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Interior designers

Also called Residential interior designer, Commercial interior designer, Hospitality designer, Healthcare interior designer, Workplace designer

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 71,500 US interior designers, with median pay of $67,190 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 6,000 from 1930, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for interior designers: Practice management platforms, 2010 to 2022.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 2.7% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Interior designers: jobs and pay since 1930 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-1025

Chicago

Future History. "Interior designers: jobs and pay since 1930." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-1025.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_27_1025, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Interior designers: jobs and pay since 1930}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-1025}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
1925195019752000now
Country
2026
Known then as Interior Decorator (pioneer professional era, Elsie de Wolfe to AID founding)
Known then as Interior Decorator / Interior Designer (AID era, decorator label dominant)
Known then as Interior Designer / Interior Decorator (NSID era, designer label rising)
Known then as Interior Designer (ASID era, professional licensure emerging)
Known then as Interior Designers (BLS SOC 27-1025)
Known today as Interior Designers (BLS SOC 27-1025)
Projected to still be called Interior Designers (BLS SOC 27-1025)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
72K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$67,190
Est.

≈ $65,467 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1905

Elsie de Wolfe takes the Colony Club commission in New York, widely recognized as the founding moment of interior design as a paid profession. Stanford White designed the building; de Wolfe designed the interior. Her aesthetic (pale colors, light chintzes, chinoiserie, trellis patterns) was a deliberate rejection of Victorian heaviness and established what became the signature sensibility of early American interior design.

Beat · 1925

Dorothy Draper founds the Architectural Clearing House in New York, the first formal interior design firm in the United States. Unlike de Wolfe's personal practice, Draper's organization employed staff and operated as a corporate entity, establishing the model for the interior design studio that would become standard by mid-century. Draper went on to design the Greenbrier resort, the Hampshire House hotel, and the Metropolitan Museum's restaurant among other major commissions.

Beat · 1931

The American Institute of Interior Decorators (AIID, later AID) is organized as the first professional society for interior decorators in the United States. Initially social in character, it gradually adopted a more professional structure over the following decades. The founding membership was dominated by women, reflecting the profession's early gender composition.

Beat · 1957

The National Society of Interior Designers (NSID) is founded as a separate organization committed more explicitly to the professionalization of the field. The split from AID reflected a generational and philosophical tension in the profession: the older "decorator" identity (rooted in residential aesthetics and taste) versus the newer "designer" identity (rooted in space planning, code compliance, and the commercial contract interiors market that had exploded with postwar office construction).

Beat · 1970

FIDER (Foundation for Interior Design Education Research, now CIDA) is established to accredit interior design degree programs, responding to IDEC's 1968 finding that interior design education lacked consistent standards. The founding of FIDER marks the point at which the profession began systematically controlling its own educational pipeline, a prerequisite for any occupation that aspires to licensed professional status.

Beat · 1974

NCIDQ (National Council for Interior Design Qualification) issues its first professional certification exams, establishing a national competency standard for interior designers. The exam tests life-safety knowledge, building codes, ADA compliance, and space planning in addition to design skills. Today, NCIDQ certification is recognized in 27 U.S. jurisdictions and several Canadian provinces as a prerequisite for practicing interior design on licensed commercial projects.

Beat · 1975

ASID (American Society of Interior Designers) is created from the merger of AID and NSID, bringing together over 13,000 designers in what the joint press release called "the largest organization of its kind in the world." The merger effectively resolved the decorator-vs.-designer identity tension that had divided the profession for almost 20 years and gave the field a single dominant professional body.

