Designing a Client profile

When starting a new project one of the first things to do is to write a short client profile.
Understanding your client is the single most important factor to consider before embarking on
putting pen to paper and starting to plan your designs. Some designers use a questionnaire form
to make sure that they gather the right information without forgetting to ask anything, and this is
probably a good idea certainly when starting out.

So what do you need to know about your client? You need to know some information about their
lifestyle –do they live alone? Do they have children? Pets? Do they have lots of house guests?
Do they enjoy watching TV or do they prefer to read? If possible try to ascertain what they do in
their spare time so you can start to build up a picture of how they may use their house. For
example, if they love the outdoors, and have a passion for gardening, perhaps they will want a
low maintenance home without too many expensive mod cons so that they can focus more time
and money on their passion.

Once you have gathered this information you will need to ask questions about the room they are
asking you to design. What do they want to use it for, what time of the day will they use it, what
are their storage requirements, technology requirements etc.
As you can see the questioning should by now have led you to get to know your clients quite
well by now.

What information is needed to create an ideal client profile for

interior designers?

Don’t worry if you’re unsure of exactly where or how to get started creating your own ideal
client profile. Most small businesses put off this priority while trying to chase down new clients.
In a later section, we’ll walk you through some of the basic questions for arriving at a complete
picture of your best business prospects. Generally, marketing experts recommend using two
different types of data when defining your target clients: demographic and psychographic.

Demographic data includes objective information about your prospects and psychographic data
profiles are used to answer more subjective questions about a prospect’s tastes, preferences,
interests. Listed below are the most common categories of information for each type of data:

Demographic Data

 Age
 Gender
 Married
 Income range
 Location
 Education
 Homeowner or renter
 Job (including industry, role and title)
Psychographic Data

 What do they value in their personal and professional lives – what are they passionate about?
 What are their design aspirations; who do they follow and most want their home or workspaces
to reflect?
 What styles or trends interest them?
 What struggles and challenges have they faced while undertaking design projects in the past;
what has led to them working with you?
 What problems can you solve, or how exactly can you make their life easier?
 How involved do they want to be in the design process and decisions?