If you are in the interior designing profession, you must have come across many tips and ideas to build an interior design portfolio. There are so many different design styles that can be employed to fulfill the dreams and preferences of clients in this field. But this one element has the greatest impact on how fast you get clients and satisfy them with your service. This element is your interior design portfolio.
Some must be already familiar with the importance of a portfolio when building a career in such a field. You must also be familiar with a typical interior design portfolio layout. Of course, it must have an ‘about us’ or ‘about me’ section, where you can write all you want about your design inspiration and demonstrate your skills. Then you will have a gallery to showcase all your past work.
But in this post, we will discuss how to create a interior design portfolio practically. We want to give you several interior design portfolio examples, which were literally made in a matter of a few hours and without any heavy investments of money and effort. Yes, we are talking about a professional interior design portfolio website that can be shared with your prospects to get you more projects. A professionally built portfolio website is what you need to attract countless clients and skyrocket your career in the interior designing field.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
What is an Interior Design Portfolio?
An interior design portfolio is the document or website URL you share with design firms and other prospective clients or employers hoping to hire you for their next big design project. It includes pictures and information about the past interior designing work you have done and is meant to represent your skills and expertise in home or office decor.
The portfolio can be full of minimalist designs or based on modern trends. Try to keep it as genuine as possible. There is no point in trying to fake your past work, as that won’t hold any substance. Signify your skill and specialization as much as you can, and impress your prospects with the creative ways you have designed the interiors of your past clients’ facilities. Whichever tool, forum, or graphic design software you use, the goal should be to share your best work with potential recruiters or clients.
5 Tips to Create an Awesome Interior Design Portfolio
Just like an architecture portfolio, an interior design portfolio should show how adaptable your design ideas suit every client’s needs. It must convey your structural nuances, creativity, and the ability to comprehend your client’s perspective.
Design firms are looking for these characteristics in the interior designers they hire. If you are an interior designer, you will be interacting with many such firms soon. Hence you need to know the criteria they usually set to select the best candidate. Interior designing is a highly competitive field. You need to navigate your path to the top to land quality clients and close big deals.
We are here to support you with a few tips for your interior design portfolio.
1. Select a Suitable Interior Design Portfolio Layout
Before you start creating your interior design portfolio layout from scratch, it is good to have a look at some of the fabulous interior design portfolio examples made by established professionals. Most of these layouts or templates use mood boards and graphic design imagery combinations. The key here is to choose templates that go well with your design ideas.
Graphic design tools like Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, or even Powerpoint provide a good range of templates that you can use as your interior design portfolio layout. Whether you use a simple white layout or a fancy, complex and multi-colored one, make sure it enhances your pictures and makes them look impressive.
2. Work With Graphic Design Tools and Software
Your interior design portfolio will significantly depend on the designs you produce. That’s why this step is very critical. The kind of tool or software you use might affect the quality of your designs. Look for tools that allow easy sharing of 3D renderings. If you use a website builder, look for one that will enable you to upload your designs directly on your portfolio website, with an option to also attach your designs as separate files in the gallery. We will discuss a good choice of portfolio website building platform below.
3. Present Your Artistic Sensibilities
The thing that will give your interior design portfolio an edge is your artistic sensibilities. You have to show your home decor skills and prepare designs for different rooms separately. Make at least one bedroom design, one living room design, one bathroom, and one kitchen design.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Then add some 3D renderings of a studio apartment. Develop two versions, one with minimalist style while the other revealing elaborate design trends. Top it all with a final layout of large and small room houses. This will demonstrate your ultimate mastery over a broad spectrum of interior designing.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
4. Attach Client Testimonials to Your Portfolio
This is important. Your prospects will trust the testimonials and reviews posted on your interior design portfolio more than what you write about your skills and experience on it. More people are expected to take on your service if your existing and past clients are satisfied with it. Make sure your portfolio website has a feature that allows your clients to publish testimonials.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
5. Pick the Right Forum
Although we mention this as our last tip here, this is the first action you’ll need to take to create an interior design portfolio. Select the platform you want to use to build your portfolio website. A growing, user-friendly, and cost-effective platform is Strikingly. Let’s describe the step-by-step process to build an interior design portfolio website on Strikingly.
Steps to Build an Interior Design Portfolio on Strikingly
To build an interior design portfolio on Strikingly, you need to take the following simple steps.
1. Create an Account on Strikingly
Sign up for a free account on Strikingly by entering your name and email address on the form on our homepage. We offer most of the features needed to build a basic portfolio website in our free plan. You will not be asked to key in any credit card details to register for a free account with us.
Image taken from Strikingly
2. Select a Website Template
Once you sign up and confirm your email, you will be taken to our template selection page. Here you can select a suitable portfolio website template. Our templates are ready to use and save you the time, cost, and effort of building your web design from scratch. We have a special category for portfolio templates, which might be the most convenient to build an interior design portfolio website on. You can preview the templates before choosing the final one. Check out the layout of each and see which one can best fulfill your interior design portfolio requirements.
Image taken from Strikingly
3. Upload Your Pictures
After choosing a template, you will get access to your Strikingly editor. Here, you can upload your portfolio pictures using our drag and drop interface. There are several ways for you to organize your images. You can either create a gallery by selecting ‘Gallery’ from the ‘Add New Section’ button on the left panel or go for ‘Big Media’, which allows you to quickly upload a combination of images and videos.
Image taken from Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly
4. Add Other Important Sections to Your Portfolio
Don’t forget to create an ‘about us’ and ‘contact us’ sections to include these details in your interior design portfolio. Your prospects should be able to contact you directly through the website if they feel interested in your services. Make sure you include some high authority, relevant keywords in your content. This will help in ranking your portfolio website well in search engines, which in turn will make it more discoverable for your prospects.
5. Publish Your Website
Once you have added all the content, it is time to hit the ‘Publish’ button and make your interior design portfolio website go live. It is really that simple! You won’t have to write any code or read any programming language in the process. You can also edit or update your website content any time you like through your Strikingly editor.
Share the link to your website with your friends and peers in person and on social media. The more you spread the word about your interior design portfolio and service, the more chances you’ll have of landing new clients.
Websites built on Strikingly are attractive, responsive, and easy to navigate. That’s why it is an ideal platform for aspiring entrepreneurs, new businessmen, and skilled freelancers to build portfolios on. You cannot be carrying around a heavy file or folder every time you go to a meeting to pitch your interior design services. You need to have something to share your interior design portfolio on, which can be accessed by the potential recruiters or clients from their own device.
