An interior design enquiry starts long before the email. Someone has saved forty kitchens on Pinterest, followed three designers on Instagram and is now, finally, searching for websites for interior designers in Dublin because the extension has planning and the builder wants decisions. They are checking whether your rooms look like the ones they saved, whether you work on houses like theirs, what a first consultation costs and whether you are the kind of person they could have in their kitchen for six months.
Our part is the site, the Google listing, the booking and payment for consultations, and a report each month. Yours is the rooms.
Rooms, not renders
The portfolio is the whole argument, and it has to work on a phone on the bus. That means photographs of finished rooms in daylight, wide enough to show the scheme and close enough to show the hardware, with before and after pairs where you have them. A 3D render is useful for the client who commissioned it and useless for the person deciding whether to ring you. Credit the photographer on each project. Designers who do, get sent work by photographers.
Keep every image sized for the web. A beautiful site that takes eight seconds to load on 4G loses the person before the first room appears, and a lot of designer sites are slow for exactly that reason. We handle the sizing so you can send us the originals.
Group projects by the kind of job rather than by room: a full renovation of a 1970s semi, a period house in Dublin 6, a two-bed apartment for a landlord, a cafe fit-out. People look for the project that resembles their own.
How you work and how you charge
The second thing a prospective client wants is to understand the process, because most have never hired a designer. Walk them through it in your own words: the first consultation at the house, the concept, the design development with drawings and samples, sourcing and trade suppliers, the install. Say how long each stage usually takes and what you need from them at each point.
Then say how you charge. A fixed fee per room, a percentage of the budget, an hourly rate for sourcing, a flat price for an e-design package done remotely. Publish the consultation fee and from-prices for the rest. Designers worry this will frighten people off, and it does frighten off exactly the people who wanted an afternoon of free ideas. Everyone else reads it as professionalism.
The paid consultation, booked from the page
Most designers we talk to lose hours a week to enquiries that go nowhere: a long email exchange, a visit, a mood board, and then silence. A paid first consultation fixes most of that, and the site makes it easy to buy. The client picks a slot, pays by card, gets a reminder, and arrives having already committed something. We wrote up the consumer rules around taking deposits and fees online in Ireland so the wording on your page is right.
Proposals and invoices should go out from an address on your own domain, not a free one. It is a small thing that clients spending a lot on their home notice.
January, September and the Christmas deadline
The enquiry calendar for interior design has two peaks. January brings people who spent Christmas in a house they have decided to change, and September brings the ones who waited for the kids to go back to school. From October the pressure flips to delivery: every client wants the room finished before the family arrives for Christmas, and the enquiries are from people hoping you can still fit them in. A line on the site saying when you are booking consultations for, updated by you, saves a dozen emails.
Trades you work alongside are worth a mention on the page, because clients ask. If you regularly bring in painters and decorators or a particular kitchen fitter, say how that works and whether you manage them or the client does.
What we need from you
Photos of six to ten finished projects with permission from the clients and the photographer’s name, your services with fees or from-prices, your process in a few lines, the areas you cover, a photograph of you and a paragraph on how you came to this. Ten minutes on the phone or at your studio and we have what we need. If you work from home and would rather not show an address, the site says you visit clients and the Google listing is set up as a service area business.
Plan and price
Complete is the right fit for most designers, at €1,499 to set up and €100 a month, because the booked and paid consultation, the business email and the review request after each project pay for themselves. Essentials, at €499 and €50 a month, suits a designer who is full from referrals and wants the portfolio and an enquiry form. Both are laid out on the pricing page. Designers outside Dublin start with a video call and the rest works the same.