Business 101

Design Is the Easy Bit: Why Talented Interior Designers End Up Firefighting

November 2, 2026
Business 101 · On running an interior design studio, by Kia Stanford
Design is the easy bit.

I know how that sounds, coming from someone who has spent 18 years running an interior design studio. Most of us got into this because we can see a room before it exists. We can pull a scheme together from a fabric swatch and a hunch. That part is hard to teach and it is the reason clients come to us.

But after over 200 projects at Kia Designs, I can tell you where projects actually go wrong. It is almost never the design. It is the bit around it.

18+Years in practice
200+Projects delivered

01Where it really goes wrong

It is…
  1. The fee that was agreed on a phone call and never written down.
  2. The client who thought “a few options” meant twelve.
  3. The contractor who was working from drawing revision C while everyone else was on E.
  4. The supplier invoice nobody signed off.
  5. The WhatsApp at 9pm on a Saturday asking if the sofa could be a different colour, sent to the one person who happens to be on holiday.
Sample library and worktable in the Kia Designs studio, with orchids on the table
The sample library, Kia Designs studio, London Bridge

None of that is design.

All of it decides whether a project is profitable, whether the client refers you, and whether you still like your job by the end.

02Good design is the minimum

Clients assume the design will be good. That is the entry ticket. What they remember is how it felt to work with you.

Client meeting room at the Kia Designs studio with an oval table and the Kia Designs logo on the wall
The client meeting room

Did they know what was happening?

Did anything surprise them that should not have?

Did they feel looked after — or chased?

That experience comes from structure: a clear brief, an agreed scope, a fee everyone understands, a way of logging decisions so they do not get relitigated, and a team that knows who is doing what.

03Why nobody tells you this about running an interior design studio

Design courses are, rightly, about design. Studios are busy. Juniors learn the business side by osmosis, which mostly means learning it by getting it wrong in front of a client. Studio owners learn it the same way, just with more at stake.

The team table at Kia Designs, where the day-to-day work of running an interior design studio happens
The studio table, where every project gets talked through

I learnt plenty of it the hard way.

At one point I changed the studio’s entire project management setup twice in one month. Good reasons both times. The result was a frustrated team and a founder who was just as lost.

Chasing the next app was not a system.

04What I am doing to make running an interior design studio easier

That is why I started The Design Plot. It is where I share the part design school skips: pricing, contracts, onboarding, project structure, client communication. It is written for studio owners, and just as much for designers employed in someone else’s studio who want to stop firefighting and get back to the work they love.

Over the next few weeks on this blog I will be going through the things I wish I had known when I started: what an internship should actually teach you, what we look for in a portfolio, how fees really work, and how to keep a project from living only in your head.

If you are a student, a junior, or a few years into running your own studio and quietly wondering if everyone else has this sorted:

They mostly do not. It is learnable. That is the good news.

Kia Stanford's card on a tray in the studio, alongside candles and a gold bowl
The Design Plot

The part design school skips.

Pricing, contracts, onboarding, project structure and client communication — for studio owners and the designers who work with them.

Visit The Design Plot

Kia StanfordFounder, Kia Designs