As an interior designer, being able to show your previous work is one of the best ways to get new clients.
Your portfolio will demonstrate your skills as an interior designer, show you style and can even set you apart from potential competitors.
You cannot underestimate the need for a professional interior design portfolio. By inviting potential clients to view the spaces you’ve created, allowing them to take in the lighting, textures, scale, ambience and style.
This lets potential clients immerse themselves in your work, delving deep into your designs from the comfort of their homes.
Why You Need An Interior Design Portfolio
As an interior designer, regardless of the specific niche, a portfolio is an absolute must. Simply put, the more creative and impressive your portfolio is, the higher your chances of finding new clients.
You can create an online or printed portfolio however, an online one is much easier to change and update. Ideally, you’ll have an always updated online portfolio and also a printed version which you occasionally update to keep it fresh. Most clients will just want your online portfolio, but there will always be a few clients that will love getting their hands on a hard copy.
Keeping great relationships between your interior design practice and clients is crucial to getting great testimonials to be used within your portfolio.
How To Create Your Own Interior Design Portfolio
There are two core ways to create an interior design portfolio:
- An online portfolio
- A printed design portfolio presentation
An online portfolio showcases your interior design projects on your website. Each project should be a separate page and there should be a hub page of all of the projects.
Each page should include as much key information about the interior design project such as the budget, size of the space, mood boards, 3D renderings, your process, what work was involved and most importantly as many photos of the project as possible – you should also include a testimonial from the client too.
Your online interior design portfolio is used to convince potential clients to get in touch and sell your services to them.
Your printed design portfolio is usually much more visual in nature, a collection of photos, boards, key facts about each project. They are used for in-person meetings or consultations to showcase your skills and convince your potential client to use your interior design services.
To start with you should focus on your absolute best previous projects and clients for your portfolio – around 5 is a really good place to start.
From there, you should always be adding to your interior design portfolio.
Every new client you work with, every new project you work on. Make sure you are documenting the process and taking as many photos as possible.
To speed up the process of adding to your portfolio, you can set up a template for a project so you can easily replicate it across new projects and clients you work with.
Creating an online interior design portfolio
Potentially one of the most important parts of an interior designers marketing arsenal.
It gives you a chance of being creative but you should also keep it clean and modern to appeal to your target market.
Your digital interior design portfolio should be hosted on a dedicated page directly on your website and be easy to find for visitors on your site.
Most website platforms, such as Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, etc all make this process extremely easy to create dedicated pages as well as a hub page to hold all of your work.
Creating a printed design portfolio
There is less need to have your interior design portfolio as a printed version, with many interior designers showing their work online using an iPad.
However many interior designers still value the printed portfolio when doing face to face meetings with clients.
You can create the portfolio on a graphic design software, like Adobe Indesign. Remembering to still include all aspects of specific projects, from moodboards, before and after images, the process, budgets, space size, etc.
You will then need it to be professionally printed to ensure you maintain a high level of quality in the work you present.
The design of your printed portfolio should be in line with your niche, whether that’s colourful and creative or sleek and modern. The fonts you use, the images, everything about it should be perfectly in line with your target audience.
Share Your Interior Design Portfolio
One of the best ways of getting new clients as an interior designer is to share your published design portfolio across the internet.
By getting your previous work and projects in front of potential clients will draw them in and these will end up being your best clients.
Your Website
Fundamentally, your website should showcase your style as a designer.
You need to make it easy for visitors to find your portfolio so consider making sure you add links to it from your homepage, your navigation menu, your footer and link to it from your blog posts too.
Houzz
The hub of inspiration for interior design. Houzz is a fantastic location to share your portfolio.
Upload the images into specific projects on Houzz and add links where possible back to your site.
The interior designers dream social media platform. Almost purely image-focused and high engagement.
You should be sharing almost every image you have of your projects on Instagram to show off your skills as a designer.
Add a link to your portfolio in your bio and encourage people to click through in the captions of your post.
An untapped channel for most interior designers. Pinterest can drive hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site.
Get started by uploading all of your portfolio images to Pinterest and link each pin back to your portfolio.
When a user of Pinterest likes what they see, they will click through to your website and be wowed by the rest of your portfolio.
5 Examples of the Best Interior Design Portfolios
Knowing where to start with your interior design portfolio can be difficult. So I wanted to share some of the best interior design portfolios I’ve seen in the wild to help you get started.
Here’s some inspiration for your interior design portfolio…
2LG Studio
Jordan and Russel’s portfolio is clean and simple. It showcases their work and style perfectly for prospective clients to easily browse through their previous work and get a feel for how they work, the products they use and the end results of the homes they create.
Sara Zofko Interior Decoration
TV interior design Sara Zofko has created an image-heavy portfolio to showcase her range of designs. She neatly arranges her portfolio to show how she can tailor each clients space to suit their needs.
Mia Zhou
This portfolio can work both as an online version as well as a printed version. Perfectly packaged to showcase the 3D renderings, moodboards and key features of each of the projects. It shows Mia’s skills as a designer of commercial spaces in a simple and professional manner.
Ore Studios
There is a clear reason why Ore Studios is such a popular interior design business. Each project within their portfolio has a clear scope of work, size of space, as well as a range of other information and detailed description of the work undertaken.
Fiona Duke Interiors
Fiona’s portfolio shows her client work in a clear way which makes it easy for visitors to take the time to see the end results of the homes she creates. Each project also contains additional information such as the brief of the project and the services she provided. This is perfect for setting the expectation for visitors to understand exactly the results of the different services you provide.
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