Good work doesn’t speak for itself anymore
Some of the best residential architects I've ever seen, licensed and ten out of ten at what they do, are calling builders right now asking if they have any clients to send their way. Meanwhile, one of my students has been posting for three weeks with about 1,200 followers, and 15 people have already reached out asking her to design their homes.
If you're not on social media, you're not losing clients to better designers. You're losing them to designers people feel like they already know.
Short answer: If you want to work for yourself, social media isn't optional anymore. Clients aren't booking a portfolio, they're booking a person, so before they ever get on a call with you they want to see how you think and whether they actually like you. You don't need finished projects and you don't need a big following. You need to show your personality and how you problem solve, and you need to start before you feel ready.
Three weeks, 1,200 followers, 15 inquiries
Watch Alison tell the story in her own words.
Alison shared this at the end of one of our coaching calls as encouragement for everyone else in the room. She'd been posting for about three weeks, she had around 1,200 followers, and 15 people had already reached out to her about designing their full homes. She told the group she'd assumed she needed hundreds of thousands of followers before any of this would work, and that it turned out to be completely untrue. Half the people on that call have more followers on their personal accounts than she has on her business account. She didn't wait until she had an audience or a polished body of work to start. She just started showing up, and the right people found her almost immediately.
So if you've been telling yourself you need to grow first and then the clients will come, that story has it backwards. The clients come from showing up, and the growth comes along with it.
The clients you're losing without knowing it
I get tons of leads every single day, far more than I can take on, so I refer them out to my students. And the number one thing I run into is that the moment I pass along a name, the lead comes right back and asks, "can you share their social?"
If my student doesn't have one yet, that person doesn't move forward with booking time with them. It's not a judgment on the student's talent, because some of them are really, really good. The lead just has nothing to go on, so they move on to someone they can actually get a feel for. I'm handing over a warm referral with my name attached to it, and it still dies right there because there's nothing for them to look at.
Nobody hires a designer they've never met
Ten or fifteen years ago, your website was everything. People wanted to see what your work looked like, so you put up your best photos and that did the job. That's not how people decide anymore. Honestly, if your social is strong, I lean toward you not even needing a website. I haven't had one up for my design business in a year and a half, and every one of those contracts I'm about to tell you about came in without it.
And now anyone can generate a beautiful image in a few minutes. A gorgeous rendering used to tell a client you knew what you were doing, and today it tells them almost nothing, because AI turns out pretty, generic pictures all day long. What it can't fake is how you think and who you are, and that's exactly what clients are looking for now.
Now people want to see how you think and whether they like your personality. They want to feel you out and figure out if this is someone they're going to resonate with before they ever put time on your calendar. Think about how you'd want to get to know someone before you hand them one of the biggest decisions of your life, because that's exactly what a client is doing. Designing a home is personal, it takes months or years, and they're going to be in a room with you making decisions about how their family lives. Of course they want to know who you are first.
So many of my client bookings start the same way. They get on the call and say, "I feel like you were going to say that," or they tell me one thing I said really resonated with them. They feel like they've already gone out for drinks with me and talked about design all night. By the time they reach out, they're not shopping around anymore. They already want to work with me, because they've watched how I think and they know they like it.
You don't need finished projects
This is the part I wish someone had told me earlier. I booked hundreds of consultations without showing a single finished project. Not one. What I shared was what I was thinking about, and how I'd work through small issues and problem solve for people.
That can be as simple as talking through why an entry dumps you straight into the living room, or how you'd fix a floor plan where the closets are stealing every exterior wall. Small, real problems, and how your brain works through them. A client watching that can picture you working through their house, and that's what makes them reach out. A finished photo can't do that for you, because it shows the answer and hides the thinking, and the thinking is what they're hiring.
If you're worried you don't have the work to show yet, start with how to build a design portfolio with no clients, and share every step of it as you go.
