How much does an interior designer cost? It’s one of the most searched questions online, and one of the worst answered. You’ll find hourly rates, day rates, percentages of the building costs and package prices that are almost impossible to compare. That’s because an interior project involves three different kinds of work, and they don’t fit into a single figure. At Choc Studio you pay for each phase differently. Below you’ll find what those three phases are and what you pay in each one.
How much does an interior designer cost, and what sets the price?
The price follows the size and the complexity of your project. A standard rate off the shelf wouldn’t do that justice. A full interior plan for a new-build house, with a lighting plan, a materials schedule and 3D visualisations, takes a different kind of effort than a design for a single living room. And renovating a listed villa asks for a different approach than redecorating a city flat.
An interior project at Choc Studio runs through three phases: design, preparation and realisation, always in that order. The design determines what gets prepared, and the preparation determines what gets realised. Reverse that order and you’re making decisions without a foundation.
What do you pay in each phase?
Each phase is priced in its own way, so there’s no single figure that covers the whole project.
The design has a fixed price, based on the size of your project. You’ll find it in the quotation you receive after our first meeting. The design includes everything you need in order to decide: the floor plans, the 3D visualisations, the lighting plan and the colour and material proposal.
The preparation is charged by the hour. How much guidance your project needs depends on how much preparatory work there is and how many trades are involved. When we quote for the design, we’ll give you an initial estimate of the hours.
The furnishing: in the realisation phase we furnish your home. We buy the products from the brands and manufacturers, and we arrange everything that happens between the factory and your house, from order administration, storage and transport to placement, assembly and styling. What the furnishing will cost isn’t something we can tell you at the start. That becomes clear once the design is finished and we know which products are needed. What we can discuss straight away is where we’ll be looking. Before we put a product proposal together, we’ll go through what you expect from the products: the level you have in mind, the brands you like and the price range we should be searching in.
Why does one house cost more than another?
It’s rarely down to the number of square metres. It comes down to how many decisions have to be made, and how tightly those decisions are tied to one another.
In a redecoration the layout usually stays as it is. It’s about a different seating area, curtains, lighting and colour. Few parties are involved and the choices follow each other in a straight line.
A heritage home in Bloemendaal was a different matter. It was handed over as a bare shell, what the Dutch call casco, so nothing was fixed yet: no layout, no pipework, no light points. The owners later described it in the Dutch interiors magazine Stijlvol Wonen: “It was quite a puzzle to work out the perfect routing and to draw in all the services. On top of that, we wanted it to be a bit exciting, certainly not an average interior.”
That puzzling is the work the price is based on. Every choice hangs on the one before it. The routing sets the layout, and the layout sets where the light goes and where the pipework has to run. Two houses of the same size can therefore need very different design work.
When does an interior designer pay for themselves?
Almost always, and that’s not a sales pitch. Deciding without a plan has a price too. It just arrives later: a wall that can no longer be moved, a light point in the wrong place or a newly bought corner sofa that turns out to be too big for the room. There’s always a solution, but solutions cost extra work, extra money and a good deal of frustration.
We’ve been guiding interior projects from design through to completion since 2007, first from Haarlem and now from our studio in Bennebroek. In those years we’ve seen what deciding with a plan delivers, and what deciding without one costs.
How much does an interior designer cost for your project?
We’ll only know after a first conversation. Based on your situation and the size of your project, we’ll set a fixed price for the design, along with an initial estimate of the guidance hours. What the furnishing will cost becomes clear once the design is there. We then translate your wishes and your taste into a product proposal, you see the price per product, and you decide item by item.
Want to see how a design comes together in practice? Read our blog on from inspiration to interior design. Or take a look at our services for an overview of how we work.
Planning a new build, renovation or restyling?
Get in touch for an informal first meeting at our studio in Bennebroek. We’ll talk through your situation and then prepare a quotation for the design.