Interior Design Studio: Real Profit per Project, Not per Workload

«I have seven projects running at once and turnover close to 4 million hryvnia a year. Yet when I counted at year-end what actually stayed in the studio's account, it came to less than a solo designer with no office and no team would earn. That was when I first sat down to count margin not for the studio as a whole, but for each project separately — and saw that three projects out of seven were feeding me.»

An interior design studio looks like a thriving business from the outside. A beautiful portfolio, a queue of clients, designers at their MacBooks, renders that take your breath away. Clients show your projects off to friends. And you, at month-end, stare at the account and can't work out where the money went, because there are so many projects and they all pay something.

The thing is, money moves strangely in interior design. Huge sums for furniture that aren't yours pass through your account. Advances arrive before the work is done. Contractors take a slice of the fee. And revisions, approvals and site supervision eat hours that appear on no estimate. So «we work so much» never squares with the figure in the account. Let's find where your margin leaks away.

Profit per Project, in Plain Words

A project's budget is not your earnings. It's the sum passing through your studio. Earnings are what's left after you subtract every direct cost on that specific project.

Direct costs in design are above all time and fees. Count what your project costs: the hours of the designer running it (salary with taxes divided by working hours), the visualizer's fee, the draftsperson's payment for working drawings, author's supervision, small outlays on printing, samples, site visits. Add the share of the studio's fixed costs this project should cover. That is the project cost. The contracted fee minus that cost is your margin per project.

The key word here is fee, not the object's budget. A client may put 3 million into a renovation, of which you as the studio get 300 thousand for the design and another 300 for procurement and supervision. The remaining 2.4 million is money for tiles, furniture and builders' work that passes by your pocket, or straight through it in transit. If you measure success by «the project budget», you're deceiving yourself by an order of magnitude.

Why «How Busy You Are» Lies

«We have seven projects running» sounds great. But that figure says nothing about money. Two studio owners with the same seven projects can have wildly different results — depending on WHICH projects they are and what stage they're at.

Here's what hides behind a healthy-looking workload:

• A project in active concept development eats the most designer hours, while the money for it (the first advance) you spent a month ago.
• A project on supervision is formally «in progress», but brings pennies for site visits, while the designer spends half a day on it every week.
• A project that should have closed in spring drags on into autumn, because the client vanishes for a month and then wants everything redone. It occupies a slot in your schedule and brings nothing new.

So «taking on one more project» isn't always about growing profit. Sometimes it's about piling work onto the team and stealing time from the projects that actually feed the studio. The workload grows while margin stays flat or falls. The portfolio gets thicker; the account doesn't.

Let's Count It on an Example

Take four typical projects of one studio over six months. The fee is what the studio gets for its work (without the transit money for furniture and materials). Direct costs are the team's hours in money plus specialists' fees. Margin is what stays with the studio. The numbers are illustrative, but the pattern repeats in almost every analysis.

Look at the country house. By fee it's the biggest — 420 thousand, the one you show off in your stories. Yet it leaves the studio 40 thousand, because the client reworked the layout twenty times and demanded new renders for every whim, and you never once billed for it. The little 32-metre studio flat at 90 thousand handed over the same amount clean — and cost you three times fewer nerves. That's why «a big project» and «a profitable project» are different things.

Without this breakdown the owner celebrates the expensive projects and undervalues the compact ones, when it's the compact ones that often hold up the studio's profitability.

Project Stages and Advances: When the Money Is Yours, and When It Isn't Yet

A design project is almost always split into stages paid in instalments: advance, layout, concept, working drawings, procurement, supervision. This is convenient for cash flow, but it creates the studio's central illusion — an advance in the account feels like earned money.

It isn't. An advance for the concept is an obligation to deliver the concept. Until you've handed it over and closed the stage, that money is half someone else's: behind it stand designer hours, renders, possible reworks. If you take an advance, spend it on salaries and rent, and then the client freezes the project — you'll have to either return the money or finish the work with no new funding.

So stages should be seen not as «how much money landed in the account» but as two separate schedules: when payments for stages come in and when you incur the costs on those stages. Costs often run ahead of the money: you build the concept over weeks, while the advance for it is only 30% of the stage sum. If you can't see that gap, in a season of several simultaneous starts the studio ends up with no cash despite a full portfolio of projects.

Contractors, Specialists and Author's Supervision

A studio rarely does everything in-house. Renders are often outsourced, working drawings are drafted by a separate person, structural work is calculated by an engineer, sometimes an assistant designer is brought in. Each of them takes a slice of the fee — and this is exactly where the margin quietly melts.

Let's count it roughly. You took 240 thousand for an apartment project. The visualizer asked 35 thousand for five views. The draftsperson wanted 45 thousand for the full set of working drawings. Plus your designer ran the project for three months. If you don't allocate these fees to that specific project, in your head it stays «a 240 project», though in reality half of it reached the studio.

A separate story is author's supervision. It's often «gifted» to the client as a bonus or bundled into the design as a single sum. And then the designer visits the site twice a week for six months, settles disputes with builders, catches installers' mistakes — all for free, because «supervision was already included». Supervision is a full-fledged service with its own cost in hours and travel. Sell it as a separate rate (say, a fixed monthly fee) or honestly build it into the overall fee. Gifted supervision is the most expensive gift a studio gives.

Revisions and Approvals: The Hours That Aren't in the Estimate

The studio's biggest hidden hole is revisions beyond the agreed scope. The contract usually says «two or three rounds of revisions at each stage». In real life the client wants a fifth version of the kitchen because «I saw a nicer one on another blogger», asks to move the walls after the layout is approved, changes their mind about the style halfway through the working drawings.

