Penelope’s restaurant offers a fusion of Spanish and Israeli cuisine in London’s Covent Garden.

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You are reading an article on charging your first client for the installation of your unique incredibly beautify interior design. Your schooling, education about furniture, calculating space and arranging colour have come together where you are ready to market yourself and be confident that your client is getting the best quality for their money. Also, you want the relationship between your time and materials to match your financial needs. Afterall, you did not spend all of your time and resources to perform pro bono work in a market with the ability to reward you handsomely.  

Components of Interior Design 

Before you can come up with a scheme to charge your client, you will have to do a little digging to understand what they are after when talking about the interior design of their private or public space. Of course, you want to determine how they are going to use the space and how the design will fit in to general character of the community. This will be the fun part for you because you will be allowed to employ a great deal of creativity toward the project. Remember, the client may not admit it, but you are the expert in this field. The client is counting on you to deliver a product that will have incredible impact on their private or professional life. Therefore, even though you are relatively new to the field, even though you were sure about your gifts before your training, project confidence in your interaction with your client. Confidence may be the one crucial factor that trumps all other considerations. 

Cost of Materials

Now, you have your discrete interview out of the way and your client has accepted your suggestion for a design style. Some real calculating can begin. A few ideas came to mind when you were screening your client for an overarching theme for their space. A Farmhouse design is a possibility, as your client’s space is on the outskirts of the suburbs and they want a country feel to their space. They prefer natural wood grains and lots of natural light. Therefore, you have to figure in the cost of genuine marble countertops, running on average $3000, and how to design around a potential fireplace. 

Or, the client is in the midst of a great internet startup, but prefers to have their employees in a community-designed space. There is room for function, spaces for private or team projects, and space for one-on-one competition. You will want to figure the prices of pool tables and flat-screen monitors to be strategically placed in a very modern space.

Overall, you get the idea that materials, furniture, lights and such are considerations that your client will expect you to have answered as you get closer to closing the deal. Deliver the appropriate figures with certainty, knowing that they are the ones purchasing these accoutrements. As you factor cost of furnishings and such expect to markup the retail price of those items a market average of 30%. Some professional established designers mark up the furnishings as much as 47%.

Labor Costs

You have to think about the time you spent giving your client a quality one-hour consultation. Remember, this activity consumes your time and energy and there is no reason to think that you do not have to be compensated for your valuable investment of your own resources. The time with your client could very well have been spent in another lucrative endeavor. That initial one-hour consultation is going cost your client an average $250. Billing for the completion of the installation could be a little tricky because potential construction and demolition may be a consideration on any project. Therefore, beware of potential problems when you talk with your client about the length of time you will take to complete the installation. If you feel good about giving a specific time frame and expect everything to go as planned, you can charge the client an average hourly rate of $150. 

Unexpected Costs

The above considerations for unforeseen problems are important points to think about when you are giving your client an estimate for the job. In a space that is newly constructed, your estimate will be essentially seamless in regards to your recent education and contemporary standards in construction. Your ideas for mounting pictures and monitors will not need a great deal of adjustment. However, when your client has in mind a more creative approach to rehabilitating an older space, expect to be ready to navigate challenges with uniquely outdated construction methods. Metal studs are becoming the norm for support behind the client’s drywall, but an older building may have wooden studs that do not quite meet industry standards. Wall-anchoring methods may have to be reassessed at any moment.

Beware of that portion of drywall that is just laying on top of a concrete wall. The client is sure they want that 70lbs plasma monitor right there. The challenge is completely different if the materials behind that drywall are not what you expect. Nevertheless, as you are estimating your first couple of interior design installations, you have to break away from any naiveté about the construction of your space being easy to navigate.

Setting Your Prices

This information, and other considerations, are a great starting point for your long lucrative career in interior design. Throughout your career, you will find yourself being quite creative in the way that you bill your client for your quality work. We went over some rudimentary ideas to give you a great foundation for interacting with the client, as a new face in the interior design community.

Expect to become skilled at employing many other diverse options for charging your client. We talked about various percentage plans when we were thinking about materials. Hourly rate considerations were important for labor. Retail and commercial spaces are billed differently that home and private spaces. After a time of gathering experience in the field, you may transition to a fixed-rate model. Expect your developing eye to simply observe a space and create the invoice in your head and find that you are quite accurate, after you perform specific measurements.

That you are researching ways to charge your first few clients goes a long way to show that you are humble and teachable, marks that demonstrate that your future is oriented toward sucess.

The tutorial below addresses a question we receive often; namely “What the heck is electronic first curtain shutter, and why would I use it over the mechanical or regular electronic shutter?” If you’ve wondered about that yourself take a look, because pro David Bergman clears up all the confusion in just about 10 minutes.

Bergman is a respected NY-based shooter specializing in sports and celebrity photography. He’s also a popular instructor, and he received the above query from a follower of his unique “Ask David Bergman” website—where readers submit questions and he answers them on the Adorama TV YouTube channel.

Some modern cameras feature a conventional mechanical shutter as well as an electronic shutter. And other models include a third option known as an electronic first curtain shutter. Interesting, there are photographers out there with cameras offering all three options, yet they’re unaware they exist—let alone how to use them.

If you always shoot with the mechanical shutter, and are oblivious to the other options available, this lesson will get you up to speed, thereby enabling you to capture better photos by using the best shutter choice for the specific task at hand.

Bergman discusses all three types of shutters and which ones he prefers for different assignments. He also explains the pros and cons of using your camera’s mechanical shutter as opposed to the electronic options.

The first thing you should do after watching the lesson is examine your camera and determine what shutter choices are available. Then consider which one is the best choice to use in various situations based upon Bergman’s advice.

You can read more questions and answers on common photographic topics by visiting the popular Ask David Bergman website. Then consider submitting a few questions of your own.

We also suggest you take a look at the recent tutorial we posted from another pro, explaining an easy way to make sure the photos you shoot are absolutely sharp.

You don’t have to be a professional portrait photographer to make flattering people pictures that make you and your subjects proud. In fact, sooner or later someone who knows you have a camera will solicit your expertise for photographing a party, wedding, or simple family images.

Proper editing is a big part of the process if you want to deliver the best possible photos, and the quick-and-easy tutorial below will explain how to get to done quickly and effectively with a one-click solution in Lightroom.

This straightforward episode from our friends at Photo Fitness Academy explains a unique approach, and you don’t have to an experienced Lightroom user to get the job done. Instructor David Buck provides step-by-step instructions in barely seven minutes.

As you’ll see, this method involves editing a photo using simple tools, then using Lightroom’s AI facial detection features to build your own one-click editing preset that can then be applied to one or more portraits all at once. According to Buck, “This is the most efficient way to edit a portrait with today’s image-editing programs.”

The bonus here is that after watching this lesson you’ll be able easily create and apply presets for just about any photos you shoot, from landscape scenes and macro photos to wildlife images and more. And once you’ve done that, your Lightroom workflow will be faster and more effective than ever before.

Another bonus is that before jumping into the specifics of creating presets, Buck provides a quick crash course on the basics of editing portraits, with tips on what to lighten or darken, and what to sharpen or soften to give portraits a professional look. Even if you never considered yourself a portrait specialist, you may change your mind after giving Buck’s advice a try.

You can find other simple shooting and editing techniques on Buck’s instructional YouTube channel, so head over there soon and see what meets your needs.

You may also want to check out the earlier tutorial we posted from another pro, explaining how your camera’s dynamic range affects the photos you shoot, and what to do about it.