Best Time Management Tips for Interior Designers

Understanding how long it takes to complete your work and then charging your client for it is the key to profitability. If you look at one of the most profitable expertise-based businesses that are similar to interior design, look no further than the law.

The legal profession is a business that makes money by charging for time. Clients approach a lawyer to help them solve a problem, and the lawyer gets paid for their advice from the very beginning.

Once you know exactly how long an interior design task takes, you will be accurately able to estimate your projects, then charge your time and then be able to price your projects so that you are profitable.

The main point here is that the way that you price is not the problem. It is how much you are charging, that is.

There are many types of pricing structures that are common in the interior design business. You can charge an hourly rate, can charge a flat fee, plus you can charge a markup or a combination of all three.

In Australia, charging for interior design services for smaller firms tends to be linked to design fees. In the US, design fees are only a part of the fee structure, most firms get their revenue from charging a markup.

I will discuss in another blog post how marking up furniture works in the USA. But essentially, the interior design firm charges out for their time and then, on top of that, purchases furniture and accessories on behalf of their client wholesale and then deliver it to their client and charges them a little less than retail.

The advantage is that the client does get a discount as well as having the whole interior design project managed and ending up with a fully realized design good enough for the designer to photograph for their portfolio.

This is the icing on the cake, but it is important not to lose sight of one of the keys to profitability for the interior designer, time management.

So what does effective time management for an interior designer look like?

1. Track your time

This is the key to profitability. You can do this in a few ways

• with an app like Harvest

• with a spreadsheet

• with good old pen and paper

  Spend at least a week (two is even better) tracking the time you are spending on tasks.

You should be capturing the following:

• the type of task it is- personal, business

• after you have divided it into 2, then divide it even further into categories- e.g. site visits, sourcing, client meetings, vendor meetings, including travel time; you probably should be allowed for this. The more granular you can be, the better your results will be blocked out your time in chunks of 15 minutes so you can easily add your hours up

2. Effective Process Management for Interior Designers

1. Use your process management tool to list out the tasks that you need to complete for a typical project that you would work on. Think of all the tasks that you do. Check your diary and note down how much time you spent on meetings and sourcing, which sometimes can take more time than you expect

2. Assess the time you spent and charge each chunk out at your hourly rate. Compare this number to what you actually charged. Is there a discrepancy? How much money did you leave on the table?

3. Have you realised yet that the key to profitability for an interior designer is that you do not give away your time and advice for free? Let’s say you have undercharged 10 hours per project and your hourly rate is $150 per hour. You have undercharged $1500. Let’s say you do one project a month, so over a year, you have missed out on $18 000.

3. Efficiency for Interior Designers

Another way that we can look at time management is to look at the efficiency of our time. It is common when we are designing to lose track of time and go completely overboard.

We think we have to go over a project again and again so that it is ‘perfect’. Instead of having open-ended planning sessions, look at your results and determine how much time you need to spend to be profitable. Use whatever time management technique that you have to make sure that you are designing for this time period. As we all know, designs go through many iterations. Allow that natural process to happen.

Here are some techniques to help your efficiency

1. Have processes & systems in place that will maximize your efficiency. Use email templates, slim down your reporting, i.e. send out a progress report weekly that is to the point and automated as much as possible. Devise SOPs and checklists to ensure that you are sticking to tasks and not spending more time. Not sure how to do this? I can help you with this.

2. Niche down. If you are specific in the types of projects that you do for your ideal client, sourcing will be a breeze. You will have processes and vendors to streamline your offerings, helping you manage your efficiency.

3. Build relationships. Relationships between your vendors, suppliers, tradespeople and contractors are important. They will know your style and taste and how you like designing and doing things. This will save you valuable time and increase your efficiency.

4. Set client expectations. Setting out how you work and communicating this to your clients at the outset of a project is incredibly important. Multiple emails and texts are an extremely inefficient way to run a business and lead to mistakes and time lags over the project. Ensuring that you regularly report and pre-empting their requests will make the process run more smoothly. Have systems in place that can deal with customer issues that arise. Lean into technology and automation that can make your life a lot easier.

5. Divide your time into revenue and non-revenue-generating activities that you need to complete for your business. Activities such as social media, your website and blogging may not make you any direct cash, but they go a long way to building your client base. However, make sure that you are spending your most valuable hours on revenue-generating activities and limit these hours to an appropriate amount of time to get the results that you need.

Need some help devising systems and processes? I work with interior designers to do just that through my coaching programs, courses and resources. Check them out 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.