Fewer Projects, More Profit: The Case for Saying No

From higher rates to smarter fee structures, six interior designers share how they traded overwhelming workloads for stronger businesses—and clients who value their expertise.

Lauren Vallario was running 31 projects at once. It was just her and a part-time assistant at Lauren Vallario Designs in Stamford, Connecticut. Revenue hovered around $300,000, which felt like a strong year at the time, and she figured the workload was simply what the job required.

“I thought that was normal!” she laughed. “I thought you had to take on a lot of projects in order to make more money.”

She found out otherwise on her first trip to High Point Market, comparing notes with other designers. Thirty-one projects for two people isn’t a business model; it’s just a lot of projects.

I run six large full-service projects a year at my firm in Macon, Georgia, and this is by design. When I asked a group of working designers around the country how they got to fewer projects and more money, every one of them described the same expensive mistake, made early: they’d confused volume with revenue.

Why They Stopped

Janiece Lonvelin of Velène Design House in Orange County, California, cut from nine or ten concurrent projects to five or six – and doubled her revenue. What pushed her wasn’t her financials though. “I wasn’t feeling motivated. I wasn’t excited to bring on new projects, and I was just unhappy in my business,” she said. That was the summer of 2025.

Meagan DelMarmol of Casa del Marmol in Central Florida described the same struggle. Running six or seven projects of similar scope at once, she found the work getting sloppy and her patience thinning. “I was resentful toward clients, even though it wasn’t really their fault,” she said. “I was charging too low and basically letting people take advantage of my time.”

When a designer starts resenting the people paying her, the problem is almost never the clients. It’s the pricing.

Four Things Had to Change

The first change is obvious but one that many designers resist: raise their rates. Angela Cunningham of Hemstitch in Kilmarnock, Virginia, raised her hourly rate and started charging for the initial consultation, which she says weeded out tire kickers immediately. Del Marmol’s advice is to do it incrementally and without ceremony. “All it takes is one client saying yes to your new pricing for you to believe it’s doable,” she said. “Use the next person who comes along as the guinea pig, raise your rates, and see what sticks.”

The second change these designers implemented is a minimum. Kathleen Reynolds of Kathleen Reynolds Interiors in Greenville, South Carolina, started with a three-room minimum, stated plainly on the first phone call. “That was really scary to say,” she said.

It also worked!

People who wanted help with a rug rethought whether they had a project at all. She now holds a five-room minimum and is working toward three to five projects a year. I hold a three-room minimum on full-service work for the same reason – it sorts out fit on the first call instead of three meetings in.

The third is charging for that first site meeting. My entry point for all new clients is a paid strategy session, and nobody gets a proposal for a larger project without one. It turns the free consultation, historically the least profitable hour in this industry, into revenue and a qualification step at the same time.

The fourth change is structural, and it’s the one most designers skip. Raising rates is easy, but redesigning how the fee gets collected is what makes fewer projects survivable.

DelMarmol moved to a hybrid model: a flat design fee upfront for the phase she fully controls, then a retainer against estimated hours for procurement and project management, where construction timelines make a flat fee feel risky. Cunningham broke each project into paid phases: pre-construction, design, and project management.

Tami Espinoza of Dwell and Flourish in Houston didn’t change her rates at all. She changed how confidently she quotes her hour estimates, split payments into four blocks of 25%, and now sends clients their project status and hours every Friday so nobody is ever surprised.

DelMarmol’s version of this is the most useful sentence in the whole conversation. When a client asks if she can do better on the price, she says: “I can’t reduce the price, but I can reduce the scope. What would you like to remove?”

“It’s a real tell,” she said. “If they’re not willing to reduce the scope to get a lower price, they’re not valuing the service.”

The Money Outside the Design Fee

DelMarmol spent her early years passing her trade discount straight through to clients as a “thank-you” for the business. It felt generous. It was also the difference between a firm that survives a slow quarter, and one that doesn’t. Once she started selling products at retail and pricing freight, receiving, storage and handling properly instead of eating those expenses, the same project count started producing real profit.

A lot of talented designers are losing money right here without knowing it. The design fee covers your thinking; product and logistics are where a small firm builds a cushion, and a firm without a cushion makes panicked decisions.

Nobody’s Version of This Was Clean

Reynolds was blunt about the lag. “It takes a while for my mindset to catch up,” she said, and the hardest part isn’t the strangers, it’s the acquaintance who needs help with two rooms. Lauren got fewer yeses and was genuinely nervous about it. Janiece is six months into the shift and still adjusting. Tami turned down projects where the client felt rushed or dismissive, and told others she couldn’t start for three or four months.

“The ones that want your time stay and wait for your schedule to open up,” she said. “The others just want anyone to work on their project.”

Why This Matters if You Sell to Designers

Designers running three well-priced projects are better customers than designers running fifteen underpriced ones, and it isn’t even close. They specify more per room. They don’t shop the same console across four vendors to save eighty dollars. When a piece arrives damaged, they’ve got contingency built into their pricing, so it’s a phone call instead of a crisis, and they’re not asking you to absorb it. They can wait out a lead time, because their client has been prepared for one.

Home News Now’s own consumer research this spring found that high-income consumers are deeply engaged in the design process and increasingly willing to finance projects north of $100,000. Those clients don’t hire the designer with thirty jobs. They hire the one with room to pay attention, and that designer only exists if her pricing lets her say no.

If you want a healthy design channel, you want designers who can afford to be picky.

So, the Designer Who Says She Can’t Afford to Turn Work Away

DelMarmol answers that one best. “If you feel like you can’t afford to turn work away, you’re probably charging way, way, way too low.”

Cunningham agrees. “You are the boss, not the client. If they want it cheaper, they aren’t your ideal client.”

Start with your own numbers. Track your hours honestly on one project and find out what you’re actually earning. Every other trade on the job knows its hourly rate down to the quarter hour. Designers are often the only ones on site who don’t. More clients won’t fix that.

Note: Header image photographed by Tracy Wind Photography