Starting Your Career as an Interior Designer

Starting Your Career as an Interior Designer contains all the necessary tools and strategies to successfully launch and grow a professional design business in the competitive world of interior design. Drawing on the authors' extensive experience, this book includes case studies, and personal anecdotes that help teach you how to:

• Choose a design field
• Obtain and keep clients
• Garner referrals
• Market and position your business
• Bid competitively on projects
• Manage sales
• Organize a budget
• Manage start-up costs and cash flow
• Promote your business
• Branch out into product and architectural design
• Design within a retail environment
• Set pricing guidelines
• Sell to your target demographic
• Set up your office

Readers will find a history of the business side of interior design as well as various career tracks available to today’s budding entrepreneur. This updated second edition also examines the current state of the interior design industry, and what's in store for the future of firms. Any early career interior designer or student looking for practical advice on the ins and outs of running a design firm will need this one-stop guide.

Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

Robert K. Hale has opened and successfully managed residential design offices in Philadelphia, London, and Baltimore, and most recently co-founded Hale-Williams Interior Design, with offices in Carmel and Palm Springs, California. He has appeared with his partner, Thomas L. Williams, on the popular television show Designers’ Challenge. Hale-Williams Interior Design was named the 2008 Design Firm of the Year by the Business Practices Network. He lives in Palm Springs, CA.

Thomas L. Williams is the author of 20/20: IFDA’s Vision for the Future, a series of articles on design and the business of interior design, and has taught business practices for interior designers at Monterey Peninsula College. As a cofounder of Hale-Williams Interior Design, he has drawn on his years of experience with interior design firms to create seminars and multi-day classes for private schools. Williams, an avid blogger, lives in Palm Springs, CA.