So you’ve decided: this is the month you actually get your website done. You’re shortlist of builders are open in different tabs, and you’re trying to work out which one is actually right for an interior design business.

Plenty of the designers I work with built a website themselves at some point. It often starts with a quick browse on a weekend with a template that looks incredible, and ends on Sunday night with a homepage that looks ok on a laptop and a bit odd on a phone. By then, you’ve fallen out of love with your choice, but you feel locked in. Any “new website” excitement fades and building your site becomes just another chore.

Your website can be a huge asset when it performs well. It ultimately determines how your future clients feel about working with you, based on how it attracts them, how it looks, and how it engages. So before you spend a weekend falling down template rabbitholes and building out a disappointing site, here’s what to check for to get a website you love.

What is an interior design website builder?

A website builder is the software you use to design and run your website without writing code. It hosts your site, lets you edit your pages, and connects your domain (your web address). There are numerous options, and each comes with its own strengths and quirks. I’d say these are the big four builder platforms in the market. They are trusted, proven and reliable.

• Showit: a drag-and-drop canvas with total design freedom. The quirk: you design the desktop and mobile layouts separately, so give the phone version an extra hour.
• Squarespace: polished templates and an all-in-one setup that’s quick to launch. The quirk: layouts follow a set structure, so you are locked into the design style.
• Wix: lots of features and a free plan to try it out. The quirk: all those options can make building a site quite confusing. Free plans may carry Wix branding.
• WordPress: the original, with thousands of themes and plugins. The quirk: definitely has the steepest learning curve, and requires updates and security, which often means calling a developer.

You may have heard about Shopify too. This platform is focused on e-commerce, so unless you have a shop it’s probably not your best choice.

What you choose all comes down to which best suits the way you work.

Choose an interior design website builder that actually feels like you

When a potential client lands on your website, it’s often the first proper look they get at how you think, before they’ve read a word of your proposal. They’re looking for a touch of creativity, and for a style that makes them think, “this is for me.”

Lots of interior design websites I see feel flat and cookie cutter. The photographs can feel underwhelming and nothing reflects the skill of the designer behind the work. Usually this is caused by a rigid template that works against the designer’s brand.

Start by looking with templates that have a vibe like your design, or your brand. If you design prominently for families, choose a design that has an element of lightness or fun. If you veer towards heritage design, go for a classical design.

Check Google and AI search can read it

A beautiful site nobody finds doesn’t book projects. Whichever builder you pick, check you can edit the page title, meta description, headings and image alt text on every page, and that you can add a proper blog. Google, and increasingly tools like ChatGPT, use these to work out who you are and where you work.

Here’s a quick test. Go to Google now and search for your studio name. Look at the blue headline on your homepage result. If it just says “Home”, you’re missing an easy win. Something like “Jo Harper | Residential Interior Designer, Phoenix, Arizona” tells a stranger and Google what you do in one line. If your site doesn’t show up at all, that’s worth knowing too.

For more on this, see SEO For Interior Designers: How To Rank & Get More Inquiries.

Does it work properly on a phone?

Many of your visitors will arrive from Instagram or Pinterest, which means they’re looking at your site on a phone. Some builders create the mobile version automatically, and large images and long headlines can come out awkwardly. Others let you design mobile separately.

Before you commit to a builder, open the demo on your own phone and scroll the way a client would. Is the text easy to read? Do the images load quickly? Can you find the enquiry button without hunting?

Ensure you can easily add projects

Your portfolio will grow, and you’ll want to write about projects and answer the questions clients keep asking. Check how a new project page gets added, and how many steps it takes. If it feels fiddly during a free trial, it will feel worse when you’re busy.

What does an interior design website really cost?

Avoid sticker shock by factoring in all prices ahead of time. When you consider a builder, add up the monthly fee, any extra for a blog or forms, your domain cost, any plugins or integration costs, and transaction fees if you plan to sell anything. Some builders or platforms give a discount for an annual fee and some hike the price after the first year. Check all of that to get to the true cost of your site.

Where are the free websites for interior designers?

Is there a free option, you ask? If you’ve been searching for interior design websites free to build, you’ll have noticed that most builders do offer a free plan, and Wix is the best known. It’s worth checking what is and is not included with your free site. In exchange for no fees, you may have to agree to certain conditions, such as:

• The builder’s branding or ads on your pages
• A subdomain instead of your own web address*
• Small storage and bandwidth limits, which fill up fast with project photography
• No option to connect your own domain
• Fewer tools for tracking and improving how you show up in search

*A subdomain is a web address that borrows the builder’s name. Instead of yourstudio.com, you’d have something like yourstudio.wixsite.com/yourstudio. On a business card or in an Instagram bio, it tells a potential client you’re still getting started before they’ve seen a single project.

When free is fine. In your first year of business, when you simply need somewhere to point people, a free site can do the job. If you’re still working out what you offer, who you want to work with and what your style is, a few projects and a way to get in touch is enough. Treat it as a sketch, and expect to upgrade later.

