How Much Do Interior Designers Make? - Interior Designer Salary

Interior designers design furnishings for the interiors of almost every type of building, including residential homes, apartments, restaurants, stores, and other business offices.

Interior designers are typically responsible for determining clients’ goals for renovation projects, sketching preliminary design plans, specifying materials needed to furnish a room, preparing final plans with computer applications, estimating project costs, supervising the installation of design elements, and visiting after the project is completed to ensure clients are satisfied.

Salary
How much does an interior designer make? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 40,750 interior designers employed in the United States earn an annual interior designer salary of $52,970, or a mean hourly wage of $25.47.

The bottom 10% of interior designers earn $25,670 or less annually, while the top 10% of interior designers bring home a mean salary of $86,900 or more. Interior designers employed in specialized design services earn an average $54,090, but those that find employment for the federal executive branch make considerably higher with an yearly wage of $73,590. The top-paying states for interior designers are the District of Columbia at $66,830 and Rhode Island with an average annual salary of $65,930.

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Work Environment
An estimated 30 percent of interior designers are self-employed, with some of these designers working from an office base in their own home. Another 27 percent of interior designers work in the specialized design services industry, 14 percent in the architectural or related services industry, 8 percent in furniture or home furnishings stores, and 4 percent work in the construction industry for renovation projects.

While most interior designers work full-time, they often need to adjust their working hours to suit their clients’ individual schedules and deadlines during evenings or weekends.

Job Outlook
Employment for interior designers is predicted to grow faster than the national average for all occupations at a rapid rate of 19 percent between 2010 and 2020. Designers will be in demand to respond to recent consumer trends of renovating the interiors of homes to be more environmentally conscious and more easily accessible for the large baby boomer population. As a result, employment for those who specialize as sustainable designers and universal designers is expected to grow even more rapidly by 27 percent.