How Much Does a Full-Service Interior Designer Cost in NYC?
Before a first meeting, most people want to know one thing: what will this cost? It's a fair question, and the answer is often vague. Full-service interior design in New York City is a significant investment, and you should know how the fees work before you commit to anything. This piece explains exactly how Studio Kestrel charges for full-service interior design in NYC: what the design fee covers, how we bill, what our projects typically start at, and what is billed separately.
The short answer
At Studio Kestrel, full-service interior design fees start at $100,000 for design and furnishing with light or no renovation, $140,000 for renovation projects, including full-gut apartments, and $350,000 for full-gut house renovations and new construction. Those figures are the design fee only. Furniture, lighting, art, and construction are billed separately.
The rest of this article explains what sits behind those numbers, so you can tell which category your project falls into and what your total budget should account for.
What "full-service" covers
Full-service interior design means the studio handles your home from the first conversation to the final styled room. In practice, our design fee covers four phases:
Concept development: floor plans, palette direction, mood boards, and concept presentations, refined until the design is ready to move forward.
Design documentation: technical drawings, finish schedules, lighting plans, and furniture specifications, at the level of detail contractors need to build without guesswork.
Procurement and project management: sourcing, ordering, tracking, and expediting every item, plus close coordination with your contractor, architect, and trades through construction.
Installation and styling: our team on-site placing furniture, hanging art, making beds, and styling every surface, so the home is finished and ready to live in when we leave.
That last point matters more than most people expect. A designer who hands you a shopping list leaves the ordering, tracking, damage claims, and delivery scheduling to you. On a full home, that is hundreds of line items and months of coordination.
How we set the design fee
Our design fee is a fixed fee for your scope of work, set in a proposal before the project begins. To calculate it, we estimate the hours your project will need at two rates:
Creative and Strategic Direction, $250 per hour: design work, drafting, rendering, sourcing, client meetings, and project management.
Administrative and Clerical Support, $125 per hour: scheduling, coordinating documentation, cataloguing selections, generating and tracking purchase orders, warehouse liaison, and data entry.
Splitting the estimate this way means the fee reflects the actual mix of design and administrative work your project needs, rather than charging a design rate for everything. The result is a single fee you know before the work starts.
A fixed fee means the design cost is settled before the first drawing. It doesn't grow with every meeting, revision, or delay, so you can plan the rest of your budget around a known number, and every conversation with the studio is about your home rather than the time it takes. It also puts the responsibility for estimating the work where it belongs: with us.
If the scope changes, such as adding rooms or a new phase of work, we send a change order with an updated fee for your approval before any additional work begins.
The starting figures below reflect what typical projects in each category require.
Starting fees by project type
The design fee is set by the scope of work, not the type of home. A large house with light renovation falls in the first tier, and a full-gut apartment in the second. Within each tier, the size of the home and the amount of custom work determine where the fee lands.
Design and furnishing, from $100,000. For apartments or houses with light or no renovation: paint, wallpaper, lighting, minor updates, and full furnishing and styling. A new condo, a pied-à-terre, or a newly built house that needs to feel like a home all fall here. Typical timeline: 6 to 10 months.
Renovation and custom design, from $140,000. For kitchen and bath rebuilds, custom millwork, and apartment renovations up to and including a full gut, with full furnishing and installation included. Typical timeline: 10 to 16 months.
Full-gut house renovation and new construction, from $350,000. For houses taken down to the studs and ground-up builds, with extensive custom furniture and millwork and full architectural coordination throughout. Typical timeline: 14 to 24 months.
We work on whole homes only, not individual rooms, which is part of why our starting fees sit where they do. Designing every room together is what makes a home feel coherent rather than assembled.
How furniture and furnishings are priced
Furniture, lighting, rugs, art, and accessories are billed separately from the design fee, at retail price: the same price you would pay if you bought the item yourself.
We don't add a markup on top of retail. Instead, our margin on furnishings comes from the trade discount vendors extend to designers. You pay retail, and the difference between our trade cost and the retail price covers the work of sourcing, ordering, tracking, receiving, inspecting, and resolving any damage or delivery problems.
In the rare case a vendor doesn't offer us trade pricing, we add a 20 percent coordination markup on that item only, itemized on the proposal so you can see it.
Working with a designer also gives you access to trade-only showrooms and makers whose pieces aren't sold to the public, which is often where the most distinctive furniture and lighting comes from.
What's billed separately
Some costs fall outside both the design fee and the furnishings:
Freight, delivery, storage, and installation labor, billed at cost
Sales tax on furnishings
General contractor and construction costs
Architectural and engineering fees
Permits and filings
Specialist consultants, such as audiovisual or lighting control
Construction, architecture, and engineering are quoted by those firms and paid to them directly, so their costs depend on who you hire and the scope they propose. We help you account for them as the project takes shape, so your overall budget isn't built around the design fee alone.