Beat · 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted interior design in two simultaneous directions: design showrooms and trade fairs closed (Salone del Mobile Milan was cancelled for the first time since 1961), while residential renovation demand surged as homeowners confronted the inadequacies of their spaces during extended lockdowns. The "home office" became a design category, and clients who had never hired a designer before sought help reconfiguring rooms for remote work. Employment recovered strongly after 2021 and reached new highs by 2023.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace interior designers? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+2.7%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 27-1025 (Interior designers): 97.1 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 99.7 thousand in 2035, a change of +2.6 thousand (+2.7%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (26.4% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
36.2%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 27-1025.00 Interior Designers. Shown: human-rated β = 0.362, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.138 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.586; GPT-4-rated β 0.5. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for interior designers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereProduce virtual staging for real estate listings and model units (using REimagineHome AI to transform empty or poorly-furnished listing photos into fully-staged, style-consistent MLS-ready visuals in minutes) preserving original architectural geometry (walls, windows, ceiling lines) while replacing furniture and finishes, with the designer's judgment applied to style-matching the neighborhood's buyer demographic.

Produce virtual staging for real estate listings and model units (using REimagineHome AI to transform empty or poorly-furnished listing photos into fully-staged, style-consistent MLS-ready visuals in minutes) preserving original architectural geometry (walls, windows, ceiling lines) while replacing furniture and finishes, with the designer's judgment applied to style-matching the neighborhood's buyer demographic.[8],[9]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Virtual staging has already replaced physical staging for a significant fraction of residential real estate (buyers in 2026 arrive with AI-shaped expectations, per REimagineHome research). Designers who offer AI virtual staging as a fast-turnaround service (same-day delivery, several style variants) can scale this revenue stream without proportional time investment. The professional value is demographic targeting and neighborhood-context styling, knowing that a Park Slope buyer responds differently to a "warm Brooklyn loft" treatment than a "Westchester contemporary" finish, not just generating pretty rooms.

AI is sitting alongside you hereProduce photorealistic client-presentation renders from live BIM/CAD models using Veras by Chaos (applying lighting, materials, and stylistic variations via text prompts directly inside Revit or SketchUp without file-export round-trips) generating 6-10 render variants for a single space in under an hour, replacing what previously required hours of V-Ray setup per image.

Produce photorealistic client-presentation renders from live BIM/CAD models using Veras by Chaos (applying lighting, materials, and stylistic variations via text prompts directly inside Revit or SketchUp without file-export round-trips) generating 6-10 render variants for a single space in under an hour, replacing what previously required hours of V-Ray setup per image.[10],[11],[3]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Rendering speed is now table stakes: clients expect photorealistic previews at every meeting, not just at formal presentations. Invest in learning Veras's geometry-override and material-strength sliders so you can produce multiple material-palette variants from a single model without losing design intent. The differentiating skill is using render quality to facilitate decision-making conversations ("you're choosing between this walnut veneer and the white oak — here they are at 4 PM daylight and 8 PM artificial") rather than just producing beautiful images.

AI is sitting alongside you hereGenerate rapid concept alternatives for a client room using REimagineHome AI or Spacely AI (uploading iPhone photos of the existing space, selecting style palettes [warm minimalist, maximalist eclectic, biophilic], and producing 8-12 photorealistic redesign variants in minutes) then curating the two strongest concepts and preparing annotated rationale decks for the discovery meeting.

Generate rapid concept alternatives for a client room using REimagineHome AI or Spacely AI (uploading iPhone photos of the existing space, selecting style palettes [warm minimalist, maximalist eclectic, biophilic], and producing 8-12 photorealistic redesign variants in minutes) then curating the two strongest concepts and preparing annotated rationale decks for the discovery meeting.[12],[13],[3]

Where your edge is

Consumer AI room-redesign tools already do this: the designer's value is not the generation but the curation, client communication, and constraint-awareness. Build a structured brief template that forces explicit decisions on the client's lifestyle (do they have young children? pets? entertain frequently?), budget tier, and non-negotiables before any visual ideation begins. The curation and annotation layer is where professional judgment creates defensible value that a homeowner self-serving an AI tool cannot replicate.

