What should I include in my interior design portfolio?

While interior design portfolios are usually visual, including photographs of finished projects, no strict rules define what they can contain. Some interior designers incorporate design concepts, mood boards, renderings, layouts, and other relevant material that reflects past projects .

What are three skills you think an interior designer should possess?

be good at identifying problems and finding solutions . develop your good negotiation skills (e.g. when a client comes to you with a budget that is unrealistic for what they want to achieve!) be able to convey design ideas to non-designers - e.g. break down jargon or technical language so they can understand.

How do I make my interior design portfolio stand out?

The most effective interior design portfolios favour showing others what you do instead of just telling them . It is dominated by compelling visuals such as photographs, 3D images, drawings and videos of completed projects. A strong portfolio emphasises visuals of completed work especially if your portfolio is online.

What are examples of showcase portfolios?

The most common example of a showcase portfolio is for creatives to showcase art, design or communication skills through tangible representations of these skills, including digital art, video, writing samples and more .

How do you create a portfolio that showcases your strengths and abilities?

Select a diverse range of your best work that reflects your skills and interests. Aim to showcase different styles or techniques to demonstrate your versatility . However, be selective and avoid including similar pieces that might dilute the impact of your portfolio.

What are the 7 elements of interior design?

Professional interior designers will usually follow a set of informal “rules”, based on specific interior design principles and elements. These interior design elements include space, line, forms, light, colour, texture and pattern ; and keeping them balanced is the key to creating an aesthetically pleasing interior.

What are hard skills?

Hard skills, or technical skills, are learned through education or hands-on experience . These are concrete, measurable abilities that are often specific to a job. You can demonstrate your proficiency in hard skills through relevant certifications, portfolios, skill assessment tests, and completed work.

Is interior design a skill or talent?

Interior design is a modern, fast-paced industry requiring many talents and learned skills . Gaining interior design skills requires a strong work ethic and a deep passion for the craft.

How many projects should be in an interior design portfolio?

A good rule of thumb that I have found to be useful no matter how much experience a designer or creative may have, is to include no less than three and no more than six pieces of your best work.

How long should interior design portfolio be?

When designing a portfolio, a designer must take the time to narrow their work down to a select few that really represent their talents and their brand. As a rule of thumb, interior design portfolios should include 10 to 15 examples of a designer's work .

Do you need a portfolio for fit interior design?

If you have an AAS in Interior Design from FIT You may apply to the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) program. Depending on your GPA and grades in Interior Design studio courses, you may be required to submit a portfolio .

Do you need a portfolio to apply for interior design?

Some interior design course requirements include resumes and portfolios (usually at a graduate studies level) to demonstrate your design qualifications. However, you might also have to submit a portfolio no matter what program you apply for .

Interior Design Portfolio: How To Showcase Your Skills (including 5 examples) (2024)

As an interior designer, being able to show your previous work is one of the best ways to get new clients.

Your portfolio website 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.

What's in the article

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 portfolio website and also a printed version which you occasionally update to keep it fresh. Most clients will just want your portfolio website, 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.

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How To Create Your Own Interior Design Portfolio

There are two core ways to create an interior design portfolio:

Online Portfolio

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.

Printed Portfolio

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 as an interior designer 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.

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Creating a Great 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.

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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.

Instagram

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.

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5 of the Best Interior Design Portfolio Examples

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 of our favourite interior design portfolio examples…

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.