Interior designers create spaces that are functional, aesthetically pleasing, and appropriate for their clients’ needs. To succeed in the role, you’ll need a creative mindset, an eye for detail, and an aptitude for problem solving. You’ll also need excellent people skills, as achieving client satisfaction is likely to be your primary goal.
There’s no single path to becoming an interior designer. While formal education isn’t always strictly necessary, most firms require at least a bachelor’s degree in a design-related field. Additionally, some states require licensure to practice or to claim the title of interior designer, typically through the National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) exam.
In 2023, job prospects for interior designers are good, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicting 13 percent growth. In particular, expect to see a rapid increase in trends like environmental design, sustainability, accessibility, and universal design.
As an interior designer, you’ll be responsible for more than just designing attractive spaces — your duties may also include client acquisition, bidding on new projects, sketching design plans, estimating costs, and ensuring that all designs comply with health and safety, product, and building regulations. It’s a tall order, which is why your resume needs to demonstrate a healthy mix of soft skills and hands-on design experience.
Soft skills like creativity, organization, and communication, while essential to interior designers, are too subjective to list outright. Instead, demonstrate these skills in action through your accomplishments. If you want to emphasize your ability to build strong relationships, highlight the amount of new business you’ve brought in through referrals or discounts you’ve secured from long-time vendors.
As an interior designer, you’ll need technical skills like Illustrator and Photoshop, AutoCAD, and Autodesk Revit. You can list hard skills like this in a separate skills section. If you have additional qualifications, you can list these in the same section, but using subheadings to make it easier for recruiters to quickly skim.
Interior design assistants are integral to the smooth running of design firms. To succeed, you’ll need both administrative and creative skills, as your tasks can range from providing administrative support to assisting with design tasks, maintaining client relationships, and managing projects. Your resume should demonstrate your ability to assist with any aspect of the job, so make sure to emphasize the hard skills and experience that employers are looking for.
Showing that you’ve worked your way up from the bottom emphasizes loyalty, commitment, and a willingness to take on any whatever task is needed. If you’ve held other positions related to interior design — like sales assistant, event planner, or design consultant — including those titles on your resume can show the kind of career growth that recruiters want to see.
Using hard numbers is the best way to provide context and emphasize the scope of your accomplishments. Including metrics for how much you increased sales, how many team members you’ve trained, or how much you increased customer referrals outlines your achievements in objective, concrete terms that are easy for hiring managers to understand.
Early in your career, you’ll be competing with other entry-level interior designers with similar amounts of education and experience. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to stand out — even without a long work history, your student activities, volunteer work, and personal projects can all demonstrate the essential skills you’ll need as an interior designer. By using action-based bullet points, you can have a professional-looking resume even as a fresh graduate.
Your resume should always prioritize your most recent and relevant experience. As a recent graduate, this is likely to be your education, so consider putting your education section at the top. The more recent your degree, the more detail — like coursework and GPA — you can include, but you should drop this extra information once you have more professional experience.
If you don’t have a lot of paid work experience, that’s okay! Educational projects and volunteer work both have a place on your resume, especially if you’re applying for entry level positions. Structure these the same way you would any other experience, starting with an action verb and focusing on accomplishments, not responsibilities.
When listing skills on your resume, make sure you’re focusing on hard or technical skills — think specific software programs, certifications, and elements of design. While soft skills like creativity and communication are also essential for interior designers, these should be demonstrated through your accomplishments only, never listed as skills on their own. Hard skills can be listed in your bullet points or in a ‘Skills’ or ‘Additional Information’ section at the end of your resume. If you do this, make sure to keep it short and easily skimmable — typically around 5-10 skills.
To find the right skills to get you past Applicant Tracking Systems and into the hands of a hiring manager, you should carefully read through the job description and pull out the most important skills. Our list of top resume skills and keywords has analyzed over a million job descriptions to give you a headstart.
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Interior Design job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
Interior designers need to have experience with taking designs from concept to creation, all while considering what their clients are looking for and how the space is going to be used. Want to show off your creativity? Use verbs like Designed and Created. If the job you’re applying for is more focused on technical skills, try Drafted or Developed. To emphasize sales and customer service, use Generated, increased, or Fulfilled.
Starting each bullet point with a strong action verb is the best way to make sure you’re focusing on your accomplishments, not simply listing your responsibilities. Remember, hiring managers don’t want to know about your previous jobs — they want to know what you’re likely to achieve in this one.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
If you're a senior-level employee, or you're changing careers to become an Interior Design, it's useful to add a paragraph at the top of your resume highlighting your most impressive accomplishments. This is called a resume summary.
Here's an example of a summary that can be used on an Interior Design resume.
A resume summary is a totally optional section, and in most cases, it's better to leave it out of your resume than include it. For example, if you're a student or mid-level hire, you should not include a summary, and instead use the space to add to your work experience.
To learn how to write an effective resume summary for your Interior Design resume, or figure out if you need one, please read Resume Summary Examples for Job Seekers: When To Include One.
