One of the hardest things that you have to do these days is learn to price your services as an interior designer and decorator.
You must set a fee to complete your design work in a way that covers the time you’ll spend on the job, with a price and package that’s attractive to your potential client.
This daunting task unleashes a myriad of internal concerns and fears, like …
- Am I worth that much?
- Is that the right amount of money?
- Can I get the task done in that amount of time?
Keep calm, take a deep breath and use these guidelines to get on the right track.
The trick is to consider the relationship of the fee to the budget –
You know you can’t bill 2.5 hours of time at $100 an hour or $250 in order to find a $286 wall sconce. It clearly doesn’t make sense since the appropriate research time for the sconce would be about 20 minutes, thus creating a fee of $33. This fee can be OK if it’s in a package, with other items you’re specifying for the client.
Using the same comparison technique, a living room furniture job with a budget of $40,000 is not a $1,200 or 12 hour design fee. This would not be enough time to do all the programing, schematic and design development phases of the job! The appropriate design fee for the $40K job can be calculated internally as 15% of the budget. This would be would be about $6,000, (at $100 per hour) giving you a generous 60 hours to complete the project.
You’ll find that your clients are comfortable with this fee and easily say “yes” to you when you present your fee in relationship with the overall budget.
Learn more on the next FREE TRAINING CALL –
Making Design Offers at 3 Levels:
The Art & Science of Good, Better and Best
Wednesday, April 29th 2015
1:00 pm PT, 2:00 pm MT, 3:00pm CT, 4:00pm ET