Where interior designers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Architects, Except Landscape and Naval

Interior Designers with strong technical skills (Revit, AutoCAD, building systems knowledge) and an interest in large-scale commercial projects can pursue Architecture, particularly in firms where Interior Architecture (fit-out design, tenant improvement, adaptive reuse) blurs the line between interior design and licensed architectural practice. The primary barrier is professional licensure: Architecture requires the AXP (Architectural Experience Program) and ARE exams, typically adding several years beyond a design degree. However, with growing BIM tool overlap (both fields use Revit, Enscape, Veras) and AI compressing drafting time in both professions, the transition is more about credential pursuit than skill acquisition. Recommended for designers who want larger project scale, institutional clients, and construction-level structural exposure.

What you'd add
  • · Structural systems fundamentals: load paths, column grids, long-span systems
  • · Building envelope and MEP coordination at the architectural level
  • · AXP (Architectural Experience Program) documentation: 3,740 hours across 6 experience areas
  • · ARE exam preparation: Practice Management, Project Management, Programming & Analysis, Project Planning & Design, Project Development & Documentation, Construction & Evaluation
  • · Zoning, building codes, and entitlement processes beyond ADA and interior life-safety scope
What it takesA real upskill, but a natural one
Tools of the era

How has the work of interior designers changed since 1905?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Hand drafting, sample boards, and material libraries (pre-CAD professional practice)

    For the first decades of interior design as a paid profession, every space-planning drawing was produced by hand: pencil and pen on drafting paper, measured with triangles and T-squares. Client presentations relied on physical sample boards assembled from fabric swatches, paint chips, and material samples collected from manufacturer showrooms. Furniture specification involved hand-typed purchase order forms and phone-based vendor communication. The skills of the profession were creative, relational, and manual: an interior designer's competitive advantage was taste, vendor relationships, and the ability to visualize three dimensions from a two-dimensional plan that most clients could not read. The hand-drafting era lasted until AutoCAD arrived on desktop PCs in 1982.

  • AutoCAD (Autodesk, 1982), 2D CAD replaces hand drafting for space plans and construction documents

    Autodesk released AutoCAD in December 1982 as the first CAD software built for desktop personal computers. Architects adopted it quickly; interior designers followed through the late 1980s as hardware costs fell. For interior designers, AutoCAD transformed the production of floor plans, reflected ceiling plans, and finish schedules: tasks that had taken hours of careful hand drafting could be completed faster and revised without redrawing. The technology did not change what a designer knew or decided, but it changed how that knowledge was encoded and communicated to contractors. Firms that mastered AutoCAD early gained a competitive edge in commercial contract work, where precise drawings are required for permits and bidding. Drafting skills that had been a core part of interior design training became less central as software automated the mechanical execution.

    Effect on the work

    AutoCAD compressed the time required to produce construction documents without eliminating the designer who produced them. Junior drafters within design firms did see some role consolidation as a single CAD-proficient designer could produce what previously required a small drafting team, but the net effect on the overall workforce was modest because the cost reduction also expanded the market for professional design services.

  • 3D visualization software (3ds Max 1990, SketchUp 2000, V-Ray rendering)

    Before 3D modeling software, the only way a client saw a room before it was built was in a hand-drawn perspective sketch or a physical scale model. Autodesk 3ds Max (originally 3D Studio, 1990) brought photorealistic rendering to workstations; SketchUp (acquired by Google in 2006, later Trimble) democratized 3D modeling for designers who were not engineering-trained. V-Ray and other rendering engines enabled interior designers to show clients near-photographic images of completed rooms during the design phase. This fundamentally changed the client presentation process: where a talented sketch-maker could once command a premium for visualizing a space, 3D rendering became a baseline expectation. The presentation layer of the profession was permanently elevated.

