Are Interior Design Reality Shows Accurate of a Real Life Interior Design Professional?
by Candice Mathers


With the influx of "reality" design shows I have noticed many new clients who are uneducated about the process of hiring an interior designer and the costs. They want their homes to look like the covers of "Traditional Home" or Elle Décor" with high quality fabrics and furnishings with completely unrealistic budgets. There are also the people who watch realtiy shows and have tiny budgets and think this is going to stretch as far as it does on television. Viewers see what can be done for $1000 and think, "If they can get all that for $1000 just think of what we can do for $20,000." They know that the sofa they just looked at in Marshall Fields costs $3,500 and the dining room table was $4,500 without chairs, yet they think a "good interior designer" can magically stretch their remaining $12,000 budget for the rest of the entire home, and pay the interior designer too.

Let's look at just how real reality interior design shows are: For one, they have a "production staff" of many people who assist the designer in making it all come together, seemingly with no problems. They can afford to work with tiny budgets because they have something called "Advertising Sponsors" of the show known as commercials; who are paying the salaries of the staff, the interior designers, and all the tradespeople.

On the interior design reality shows the production staff consists of full time tradesmen who in the real world charge thousands of dollars to build custom furniture around the clock. Then there are design assistants who work on the shows, who schlep all over town for the main designer to get items needed for the design scheme. In real life, an independent interior designer/decorator would pay an employee to do their bidding, and many do not have design assistants to shop all over or do their running around. If we don't have an employee for running around, we get paid for this service. It's added on to our time. Interior designers also don't have free electricians, painters or a magical salary---we are paid by the hour, by the project or a combination of hourly and markups. We work very long hours. Interior designers who own their own studio on average work about 70 - 80 hours a week or more, especially while working on demanding projects.

Think of interior designers as a contractor of aesthetics for your space. Just like in construction or renovation….design is a process. It takes time to make a plan, implement it and it takes money. Take into account everything and everyone a contractor has to coordinate. All the materials and supplies they need before they can get started. They also want a payment for half down as well. Well, interior designers work very similarly. We have initial meetings, budgets to meet and agree on, contracts to get signed, money down to begin the work, space planning, design schemes, drawings or autocad imaging, shopping, orders to place, checks to send, driving, client update meetings or phone calls, vendor orders from many different companies to watch over and coordinate delivery for, management over the trades like painters, tile installers, millworkers, faux finishers, upholsterers, contractors, and constant phone calls and juggling to make your space come together beautifully, on time and within budget.


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