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Product Description
Product Description
This second edition is updated throughout and includes additional material on time management and numerous interviews with leading designers. Empowered by the step-by-step guidance in this book, interior designers will be able to establish prices and budgets that make their clients happy and their businesses profitable. Written by a designer and veteran expert on pricing, estimating, and budgeting systems, the book provides practical guidelines on how to value the cost of designing commercial or residential interiors, from the designer's creative input to the pricing of decorating products and procedures.
The book shows how to determine a profitable and fair hourly rate, balance the client's budget with his or her wishes and needs, negotiate prices with suppliers and contractors, write realistic estimates and clear proposals, manage budgets for projects of all sizes and types, and position the firm's brand in relation to its practices. Interviews with experienced interior designers, case studies, and sidebars highlight professional pitfalls and how to master them, from daily crisis management and self-organization to finding the perfect office manager. This superbly thorough guide offers pricing, estimating, and budgeting advice that is a necessity for every designer and firm pushing to bolster the bottom line.
The book shows how to determine a profitable and fair hourly rate, balance the client's budget with his or her wishes and needs, negotiate prices with suppliers and contractors, write realistic estimates and clear proposals, manage budgets for projects of all sizes and types, and position the firm's brand in relation to its practices. Interviews with experienced interior designers, case studies, and sidebars highlight professional pitfalls and how to master them, from daily crisis management and self-organization to finding the perfect office manager. This superbly thorough guide offers pricing, estimating, and budgeting advice that is a necessity for every designer and firm pushing to bolster the bottom line.
About the Author
Theo Stephan Williams is the founder of Real Art Design Group, Inc., an award-winning, full-service graphic firm whose international client-base includes Universal Studios Hollywood, the Walt Disney Company, and Mead Corporation. The author of The Streetwise Guide to Freelance Graphic Design and Illustration and of Creative Utopia: 12 Ways To Realize Total Creativity, she has taught many college courses in design theory. Having founded an organic ranch and specialty food company with her husband Joel, her career has transcended to interior design, creating original patterns that are being manufactured into carpets and other textiles in Nepal. She and her family live in California.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
52 of 53 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Advice from Someone who's Been There Before, Aug 7 2005
By John Matlock "Gunny" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Interior Designer's Guide To Pricing, Estimating & Budgeting (Paperback)
One of the hardest things to learn about interior design, or any other service industry is that the only thing you have to sell is your time. To do this in a profitable manner, you need two sets of skills.The first is the one you know about. You've got to find customers, you've got to do the job they want done and you've go to make them happy. This is probably the job you've trained yourself to do through experience, through training, and through the basic aptitude that you had to get into that business in the first place.
The second job is harder. You've got to realize that you are a business manager. You need accounting (to keep your business partner the IRS happy). You need to develop a busines plan, budgeting, etc. You need to know how to prepare and send out bills and how to handle the money when it comes in. And the most critical of all, telling the customer what your effort is going to cost him.
In this book Mr. Williams gives an excellent introduction on how to do these critical things. He also includes enough war stories from his past to give you the understanding of how he learned these things.
I really enjoyed his page one story of starting his own company: sold his car so as to eliminate the payments, crammed his office into his bedroom, paid off all credit cards, in general reduced his expenses to a minimum. When I started I did almost exactly the same: I had a very tiny kind of dumpy house in not too good a neighborhood - but no payments. I had an ancient vehicle - but no payments. Like with him, I was profitable the first month, but you had best not bet on it.
Mr. Williams has been there, done that, walked the walk. His book makes excellent sense.
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book for pricing - not just for interior decorators..., May 12 2006
By J. K. Carreira "JKCDesigns" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Interior Designer's Guide To Pricing, Estimating & Budgeting (Paperback)
This is a phenominal book for pricing and structure in any business. As an independent consultant one of the most difficult things when starting out is finding the right pricing structure. This book covers that as well as many suggestions on how to effectively organize and run a business. I have already recommended this book to my husband who is in Home Improvement and a friend who has a curtain business. I think it is so well written that it could be of value to many types of businesses small and large.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
not really that helpful, July 2 2010
By ogden "ogden" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Interior Designer's Guide To Pricing, Estimating & Budgeting (Paperback)
I didn't get what I was expecting out of this book, and I think the title is really a misnomer. This book is written really more as a reference for young and inexperienced designers looking to start their own business. Note the following:The author is a GRAPHIC designer, not an interior designer. She (yes, "Theo" is a she) makes reference to interior design projects that are laughable--designing a carpet is not interior design. And just because it will be a vinyl applied to a wall, doesn't mean a logo design is interior design. Not being an interior designer, the author makes absurd comments about the industry that just aren't true (like that per-SF billing models are a bad idea. maybe for residential but for commercial design, per-SF is standard. And profitable). I just don't think the author is qualified to be writing this book.
Furthermore, estimating and budgeting are ONLY talked about in very generic terms. Basically, the author wants you to know that these are important things to do right, or you won't make any money. Unfortunately I think most readers already know these are important things, otherwise they wouldn't buy the book. But there are no specifics on how to calculate different types of materials, labor, processes. Nothing of real substance that the reader can take with them to the job and apply.
There are lots of contradictions and very astonishing ideas expressed by the author. For example, the author says to 'respect the client's personal time' by not contacting them outside normal business hours....but then suggests that when you have bad news to share, wait until the last possible minute, so that the client can think about it over the weekend. How is expecting the client to think about work on the weekend respecting their time?? Even if that is respectful, its still bad advice--the LAST thing you want to do is give the client time to stew about the problem. By Monday morning they're sure to be really pissed. She also says that over the years she learned NOT to take responsibility for her staff's mistakes. Um, HELLO!?!? A client hires the company, and as the boss, you do have the ultimate responsibility for everything every employee does. Her advice is the exact opposite of what a designer should do.
I might reference the forms in the back of the book, maybe some day. But overall this book just didn't offer me anything I can use. Might be better for someone who has only a year or two of work experience.
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