What to Include in an Interior Design Welcome Guide in Your Interior Design Business
An Interior Design Services Welcome Guide is a collection of information you give to a new client at the start of a design project.
It typically includes information about your services, design process, fees, and any policies or procedures that the client should know.
It provides the client with a clear understanding of what to expect from the designer and the design process.
It establishes a professional relationship between the designer and the client. It can also serve as a reference guide for the client throughout the project.
In this blog post, I’ll share with you what you should include in your Welcome guide and how you can make this an excellent resource for your client.
When do you hand out the Welcome Guide?
You give out the Welcome Guide after the contract has been signed. You may also be sending them a link to your Client Portal, so you might want to send them a link to this as well.
Have different Welcome Guides for different services
You should tailor your Guide specifically for these services if you offer different services.
What should I include in the Welcome guide?
Personalisation: make sure that you personalise your guide to the client
Your special approach
The Interior Design Client Journey
Timeline with an estimate of the timing of each stage
Fees, Billing and Invoices - this will be laid out in your contract or design agreement, but you should outline the different types of fees that they can expect, such as designing/drawing, 3 d visualisation, sourcing, procurement, admin/correspondence, site visits, meeting
What to expect during the process- describe each stage and ensure you are as detailed as possible.
Your team and about me page
Contact- You should outline how clients should contact you; essentially, everything should be in writing. Give your clients regularly scheduled updates ( the time to prepare these should be included in your design fees), usually once a week, Make sure that they know when to contact you and when they can expect a response. If you have a Client Portal, include some information about it there.
Policies including out-of-scope, cancelations, revisions
Include FAQs or links to the FAQs on your website.
Include helpful tips or useful links. These may be links to design stores, a renovation budget, planning tips etc. These can be tailored to their project.
A client checklist - need the client to get ready? Provide them with a helpful checklist so that they can get started
You can include testimonials from past happy clients throughout the Welcome Guide
How to get your client to actually read your Welcome Guide?
One of the challenges is getting your client to read your welcome guide.
Keep it as concise as possible: you have a lot to include here but make sure it is as short as possible. You might want to include it as a link to a page on your website and record a video highlighting the essential points.
Make sure that the guide is on brand and is written in your brand voice
Once you have customised your welcome guide, you can either save it as a PDF to be personalised to be sent out to clients. I like to accompany it with a Welcome video which can be hosted on your website which outlines the main purpose of the Guide. Need a Welcome Guide template? You can download one here.
Hi 👋🏽 I’m Joanne!
I’m an interior designer, educator and business coach. After studying Economics and Education at uni, the design world beckoned, drawing me to Christie’s in London, where I completed post-grad studies in art & design and then to Hong Kong, where I founded Eclectic Cool, a design firm and design store. . Eclectic Cool represented international brands such as Gubi, &tradition, HAY, Armadillo Rugs & Dinosaur Designs to name a few. My work and store have been featured in Monocle, Conde Nast Traveller, Elle Decor, Expat Living, Cathay Pacific inflight magazines, South China Morning Post and the ABC (Australia) network and more. I live on the south coast of Australia on a country property between the beautiful Australian bush and the Pacific Ocean with my husband and cavoodle. I’m the mum of three adult children.
