Last updated 15 October 2026
About £40 a lead, against a £5,000 design fee.
Only one seller lets you work out a price per interior design lead. Zapo runs search ads for designers from £400 a month plus VAT and forecasts 10 leads on that plan, so roughly £40 each. Bark sells credits at £1.80 without saying how many a design client takes, Houzz Pro is £139 a month for a year at a time, and the BIID's referrals come with a £395 plus VAT membership. A click on your own ad costs £3.08 to £7.55.
Set against a design fee, every one of those prices is small. What separates them is who else sees the client and how long you're signed up for. This guide is for designers and small studios winning homeowner clients, not for anyone hunting a lead designer job. Painters who get called interior decorators are in decorating leads, and kitchen planning and fitting in kitchen leads.
From Houzz's own help page
"professionals that are Houzz customers are prioritised, factoring in the price paid for the advertising"
That's how Houzz decides which designers a homeowner sees after filling in its matching tool. Its other factors are the homeowner's preferences, how quickly you reply, and "other factors". A designer on a bigger advertising package is shown more.
Where we stand
We don't sell interior design leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying interior design leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build interior designers a website that turns visits into calls, and run Google Ads in an account in your own name, so every lead that comes in is a customer who found you, and nobody else was sold it.
What one client is worth
A single room pays for a year of leads. The wrong client costs you more.
Checkatrade's cost guide prices an interior designer at £50 to £150 an hour, an entry-level package (usually one room) at £3,000 to £7,000, and full design with project management from £20,000. Some designers charge 10 to 15% of the project instead, it says; MyBuilder's guide puts it at 10 to 25%. The table sets those fees against Zapo's forecast lead and against a lead from your own "interior designer near me" ad, if you win one client in 3.
| Work | Typical UK fee | Zapo, about £40 a lead | Own ads, about £71 a lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ten hours of design time | £500 to £1,500 | £120 a win, 12% of the fee | £213 a win, 21% of the fee |
| Entry-level package, usually one room | £3,000 to £7,000 | £120 a win, 2% of the fee | £213 a win, 4% of the fee |
| Design and documents, several spaces | £5,000 to £20,000 | £120 a win, 1% of the fee | £213 a win, 2% of the fee |
| Full design and project management | £20,000 to £50,000 | £120 a win, 0.3% of the fee | £213 a win, 0.6% of the fee |
Job prices are from Checkatrade's interior designer cost guide, whose table was last updated in May 2024. Ten hours is our own example of a small job at its hourly rates, and the whole-home row takes its "£50,000+" as £50,000. Ranges are worked at their middle. Winning one quote in 3 is MyJobQuote's figure for its own trades; nobody publishes one for interior designers. For Zapo we take its £400 plan and share it across the 10 leads Zapo itself predicts, before VAT.
As a rough rule, winning a job should cost about 10 to 15 percent of what it's worth. Design fees sail under that: a Zapo lead is 2% of a one-room package and 1% of design and documents. Even 10 hours of consultation work only reaches 12%. So the lead price is rarely what sinks a designer. The client who wanted a £50-an-hour chat when you sell whole-house schemes is.
Most designers don't publish fees
In the BIID's 2019 survey, 80% of designers did not list their fees on their websites. A homeowner who enquires can't tell if you charge hourly, by the room or by the percent, which is exactly how mismatched leads get made.
Anyone can use the title
The BIID's own client guide says the title "interior designer" is not protected, so "anyone can call themselves an interior designer". A platform listing puts you next to all of them. Your own website is where the credentials and the portfolio get the room to show.
Your numbers
What can you spend to land one design client and still profit?
Start on the one-room package. Set how many consultations it takes you to sign one client, then type in a seller's price per lead, or your own cost per click divided by how many clicks turn into a call. Flip to the ten-hour row to see how much tighter it gets on small work.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR AN INTERIOR DESIGN LEAD?
Pick a job, or type in what yours are worth
Starts on one in three, the figure MyJobQuote tells its own trades to expect. Put in yours.
You can pay up to about
£250
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £500 to £750
- Which per lead is
- £167 to £250
Put a seller's price in the last box and this will tell you what each won job would cost you.
That 10 to 15 percent band is a rule of thumb, not a measured figure.
Who sells them
Six places sell you design clients. Only one says the client is yours alone.
