Interior Designers
Plan, design, and furnish the internal space of rooms or buildings. Design interior environments or create physical layouts that are practical, aesthetic, and conducive to the intended purposes. May specialize in a particular field, style, or phase of interior design.
- Median pay
- $67,190
- Doing it now
- 97,100
- By 2035
- Up 2.7%
- Usually needs
- Bachelor's degree
a year
across the country
7,700 openings a year
to get in
What the work involves
- Estimate material requirements and costs, and present design to client for approval.
- Confer with client to determine factors affecting planning of interior environments, such as budget, architectural preferences, purpose, and function.
- Advise client on interior design factors, such as space planning, layout and use of furnishings or equipment, and color coordination.
- Select or design, and purchase furnishings, art work, and accessories.
- Formulate environmental plan to be practical, esthetic, and conducive to intended purposes, such as raising productivity or selling merchandise.
- Subcontract fabrication, installation, and arrangement of carpeting, fixtures, accessories, draperies, paint and wall coverings, art work, furniture, and related items.
- Render design ideas in form of paste-ups or drawings.
What to study
The fields of study the Department of Education links to this occupation, most widely taught first.
- Interior ArchitectureSee 46 colleges that teach it
- Design and Applied ArtsSee 679 colleges that teach it
- Apparel and TextilesSee 94 colleges that teach it
- Environmental DesignSee 38 colleges that teach it
Who it suits
O*NET scores every occupation on six interest dimensions. This one leans hardest on these three.
Creative and expressive
Hands-on and practical
Organised and precise
Careers like this one
Where this comes from: the description and the task list are O*NET, which the Department of Labor maintains. Pay, workforce size, outlook and the education normally needed are the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections programme, 2025 wages and 2025 to 2035 projections. Half of them earn more than $67,190 a year, which means half earn less, and what you would earn depends on where you work and how long you have been doing it. The fields of study come from the National Center for Education Statistics crosswalk.