Opting for an interior design career is an excellent opportunity to develop a sense of style, work with various clients, and creatively express yourself.
Becoming an interior designer is a highly rewarding career for those with artistic and creative talents.
In this profession, you get to change dull spaces into visually stunning areas that help improve clients’ lives.
Each new project offers an opportunity to express your style and vision.
If you’re considering this career path, then it’s useful to learn more about the pros and cons to decide if this is the right choice to meet your lifestyle, skills, and goals.
Keep reading to learn more!
Table of Contents
Pros of Being an Interior Designer
The ability to bring a concept to life through interior design is a major skill of these experts.
The following is a list of some of the career aspects you can look forward to when working as an interior designer.
One: Boost Creativity
Interior design allows you to explore your creative and artistic side.
It’s one situation to have a blank canvas but another when the canvas is a living environment, so you can really stretch your imagination.
As you progress through your career, you can build a sense of planning and design through varying combinations and permutations.
Finding the ideal design elements for a space is an exciting challenge, and you may have numerous color pattern options and items to utilize.
Although there may be more particular clients, you learn to gain control.
Two: Choose Your Hours
Depending on your employer’s requirements and where you work, you may have exceptional schedule flexibility.
Those who opt to be freelancers and pursue individual clients will have the most freedom as interior design company owners can select the type and number of clients during a period and set a meeting time with them regarding different projects.
An interior design career benefits those who wish to pursue external activities or have other career choices.
Three: Expanding Industry
Experts predict global interior design to become a $210 billion industry by 2027 from $145 billion in 2020, which shows a growth of 5.5 percent in seven years.
The most important factors for this growth include a generational change toward better living standards due to higher earning professions and social environment changes.
Interior design is currently massive, with numerous domains, including events, corporations, businesses, and residential clients.
The result is limitless possibilities for those with the skills and creativity to be at the top of the sector.
Four: Intriguing Profession
An interior designer profession can take you on many new adventures and meet interesting indvidiausl.
You could work abroad with internationally acclaimed artists, firms, designers, and professionals or in some of the most popular places domestically.
Bringing a unique look in someone’s home and creating the space from scratch is an artform.
Best of all, you can start your career without a bachelor’s degree if you have an eye for design.
Five: Lucrative Business
The interior design field can be highly lucrative since making money is straightforward; you charge for the rendered services or earn a salary from a firm.
It’s also helpful to build strong ties with suppliers and vendors to source items and materials at an affordable then selling to the client and setting your price.
At the beginning of your career, the pay is low, but the earning potential is endless depending on the sector, location, and clientele.
Six: Satisfying Career
It’s hard to match seeing your creative vision come to life in other professions.
As an interior designer, this is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job.
Your hard work and efforts are transforming a dull space into something amazing.
The other most satisfying aspect of this career is gaining your client’s acceptance of the vision you have implemented into their space.
This leaves you feeling great at the end of the day.
Seven: Select a Career Path
Depending on your employer’s preferences for the clients you choose, numerous interior design positions exist with varying professional and educational requirements.
A formal education in the field is valuable for qualifying you for certain positions and developing your skills, but a training program is not necessary.
For instance, you may have a strong design portfolio highlighting your preferred aesthetic and skills, which could appeal to some clients who value your specific approach to their space compared to a trained professional.
Cons of Being an Interior Designer
Like with all jobs, there are some downsides to being an interior designer, such as:
One: Can Be Stressful
Satisfying the specific requirements of a client is not a simple task.
Regardless of the field, no professional wants to hear that a client didn’t like their work.
As an interior designer, the stress can increase because you may not have the opportunity to delete or edit mistakes.
If you purchase the wrong chair or arrange for specific shades too quickly, the client may not be happy with the result.
Pressure and stress can build over time making it more difficult to generate ideas.
This is especially true for demanding clients with severe deadlines.
Two: Deal With Demanding Clients
Adding to the stress of the job is dealing with demanding clients with a specific sense of style and personality.
Some clients are laid-back and give you the entire independence and project control, but there are always difficult customers.
Working through challenging clients means they will constantly be providing unsolicited advice through the design process, which is acceptable pending it doesn’t ruin the entire vision.
Also, many clients are wary of design project budget use, so you want to offer the best work possible at the lowest price.
Other clients have completely unrealistic expectations, so having excellent patience, tact, and practicing subtle persuasion is the best remedy.
Three: Long Hours
Working long hours to ensure all milestones are completed quickly and accurately is one aspect most interior designers don’t enjoy.
Those working in this environment need to put in extra hours to create the right design and vision.
This is especially true at the beginning when you’re attempting to build your career.
Working lengthy hours has a significant impact on your work-life balance thus reducing focus and leading to a stressful and hectic lifestyle, which often leads to burnout.
Four: Low Income When Starting
While being an interior designer is a lucrative industry, it takes time to build a client base to make a high income.
Whether you’re freelancing or working for a firm, the pay is usually less at the beginning, which is one of the greatest downsides of the profession.
To earn more, you must build the proper skills and experience to increase prices or advance at an interior design company.
There is plenty of room to learn and grow in the profession, which equates to earning more money.
Five: Takes Time to Build a Career
Building a robust and lucrative career in interior design takes effort and time.
It’s easy to become discouraged at the beginning of your career when you aren’t landing lucrative clients or making large sums of money.
However, the true reward when first entering the industry is learning the skills needed to build a robust and rewarding career.
Six: Unique Entry-Level Challenges
Beginning a career in the interior design field often comes with unique requirements.
For instance, if working for a firm, you may only control specific project characteristics until you increase experience.
If you work as a freelancer, it can take time to promote your skills and build a client base.
By developing a professional network, studying key design concepts, and researching your options, you can increase your chances of successfully joining this career.
Seven: Work on Unintriguing Projects
Interior design offers a unique opportunity to express yourself artistically, but not on every project, especially at the beginning of your career.
To provide financial support, you will often need to accept projects that only meet several of your requirements while adhering to the client’s strict guidelines or limited budget.
When accepting a new project, it’s crucial to find two to three specific aspects that inspire and excite you.
14 Pros and Cons of Being an Interior Designer – Summary Table
| Pros of Being an Interior Designer | Cons of Being an Interior Designer |
|---|---|
| Boost Creativity | Can Be Stressful |
| Choose Your Hours | Deal With Demanding Clients |
| Expanding Industry | Long Hours |
| Intriguing Profession | Low Income When Starting |
| Lucrative Business | Takes Time to Build a Career |
| Satisfying Career | Unique Entry-Level Challenges |
| Select a Career Path | Work on Unintriguing Projects |
Should You Become an Interior Designer?
Being an interior designer is a highly rewarding career for those with an eye for design and who want to see their ideas come to life.
Every new project is a chance to express your vision using the latest items, trends, patterns, colors, and designs.
The industry offers excellent flexibility and can be highly lucrative depending on your career choices.
Additionally, the field is expected to continue expanding, so there’s plenty of job security.
Beginning your career as an interior designer is more difficult than many other professions since it’s low pay for long hours, and the new person at the firm may work on boring projects.
However, this is the time to build a strong foundation for more lucrative clients with interesting projects in the future.
Becoming an interior designer is a personal choice that depends on where you want to take your career and how you plan to get there.