Each row quotes the platform's own pricing page, terms or help centre. "Not stated" means we couldn't find it on their site.
| Platform | Price | Who else sees the client | How long you're in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zapo (formerly Get Work) | £400 to £1,600 a month + VAT | Nobody, it says | Month to month |
| Bark | Credits at £1.80, count per lead not stated | Up to 5 responders | Credits last 3 months |
| Houzz Pro | £139 a month, ads from £119 | Other pros, ranked partly by ad spend | 12 months, renews itself |
| BIID referral service | £395 + VAT a year to be eligible | Other Registered Interior Designers | Membership year to 31 March |
| Checkatrade | £30 a month, lead plans from £59 | Not stated | Fixed plans run 12 months |
| TrustATrader | Not published | Not stated | 12 months, paid up front |
Zapo buys the clicks and forecasts ten
Its interior designers page says "Zapo Ads delivers exclusive leads to interior design companies, interior designers and fitters", starting "within the next 14 days". On the cheapest plan, £200 of the £400 goes on the ads and Zapo estimates 10 leads a month; its top plan is £1,600 for an estimated 40. It adds that "volumes vary by sector, location and season", and contracts are month to month. Those are search ads in the same auction you can bid in yourself, and the other half of the £400 is Zapo's fee for running them.
Bark shows you the queue before you pay
Interior design on Bark is still bought with credits, not the newer monthly plans, which in the UK only cover cleaners so far. A credit is £1.80 and the lead's credit cost shows before you respond. Bark says "Specialist services typically cost more than general ones" and "A customer ready to hire may cost more than one still researching". Up to 5 professionals can respond to one customer, and you can see how many already have. Its terms give credits back only for bad contact details reported within 7 days (its help centre says 14), and a client who hired somebody else doesn't count. Our full Bark review covers the rest.
Houzz Pro is a year's subscription with matching
The pricing page lists £0 for a 30-day trial, then £139 a month, with advertising "Starting at £119/month". That's £1,668 a year for the plan and £1,428 for the cheapest advertising. Its advertising lets you "Select the types of projects and budgets that you serve", which matters more to a designer than to most trades, since the budget decides the fee.
The terms make the initial term 12 months from your first payment, renewing automatically for another 12 unless you give notice at least 30 days before the end. Payments are non-refundable, and Houzz "cannot guarantee ... that leads will contact you".
The BIID sends referrals to members
The BIID referral service is "a membership benefit for BIID Registered Interior Designers". A client fills in a form, the BIID sends the request to its Registered Interior Designers, reviews the replies, and asks unsuccessful ones to redraft before the client gets "the final pool of submissions". It says referrals in its last membership year carried budgets of more than £7.5 million, and also that it "cannot guarantee clients will make contact". Becoming a Registered Interior Designer costs £395 plus VAT a year and a £50 plus VAT application fee; a one-to-three person practice is £600 plus VAT. The year runs to 31 March, and missing that date to resign leaves the full year's fee due.
Checkatrade and TrustATrader list you by trade
Checkatrade has an Interior Designer category, and its job form asks whether the customer wants "a full home redesign or a commercial consultation". It sells Approved at £30 a month and lead plans from £59, and its pricing page says fixed plan memberships "are for 12 months". TrustATrader lists interior designers too, on an annual membership paid in advance with no price published. MyBuilder has no interior design trade and sends those jobs to architectural services; Rated People and MyJobQuote have no category for it. What sharing one homeowner between several firms does to your price is in the shared-lead trap.
Everything here about Houzz's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 1 October 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have interior design leads that are yours alone?
That's what we do. We don't sell leads. We build the website and run the Google Ads that bring customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingWant to know how many people near you search Google for what you do each month? Message us your town and we'll send you the real numbers.
Check my areaBuying the click yourself
Homeowners type "interior designer" 8,100 times a month. Designers search for leads about 10.
"interior designer leads" gets about 10 searches a month and nobody bids on it. "interior design marketing" gets about 40 at £7.06 a click, and "houzz pro" about 720. The homeowner side is far bigger: "interior designer near me" alone is 5,400 a month at £5.22 a click. For the last column we assume 7.33% of clicks get in touch, which is WordStream's conversion rate for home improvement search ads. It comes from American campaigns, so treat that column as a guide.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| find an interior designer | 50 | £7.55 | £103 |
| interior designer london | 3,600 | £6.58 | £90 |
| interior designer birmingham | 390 | £6.00 | £82 |
| interior decorator | 590 | £5.76 | £79 |
| interior designer | 8,100 | £5.61 | £77 |
| luxury interior designer | 260 | £5.54 | £76 |
| interior designer manchester | 590 | £5.38 | £73 |
| interior designer near me | 5,400 | £5.22 | £71 |
| hire an interior designer | 140 | £5.20 | £71 |
| interior design company | 880 | £5.12 | £70 |
| interior design consultation | 390 | £4.59 | £63 |
| interior design services | 390 | £4.54 | £62 |
| residential interior designer | 90 | £4.49 | £61 |
| interior design near me | 2,400 | £3.94 | £54 |
| online interior design | 880 | £3.90 | £53 |
| interior design studio | 480 | £3.08 | £42 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 1 October 2026. Click prices are bid estimates from other advertisers, so your real cost per click will sit near them, not exactly on them.