Each such revision is designer hours again, and often new fees to the visualizer. Here's what it looks like in money:

• An approved layout is reworked a third time — that's 8–10 designer hours, several thousand hryvnia of cost that nobody paid for.
• The client wants three more render views beyond those agreed — a new invoice from the visualizer for 15–20 thousand, which the studio often covers out of its own pocket.
• A change of style at a late stage is effectively a new project, dressed up as a «minor tweak».

The problem isn't that clients are demanding — that's normal. The problem is that the studio doesn't count these hours and doesn't bill for them. The contract should be clear: how many rounds are included, and what costs extra and how much. Then revisions beyond the norm stop being charity and become extra income. A client who knows the fifth version of the kitchen costs money stops to wonder whether they really need it.

Procurement and Purchasing: The Client's Transit Money Is Not Revenue

This is the design studio's most treacherous trap. At the procurement stage, hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of hryvnia for furniture, lighting, plumbing and decor pass through your account. The client transfers you the money, you pay the suppliers. And the account suddenly looks flush.

This money is not yours. It's transit. Your earnings here are only the procurement commission (say, 10–15% of the purchase sum) or a fixed fee for selection and accompaniment. If you see 800 thousand in the account and think «good month», while in fact 720 thousand of it goes to the furniture supplier tomorrow, you're making decisions on the basis of other people's money.

This is exactly where studios most often fail. The owner sees the balance, relaxes, pays bonuses or takes on new commitments — and a week later it's time to pay for the furniture and there's no cash. The client's transit money must be tracked separately from your revenue: in your accounting it should show up as «client's money for purchasing», not as studio income.

«Dead» Projects That Dragged On

A separate category of losses is projects that should have closed in three months but live for a year. The client vanished because their circumstances changed. The renovation stalled over money. The client won't approve a stage for weeks. The project is formally unclosed, its slot in the schedule taken, and no new money comes in.

Such a project is doubly dangerous. First, you already received an advance and spent it, while the final stages that should have brought the main payment are stuck. Second, the designer periodically returns to the project — to refresh their memory, answer the client, make a small edit — and nobody counts those hours. The project smoulders and slowly eats resources.

Dead projects need to be visible plainly: how many there are, how long they've hung, how much money is stuck in them. Sometimes the healthiest decision is to close the project formally, issue a final invoice for what was actually done, and free the slot for a live commission. A project that brings nothing for a year costs you more than an empty slot in the schedule.

How It Sounds in Real Life

The realization usually arrives at the same moment. The owner sits down to work out why, with seven projects this year, they earned less than with five last year. They sort the projects by margin — and see that the two biggest and most prestigious ran at almost zero because of endless revisions and gifted supervision.

«For years I took pride in expensive objects and felt awkward charging for revisions. It turned out I was funding clients' whims out of my own pocket, while the compact projects I looked down on were the ones feeding me.»

Then come the conversations owners avoid for years: split supervision into a separate rate, spell out in the contract the price of revisions beyond the norm, separate transit money from revenue. Not because the studio is greedy, but because the number is finally visible, and it's clear where the studio is being short-changed.

And a second discovery almost always follows: clients take fair rules just fine. A client who agreed to the project pays calmly for extra render views and separate supervision when it's spelled out from the start. Problems arise only where the studio stays silent and endures, and then burns out.

How to See It in Finmap

To count margin per project you don't need a financier on staff. You need money, fees and transit to stop sitting in one pot. In Finmap it comes together exactly like this:

• Income by project. Every fee is visible separately: for which project, which stage, when it arrived. You instantly see how much the studio really earned, not how much money passed through the account.
• Direct costs by project. Fees to visualizers, draftspeople, engineers, designers' hours, site visits — allocated to a specific project. You see the cost, not just «all expenses together».
• Margin on every project. Fee minus direct costs — and you see who feeds the studio and who merely loads up the team. Dead projects become visible too.
• A payment calendar of stages and payouts. You see when advances and final payments arrive, when you must settle with specialists and suppliers, and whether cash will hold when several projects start at once.
• Transit money kept separate. The client's funds for buying furniture are tracked apart from revenue, so the account balance no longer misleads you.

Once this sits in one place, «where does the money go» stops being a question. You look at margin by project — and the decisions become obvious: which project to take, what to bill extra for, which slot to free.

Advice for a Design Studio Owner

• Count the fee, not the object's budget. Your earnings are what the studio charges for its work, not the client's renovation total.
• Make author's supervision a separate rate. Gifted supervision is the most expensive gift you give.
• Spell out the price of revisions beyond the norm. How many rounds are included and what costs extra should be in the contract from day one.
• Keep transit money separate from revenue. Funds for buying furniture are not your income but an obligation to suppliers.
• Don't treat an advance as earned money. Behind it stand hours you still have to work.
• Look at dead projects once a month. Closing a stuck commission and freeing the slot is often more profitable than dragging it out for years.

On a related note — if you want to bring systematic order to accounting for projects, fees and settlements with contractors, start with accounting for a creative studio: projects, contractors, fees. And to dig deeper into the mechanics of per-order margin and stop working at a loss, look at how to count project margin and stop losing money on client work.

«Plenty of projects and little in hand — that isn't about the volume of work. It's about the fact that some of the work you do for free, and other people's money you count as your own.»

Money Doesn't Disappear. You Just Don't See It.

Your studio's money doesn't vanish. It gets lost between gifted supervision, free revisions and the furniture transit you mistook for revenue. The moment margin on each project becomes visible, the decisions arrive on their own — which project to take, what to charge for separately, which slot in the schedule to free.

Try Finmap free for 14 days. Enter your projects, lay out the fees, the specialists' costs and the transit money — and for the first time you'll see which projects really feed the studio and which merely thicken your portfolio.