When to upgrade. Consider upgrading once you’ve defined your niche and you want your website to start working for you. That means your own domain, no builder branding, and control over your page titles, descriptions and blog, so Google and AI search can find you.

I have a free one-page template build specifically for interior designers on Showit. You will still need a subscription to access it, but after that it’s all yours. Download it here, and get instructions for designing the template and get a free month of Showit: download a free website template for interior designers

Later, when you’re actively driving qualified leads from Instagram, Pinterest or ads, your website becomes more a part of your sales process. At that point a subdomain or a stock layout starts costing you enquiries, and it’s worth investing in a site that looks like your best work and does its job. For more on the trade-offs, see How to Pick the Right Website Template for Your Interior Design Business.

Some builders, including Squarespace and Showit, skip the free plan and offer a free trial instead, which is a good way to test one properly. You can get a month free with Showiit here.

Can you move your interior design website later?

You may outgrow your first choice, so it’s worth knowing how easily you could leave.

Start with your domain. That’s your web address, like ellekwan.com, which you rent a year at a time from a domain registrar (Namecheap and GoDaddy are two common ones). Some builders will register it for you in their own account. That’s convenient until you want to move, because the domain is then tied to their setup, and transferring it can mean extra steps and waiting periods. The ideal is to buy your domain yourself, in your own name and account, and simply point it at your builder. Then you can point it somewhere else whenever you like.

Your words and photos are the next thing to check. Some builders let you export your text and images, or at least your blog posts, in a standard format another platform can import. Others keep everything inside their own system, so moving means copying each page across by hand and re-uploading every photo. Look for a clear export option for pages and blog posts. Whatever you choose, keep your own copies: your photos in a folder on your computer or in the cloud, and your website copy in a document.

The design itself never transfers, whichever builder you use, so a move always means rebuilding how the site looks. That’s why owning your domain and holding onto your words and photos matters so much. They’re the parts you get to keep.

Quick way to finally choose your interior design website builder

Start by writing down how you want the site to look, how much you want to update it yourself, and how much you’d ideally like to spend. Then take a look at what templates each website builder has available.

The template matters as much as the builder. I walk through how to check the look, the pages, the phone view and the search set-up in How to Pick the Right Website Template for Your Business.

Try it with your real content. Once you have two strong candidates, spend an hour adding some of your real project photos and a few lines about who you are and what you do. If you’re not sure what to write, my free guide, The Missing Rooms, has fill-in-the-blank prompts for both your homepage and your About page.

When the hour’s up, ask two more questions:

• Does this feel intuitive to use?
• Does it speak to my ideal client?

If you can say yes to both, you’ve probably found your builder.

When you realise you don’t want to build your own website

Maybe you’ve read this far and realised building it yourself isn’t for you. That’s exactly what this next bit is for. There comes a point where handing it to a professional pays for itself, so when should you call in a website designer (or developer) for your interior design business, and what do they do? A designer could list hundreds of small tasks that go into building out a website, but that would be boring. Here’s the top-line:

• Tailors your site to you and you alone, around your goals, your experience and your ethos
• Keeps the project in check and on time
• Handles it all for you, so you can be onboarding clients (or be in the thick of one)
• Brings your writing, projects and client conversion together cohesively, because websites that work are more than just pretty. They align with your ideal client too

How do you know it’s time? Well, it usually happens when you feel

• You’re setting up, and you want to do it well now because you’ll be too busy later, and you need the site to evolve with you
• You’ve narrowed your niche and you’re ready to own it. You’ve been eyeing up your competitors’ sites and you want the projects they get
• You thought you had a decent site, but you get no traction from it and can’t work out why
• You spent months building out a site, then stopped. You hated it. You might have done that again and again!
• You simply have no desire to make a website. You’re an interior designer who prefers to design spaces in real life, not online!

Putting it off can cost you months (and projects). A designer can customise a template you’ve found, or create something completely custom for your business.

Contact me to see if I’m the right fit to design your website.

The short version

Choosing an interior design website builder doesn’t have to swallow your weekend. Pick one that lets your creativity show, gives you the freedom to add projects and make changes as you grow, and lets you keep hold of your domain, your words and your photos. Give your top two a one-hour test drive, then trust your gut on which one feels like you. Your website is often the first hello a future client gets, so it’s worth making it a good one. You’ve got this!

Try Showit free for a month

If Showit sounds like the right fit, you can try it with a free month here: Try Showit free for a month. And if you’d rather start with the structure already in place, my Showit templates for interior designers come with the pages, layout and guidance on what to write. Shop your next website

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Chosen your builder? Here’s all the sections you need to include on your new website

Once you’ve chosen a builder, the next question is what goes on the site. My free guide, The Missing Rooms, walks through the seven sections an interior design website needs before anyone enquires, with a quick fix for each. Download The Missing Rooms

TL;DR? Here’s just the FAQs