You must have a niche.

You must have a specialty. Your specialty, or niche, will either be something you’ve figured out for yourself or if you don’t choose, sometimes it’ll emerge on its own just because of your natural talents and personality. Who you are, what you do, and who you attract all come into consideration for your specialty. Uniqueness is a beautiful thing.

Your uniqueness is what will seal the deal for clients. It’ll be the deciding factor on who they choose to design their home. It helps you stand out and get noticed - get clients.

Today, I’m going to share some ideas for rethinking your interior design niche.

Because you must have a niche.

Your Interior Design Niche

When we choose a specialty we are saying, “This is what I do best and this is why you should hire me.” It puts you in your zone of genius to do your best work for your clients and helps your business run smoothly.

Niche can be comprised of many things:

• design style (i.e. modern Americana, California casual, bright poppy colors),

• project location (city, neighborhood),

• project type (new construction, remodels, interior furnishings),

• client lifestyle (stay-at-home dads, young professionals)

• client personality (detailed, dreamer, enthusiastic shopper, indecisive, decisive)

• rooms (kitchen & bath, bowling alleys, kid’s spaces)

• client occupation (lawyers, photographers, farmers, hedge-fund managers)

• your special sauce (innovation, steadfastness, budget-management, adventure)

Your niche will likely be some combination of these things - such as, lawyers who live in Durbinshire and love bright pops of color. Unless you live in a low population area, the more specific you can be the better. In fact, if you are having a hard time attracting clients, niching down can actually help you.

Read Make More Money by Specializing to learn more.

Rethinking Your Interior Design Niche

But, when you just choose a specialty based on the above, you are missing an important component of why clients will hire you.

Sometimes called pain points, or jobs to be done (JTBD), what is missing is WHY clients hire you. What problem are they experiencing that is the motive for reaching out to a designer.

As my friend, Candace Sheppard said,

Niche is a problem, not a person

I’ll go a step further for interior designers and say that niche is a person with a problem. So what problem do you solving for your clients? Where are they having challenges? Where are they struggling? What is their expected outcome? What do they want to achieve? How do they want to achieve that?

When you can pinpoint the main problem that you solve (or that you like to solve) for clients your marketing will be much easier, you’ll be clear on your value, and you’ll attract more dream clients.

For example, your niche may be lawyers who live in Durbinshire and love bright pops of color. And the problem that you solve for them may be that you are minimally disruptive to their life. Your work is done quickly behind the scenes and with a turn-key installation over three days.

Or maybe your niche is still lawyers who live in Durbinshire and love bright pops of color, but the problem you are solving is creating a place to entertain clients OR a refuge from the stressful corporate world OR a family home designed to encourage togetherness.

What do you think of niche and specialty? Do you have a clear idea of what problem you are solving for your clients?

About The Author

Hi! I’m Capella and I’m an interior designer who helps fellow designers build their businesses. Forget secrecy and competition, I believe designers should support and uplift each other. By helping and boosting one another, we can elevate the business of interior design together! Hang around a bit and I’ll share all the business “secrets” no one else wants to talk about.