  • Revit BIM (Autodesk acquires Revit Technology Corp., 2002; commercial adoption from 2004)

    Autodesk acquired Revit Technology Corporation in 2002 and began integrating Building Information Modeling into the architecture and engineering workflow. Interior designers working on commercial, healthcare, and institutional projects were pulled into BIM-coordinated project delivery as their architect-partners required Revit models for design coordination. The transition was not uniform: residential designers often stayed in AutoCAD or SketchUp while commercial contract designers adopted Revit to remain on architect-led project teams. Revit's parametric model (walls, floors, doors as intelligent objects with properties, not just lines) enabled clash detection between interior fit-out and building systems (MEP, structure) for the first time at an accessible price point. For interior designers, this meant a steeper software learning curve and deeper integration into the construction documentation workflow.

  • Practice management platforms: Studio Designer, Mydoma, Houzz Pro (procurement, project, client portals)

    Interior design practice management software consolidated the administrative layer of the profession: procurement order tracking, vendor management, FF&E specification, client approval workflows, invoicing, and project scheduling into integrated platforms. Studio Designer (founded circa 2010) and Mydoma Studio became dominant platforms for residential designers; Houzz Pro added CRM and portfolio features. These tools did not change what designers created, but they reduced the hours consumed by administrative work, especially on projects with more than a hundred FF&E line items. The procurement markup model (designers buying at trade and billing at retail) was also systematized, making the revenue model more legible and scalable for small firms. By 2026, Studio Designer's acquisition of Mydoma placed roughly 20,000 US and Canadian designers on a single platform.

  • Generative AI visualization: REimagineHome, RoomGPT, Veras by Chaos, Foyr Neo, Spacely AI (2022-present)

    The arrival of diffusion-based image generation models in late 2022 and their rapid application to interior design created consumer AI tools that can transform a smartphone photo of any room into a photorealistic redesign. For professional designers, this compressed the concept-visualization phase: tools like Veras by Chaos (which works inside Revit and SketchUp natively) cut rendering time from hours to seconds, a claimed 100-500x acceleration. The impact is bifurcated. For licensed commercial designers, AI accelerates a production step but does not touch the legally protected work: NCIDQ-credentialed designers in many regulated jurisdictions must still sign and seal life-safety drawings, and no AI tool can substitute for a credentialed human on permitted commercial interiors. For entry-level residential concept work, the competitive pressure from consumer AI is real: a homeowner can get several photorealistic room variants, compressing the market for low-complexity residential ideation commissions that once supported junior designers.

    Effect on the work

    AI adoption among interior designers tripled from 9% in 2023 to 29% in 2025, with 74% planning to increase usage within a year. Architecture firms using AI design tools have already cut entry-level drafting positions. The profession is bifurcating: designers with NCIDQ credentials, contractor relationships, and commercial project experience face reduced displacement risk; entry-level residential concept roles face meaningful competitive pressure.

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Interior Designers employment and pay by year

On record since1905
Latest US employment71,500 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$67,190 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+2.7% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

In other countries

The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.

  • Canada (NOC 52121)

    Employment, 2020
    26,585, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 52121 Interior designers and interior decorators, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
    Median pay, 2020
    C$51,200, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 52121 Interior designers and interior decorators, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
View all 26 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
19306,000n/aEst., Routledge Researched contextReport
197540,000n/aEst., Wikipedia Researched contextReport
199558,000$30,000BLS CPS Researched contextReport
200346,240$40,120BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
200446,360$40,670BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
200550,020$41,350BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
200652,440$42,260BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
200752,620$43,970BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
200853,290$44,950BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
200946,010$46,180BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
201040,120$46,280BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
201140,950$47,620BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
201240,750$47,600BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
201343,710$48,500BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
201445,010$48,400BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
201551,050$48,840BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
201653,160$49,810BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
201756,070$51,500BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
201857,070$53,370BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
201960,650$56,040BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
202059,170$57,060BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202161,970$60,340BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202264,290$61,590BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202367,760$62,510BLS OEWS May 2023 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2023 (pay) Official statisticReport
202469,580$63,490BLS OEWS May 2024 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2024 (pay) Official statisticReport
202571,500$67,190BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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