How do you brand an interior design business? To help your clients identify you as the ideal interior designer for their home, the answer is to brand from the inside out. In most industries, you build a brand by asking what the audience wants. However, interior design is a highly personal thing.  Interior designers and their clients need to resonate, to understand each other's visions, and agree on what is beautiful. Because you are the constant, build your brand based on your own personal aesthetic that will color every decision and recommendation you'll make when working with your clients.

For interior designers, branding challenges you to identify and hone your own style. Are you modern or rustic? Minimal or elaborate? Do you naturally work technology into your designs or favor stationary pieces of art as centerpieces for a room? The right brand design can tell clients if your designs will resonate with them right off the bat. Your logo, colors, imagery, and select portfolio gallery should showcase the soul of your design style -- and it can. You are your brand. The trick is to refine that into a simplistic, expressive brand design.

Identifying Your Style as a Designer

Knowing your style is knowing your ideal customers. There are two ways to find your own style - looking into yourself and looking outward at your past projects.

Reflecting on Your Talents and Preferences

You already know if you have strong feelings and unique inspirations when it comes to certain design styles. Whether you specialize in neo-victorianism or you can make minimalism look luxurious, we all have our talents and preferences. Write these down, along with a realistic look at your least favorite styles or design techniques.

Examining Past Projects

Now look back at the projects you've designed in the past. Identify the ones that you had the most fun with, that turned out the best in your eyes, and the ones that pleased your clients the most. What was it about those designs that shone brighter than others? What do they have in common? What, of each of them, did you do the best or were you the most proud of?

Consider the projects you have most enjoyed and why you enjoyed them. Why did you love the designs?

Finally, consider your least favorite projects or your worst moments. What made them not fun, or what caused the design not to come together? Everyone has least-favorite styles or styles they have a less defined aesthetic for. It's a good idea to identify and know these about yourself and play to your strengths.

Know Your Ideal Customers

Now think about who your clients are, both in your region and in your experience. Demographics like income, age, and neighborhood will matter, but not as much as the personal aesthetic of each client. No doubt, you have a mental list of your best and worst clients - all professionals do.

Your Best Clients

What made your best clients so great? What about them made them great as clients, aside from being nice people? You may find that you love working with families who have children the most, or find a special joy in design for elderly homeowners. You might find that all your best clients have made special requests, or loved your first draft, or argued with you about details and that made it more fun.

Your Least-Favorite Clients

Then examine your least favorite clients. Other than difficult attitudes, what made those projects unpleasant? Was it a difference in style, challenging architecture, constant corrections, or conditions you didn't appreciate? You might be unable to work around under-foot pets, or need a quiet space to work your magic.

What is Learned?

By examining your favorite clients, you identify your ideal client - the elusive category of people who both resonate with your sense of beauty and are enjoyable to work with. At the same time, you can identify what you want to move away from with your brand. 

Building Your Interior Design Brand from the Inside Out

Now take everything you have learned. With the previous exercises, you have identified:

• Your favorite and least-favorite styles,

• What defined your best and worst projects, and

• The characteristics of your favorite clients.

Build your brand from there. It might help if we offered a few personalized examples, so you can see where your brand fits uniquely into the aesthetic.

Modern and Minimal

If you are a modern and minimal designer who likes open-plan homes and a preference for young couples and families.

• Logo: The silhouette of a couple standing between brush-strokes that stylishly suggest an empty room.

• Colors:  Pastel grays favoring either grey-blue and gray-rose

Art Collection Specialist

If you are an art-focused designer who specializes in homeowners who want to display their collections stylishly in public and private rooms.

• Logo: A bust with the subtle shade of a wall alcove behind it, suggesting a casual relationship with art placement and presentation.

• Colors: Pastels that are reminiscent of plaster with splashes of bold paint-rich color.

Homestead Rustic

If you are a rustic designer with a talent for making any house feel like the family's hundred-year-old homestead for any client who would feel at home in that environment.

• Logo: A warm cottage or a detailed line-drawing of a carved wooden rocking chair.

• Colors: Warm colors that remind people of old, well-oiled wood and dusty sunbeams with splashes of antique print fabric colors.

How to Brand Your Interior Design Business

Right now, there should be a few images and ideas swirling in your head. Maybe you've sketched a few. Maybe you're ready to dive into design, or you're still wondering how to refine your new sense of brand identity. Working with professional brand designers can help. Just as you can refine a homeowner's vision of a beautiful room, we can help you refine your design style into the logo, palette, and asset-set needed to run a business today. 

Want to talk about defining your interior design brand to attract your ideal clients and projects?