Per lead that works out at £42 to £103, dearer than Zapo's forecast. "interior designer london" costs about £90 a lead and "find an interior designer" about £103, on a handful of searches. Two rows need care. "interior decorator" at £5.76 pulls in people after a painter as well as a designer, so run it with your fee basis in the ad. "online interior design" is cheap at about £53 a lead, but it's the e-design shopper, not the whole-house client. What owning the ads buys you is the choice:
- Bid on your towns, not the whole UK
- Your fee basis in the ad, before the call
- Your portfolio is the page they land on
- No other designer gets sent the enquiry
- Clicks paid to Google, nothing added
- An ad account that leaves with you
Designers have no slot in Google's UK Local Services Ads, so paying Google for a homeowner who wants a scheme drawn up means plain search ads. The setup is in our Google Ads guide, and setting the monthly figure in how much to spend on Google Ads.
Before the builders arrive
Specify the fit-out and the law can treat you as principal designer.
HSE spells it out: "Designers can be architects, consulting engineers, quantity surveyors and interior designers, or anyone who specifies and alters designs as part of their work." CDM 2015 counts fitting out, renovation and redecoration as construction work, and a specification as part of a design. HSE adds that "Working as a designer for a domestic client is no different to working for a commercial client."
Before you start work
Regulation 9 says a designer "must not commence work in relation to a project unless satisfied that the client is aware of the duties owed by the client".
When several trades work
If more than one contractor is on the job and the homeowner appoints no principal designer, HSE says the role falls on "the designer in control of the pre-construction phase".
What BIID members put in writing
The BIID's 2026 Code of Conduct tells members to confirm in writing whether they will act as principal designer, alongside the fee and how it is calculated.
None of this is on a lead. "Full home redesign" on a Checkatrade form could mean cushions and paint, or knocking through and rewiring with three trades on site. Ask which before you quote, and price the coordinating in if it's the second.
Signing the client
Start the mood boards on day one and the client can still cancel on day 14.
Agree a design contract in the client's home, or by phone or email, and the Consumer Contracts Regulations give the client 14 days to cancel a service. You can only start inside that time if they ask you to, and for an off-premises deal the request has to be on a durable medium. If they then cancel, regulation 36 has them pay in proportion to what you've done.
- Cancellation info given: 14 days
- Asked in writing to start: they pay pro rata
- No cancellation info: up to 12 months more
- No info and you started: they owe nothing
That last line is in regulation 31 and regulation 36(6). A concept scheme drawn up in the first fortnight without the paperwork is work you may never be paid for.
Trade discounts, said out loud
Houzz put supplier trade discounts at typically 10 to 20 percent back in 2015. The BIID warns that an undisclosed payment from a supplier can put designer and supplier at risk under the Bribery Act 2010. Selling furniture at retail is "entirely legal as long as the designer has made it clear to their client that in addition to providing professional services, they are also a retailer".
Who owns the drawings
Under section 11 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, the author of a drawing is its first owner, or the employer if an employee drew it. The BIID suggests a term that the client "cannot use your copyright drawings and documents for other projects without your written consent".
Through the year
Homeowners look for designers in autumn and January, and go quiet in summer.
UK searches for "interior designer near me" held at 6,600 in September, October, November and January, and fell to 3,600 in December, May, June and July. That's a gap of about 1.8 times between the busiest and quietest months.
UK searches for "interior designer near me", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
Three quiet months, not one
Three months sat at the bottom, May to July. That's the stretch to finish live schemes and chase past clients for reviews rather than lift bids.
A Houzz year doesn't follow it
A 12-month plan bills the same in June as in October. A search budget can drop when searches drop and go back up in September.
Before you sign up
Five questions to ask a platform before it has your card details.
