodeling project. While this seems like a more economical solution than cost-plus, remember that the same conflict-of-interests exists: the designer may knowingly lead you into more expensive decisions and ultimately blow your budget in the name of a higher commission. Discounted purchases and money-saving shortcuts will be totally off the table, which are two of the staple benefits of hiring an interior designer. In addition, interior designers will only work with the furniture and decor from their parent company or authorized vendors, which greatly limits your selection.

For more information on interior designers, be sure to read the other articles in this series, Hiring an Interior Designer, and What to Expect from an Interior Designer.