What makes the cost go up or down
Within each category, a few factors drive where your fee lands.
Size and number of rooms. A three-bedroom apartment requires more drawings, selections, and installation hours than a one-bedroom.
Extent of renovation. Moving walls, rebuilding kitchens and baths, and coordinating with an architect adds documentation and site time.
Custom work. Custom millwork, built-ins, upholstery, and rugs take more design and coordination hours than ready-made pieces, but they are often what makes a home feel unlike any other.
Timeline. A compressed schedule means more hours in a shorter window, and a greater reliance on in-stock and quick-ship pieces.
Decision speed. Clients who review and approve selections promptly keep the project efficient. Repeated rounds of revisions add hours.
Where good design saves money
A design fee is easier to evaluate when you count what it prevents. The most expensive mistakes on a New York renovation are rarely the furniture. They are sequencing errors: plumbing roughed in before the vanity was specified, millwork ordered before the framing was confirmed, lighting wired before the furniture plan was set. Each one leads to change orders and delays. We cover this in detail in how to hire an interior designer for a luxury home.
Procurement is the other place clients save, mostly in time. Tracking dozens of vendors, lead times, and damaged deliveries is a part-time job on its own. On a full-service project, that job is ours.
How other fee structures compare
When you interview designers in New York, you'll see three main ways of charging. Knowing the difference makes proposals much easier to compare.
Fixed fee based on scope. The approach we use. The fee is calculated from the work your scope requires and agreed before the project starts. You know the full design cost on day one, and it only changes if you choose to add to the scope.
Hourly billing. Many designers bill for time as the project goes. The rate is clear, but the total isn't: it grows with every meeting, revision, and delay, and you won't know the final design cost until the project is over.
Percentage fee. Some designers charge a percentage of the construction or furnishings budget. It's simple on paper, but it ties the designer's income to how much you spend.
Cost-plus on furnishings. Some designers buy furniture at trade price and resell it with a markup added. Depending on the markup, the client can end up paying more than retail for the same piece. We price at retail, never above it.
None of these is wrong. What matters is that the proposal tells you clearly which model the designer uses, what the fee covers, and how furnishings are priced. If any of those three is hard to pin down, ask before you sign.
Questions to ask any designer about fees
Whoever you hire, these questions will tell you what you're actually paying for:
Is the design fee fixed, hourly, or a percentage? And what happens to it if the scope changes?
How are furnishings priced? At retail, at trade, or at trade plus a markup? Is any markup shown on the invoice?
Who handles procurement? Does the studio order, track, receive, and inspect every item, or is that left to you?
What's billed separately? Freight, storage, installation, tax, and consultants can add up if no one has mentioned them.
Is installation included? A finished, styled home is a different result from a delivery schedule.
Clear answers to these questions are a good sign. Vague ones usually mean the surprises come later.
The first step: a design consultation
Every project begins with a two-hour design consultation for $700. We walk through the home, discuss your goals and budget, and outline a scope of work. From there, we prepare a proposal with your design fee, so you know the cost before committing to the full project.
If you're planning a project in New York City and want to understand what it would involve, book a consultation or read more about our services.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a full-service interior designer cost in NYC?
At Studio Kestrel, full-service design fees start at $100,000 for design and furnishing with light or no renovation, $140,000 for renovation projects, including full-gut apartments, and $350,000 for full-gut house renovations and new construction. Furniture, lighting, art, and construction are billed separately.
Do you charge a percentage of the project budget?
No. The design fee is a fixed fee for your scope of work, set in a proposal before the project begins. We calculate it from the hours your project will need, at $250 per hour for design and project management and $125 per hour for administrative support.
Do clients get the designer discount on furniture?
Furniture and furnishings are billed at retail price, with no markup on top. The trade discount we receive from vendors is our margin on procurement, which covers ordering, tracking, receiving, inspection, and resolving any problems with deliveries.
Do you take on single rooms?
No. Studio Kestrel works on whole homes only, so every room is designed as part of one plan.
Paul De Andrade is the founder and principal designer of Studio Kestrel, a residential interior design practice working across New York City, the Hamptons, and Miami. He has been designing interiors since 2014, founded Studio Kestrel in 2019, and has completed more than 30 full-service projects through the studio since. His work is rooted in organic modern principles, feng shui, and a wellness-led approach to how a home is built around daily life. Studio Kestrel has been featured in Architectural Digest, The Wall Street Journal, Homes & Gardens, Domino, and Hamptons Magazine, among others.
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