If the platform hands you contact details, the ICO expects you as the buyer to check how they were collected, and says a seller's word that the data is clean isn't enough.
- How many designers see each client?
- Can I set a minimum budget?
- Is it 12 months, and does it renew?
- What gets credit back, and by when?
- Did the client ask to be contacted?
Keep the replies in the same folder as the contract, because the renewal date is the one you'll need in eleven months.
Which way to go
Pay for reach if you're new. Pay for clients who already want your fee.
A platform suits you if
- You have no portfolio site yet
- You can filter by budget
- You reply the same day
- One client covers the year
Think twice if
- Up to 5 designers can respond
- It renews for 12 months
- Most enquiries want an hour
- Matching favours big spenders
Run your own if
- You sell rooms or whole homes
- Your fee basis is on your site
- You want the client to yourself
- You want to pause in summer
A designer's problem is rarely the price of a lead. It's spending a free first hour with somebody who wanted cushions when you sell whole floors. Anything that puts your fee and your work in front of the client before they ring does more than a cheaper lead. Built-in storage often comes up mid-scheme; the joiners behind it are in fitted wardrobe leads, and every other trade is in our guide to trade leads.
Our sources
Where every interior design figure here came from.
We have a stake here: we sell designers the alternative, a website and an ad account of their own. That's why each platform is quoted from its own pages, and why the tables show Zapo's forecast lead coming in cheaper than one from your own ads.
Seller pages and terms were read on 1 October 2026, and the UK search and click data was pulled from Google Ads the same day. Fees are from Checkatrade's cost guide and the BIID's survey. Platform terms are Houzz's Pro terms, Bark's terms and the BIID's referral pages. CDM duties come from HSE and legislation.gov.uk, cancellation from the Consumer Contracts Regulations, and copyright from the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.
Questions designers ask
Interior design leads, straight answers.
- How much do interior design leads cost in the UK?
- Almost nobody prints a price per lead. Zapo, formerly Get Work, runs search ads for interior designers from £400 a month plus VAT and forecasts 10 leads on that plan, so roughly £40 each. Bark sells credits at £1.80 but doesn't say how many an interior design lead takes. Houzz Pro is £139 a month on a 12-month term, with advertising from £119 a month. A click on your own interior designer ad costs £3.08 to £7.55.
- Are interior design leads exclusive?
- Only Zapo says so. On Bark up to 5 professionals can respond to one customer. The BIID sends each referral to its Registered Interior Designers and passes a pool of replies to the client. Houzz chooses which pros a homeowner sees partly on their paid advertising status and what they paid for advertising.
- Is Houzz Pro worth it for an interior designer?
- A year of Houzz Pro is £1,668 before any advertising, about 33% of one £5,000 entry-level design package, so a single client pays for it. The catch is the contract: the plan runs for 12 months, renews automatically unless you give notice at least 30 days before the end, and Houzz's own terms say it cannot guarantee that leads will contact you.
- How does the BIID referral service work?
- A client fills in the BIID's form, the BIID sends the request to its Registered Interior Designers, reviews the replies, and sends the client a final pool. Only Registered Interior Designers can respond, which costs £395 plus VAT a year plus a £50 application fee. The BIID says it can't guarantee the client will make contact.
- Do Checkatrade and MyBuilder have interior designers?
- Checkatrade has an Interior Designer category and TrustATrader has an interior design one. MyBuilder has no interior design trade and sends those jobs to architectural services. Rated People and MyJobQuote have no interior design category at all.
- Am I a designer under CDM 2015 on a home renovation?
- HSE lists interior designers among the people who count as designers, and says working for a domestic client is no different from a commercial one. If more than one contractor works on the job and the homeowner appoints no principal designer, the designer in control of the pre-construction phase takes that role.
- Can a client cancel an interior design contract?
- If you agreed it away from your premises or remotely, yes, within 14 days. If they asked you in writing to start sooner and then cancel, they pay for the work done so far. If you never gave them the cancellation information, the period runs up to 12 months longer and they owe nothing for work done inside it.
- When do people search for interior designers most?
- In the last 12 months, UK searches for "interior designer near me" sat at 6,600 in September, October, November and January and dropped to 3,600 in December, May, June and July, about 1.8 times apart.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Design clients who saw your work and your fee before calling you.
Our part is a website that shows your schemes and how you charge, and Google Ads in an account under your own name, aimed at homeowners in the towns you work. See what it costs, then tell us about your business and we'll set the campaign up around the projects you want more of.