Understanding Design Fees

What are the design fees?

In short, it’s all the time the design team spend on your project, billed at an hourly rate.

The rate varies depending on who completes the task and on the task itself. For instance, if a junior designer sources lighting, it’s billed at a lower rate than if the principle designer creates your floor plan. All the time is being logged so that you know exactly how the time was spent and when.

When the detailed project budget is being presented the design fees are not included. Why?

By spending time in the planning stage of your project, we are able to give you a precise quote of your project at the presentation(step 5).While we can plan for the amount of subfloor we need and how many dimmer switches, we cannot estimate how many hours the design team will spend on your project with 100% accuracy.

The complexity of projects vary and some projects require more site meetings than other. The design fees for a renovation typically end up being around 25% of the total cost. Since we share our discounts with our clients, on a project with furnishings, those savings can easily make up for 50% of the design fees.

With the goal of complete transparency, by logging our hours and sharing them with you, you will be able to see exactly what you are paying for.

As always, if you have any questions please reach out to us.

Sofie and the SBD team