Websites for interior designers that win the work.

Interior design clients usually arrive with a picture already in their head - a Pinterest board, a hotel they stayed in, a friend’s house - and they are looking for someone whose finished rooms feel similar. They discover designers through Instagram, Houzz, Pinterest, recommendations and search for "interior designer" plus a town. The big questions come next, and most clients are embarrassed to ask them: how do you charge, is there a minimum, will you work on just one room, do you manage the builders or just produce a scheme, and can I buy the furniture myself. Commercial clients - holiday lets, cafés, offices, show homes - want to see relevant work and a sense of timescale. Clients are choosing a person to work with in their home for months, so the designer’s personality and taste matter as much as the portfolio.

When demand peaks. January and early spring bring planning enquiries; clients wanting rooms finished before Christmas start in late summer.

Interior design websites often show beautiful images and very little else, which leaves the visitor unable to work out whether they can afford you or whether you take their kind of project. Hiding how you charge - hourly, fixed design fee, or a percentage of the project - creates exactly the anxiety that stops people enquiring. The second failure is the portfolio itself: a grid of unrelated close-ups with no project story does not show the transformation, and before-and-after is what clients want to see. The third is being unclear about services. "Full-service design" and "e-design" mean different things to different people; spelling out what the client gets at each level turns browsers into enquiries.