And this isn't theory for me. Just this year, I've signed a $108,000 contract, a $32,000 contract, and an $11,000 contract from people who found me on social media. Not one of them came from a referral or someone I already knew. They found me, they resonated with what I was saying, we had a consultation, and they decided to work with me because of it. I want to be honest that not every project I take comes through social media, but the single biggest reason my business has grown the way it has is that I kept showing up online. Even the people who knew me before I was posting much, a lot of them move forward with me now partly because they see that presence and it reassures them they're making the right call.
The post that had nothing to do with design
One of Alison's videos wasn't about design at all. It was about her experience on the PCT, the Pacific Crest Trail, a through hike that runs up the West Coast. It barely got any views. And two people messaged her specifically because of that video, told her they had to reach out, that they liked her take on design, and now they want her to design their forever house.
That's the part I want you to really hear, because people aren't only deciding whether you can design a house, they're deciding whether they want to spend the next year or two with you. So share the moments that make someone think, this person's really cool, I'd enjoy working with her, we care about the same things. The trail you hiked, the town you can't stop thinking about, what you believe a home should feel like and why. Those are the things people connect to, and they're what makes someone pick you over a designer with ten times your following.
If you're talking to everyone, nobody's responding
Now, sharing your personality doesn't mean posting whatever you feel like that day. Everything on your profile should speak to your ideal client, and you can't be all over the place. If a beach cottage, a modern farmhouse, a commercial fit-out, and a random restaurant photo all sit next to each other with no thread between them, nobody can tell who you're for, so nobody reaches out.
When your personal stories and your design work point at the same kind of person, someone who loves being outdoors, who wants a smaller home done really well, who wants to live close to nature, whatever that is for you, the right client lands on your page and feels like it was made for them. That's exactly what Alison's hiking video did. It wasn't random. It said something about who she is and what she cares about, and the right people heard it. If you're still figuring out who that person is, start with how to find your niche as a residential designer.
But I don't have anything to post yet
This is the one I hear the most, and it's the exact thing holding most people back. You feel like you have nothing to post because you don't have finished projects or a long résumé yet. But the feeling that you have nothing to post is the thing to post. Share your thought process. Share how you're working through a project right now, the problem you're solving this week, the thing you just figured out. That's what people connect with, and it's something you have plenty of.
Post early, because you want to evolve in public. The people who start rough and keep going get better at their thinking, their eye, and the way they show up on camera, all out in the open, and their audience grows with them. The people waiting for the perfect first post never start, because that moment doesn't come. If you wait until you feel ready, you'll be waiting forever. I still second-guess myself every single time I sit down to post, and I've been doing this for years. It doesn't fully go away, so you just start before it does. That's exactly what Alison did. She didn't wait until she was the expert. She started posting while she was still in the program, working through her projects out loud, and that's what people reached out to.
Stop posting just to say you posted
The biggest mistake I see when someone starts posting is posting just to say they posted. If it isn't speaking to your ideal client, their emotions and their problems, it isn't worth the fifteen minutes or the two hours you spent making it. Be as intentional with every post as you would have been ten years ago deciding what went on your website. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be intentional.
So what's worth posting? Anything you're problem solving, and anything you're teaching, as long as it's something your ideal client would actually want to know. If your ideal client owns a hunting plantation in Alabama, walk through how you'd design or redesign a mudroom that actually works for the way they live. If they keep horses, that's a different set of problems again. If it's rock climbers or hikers in a small loft in Seattle, that's a completely different person, and a completely different set of problems to solve on camera.
You don't have to be married to that ideal client forever. But speak to that person as much as you can, because every post that solves their problem is also telling the world that you love working on these kinds of projects, and that's exactly how you attract them.
Critiquing existing homes is another one I love. Pull up a house and talk through what's working and what isn't. On a recent coaching call we looked at a cabin I'm reworking that has bay windows on the front porch. A bay window bumps out from the house to pull more light inside, so tucked under a porch roof it's completely pointless, and it takes the exact spot where a bench or rocking chairs should go. Breaking down something like that shows your ideal client how you see a house, and it teaches them something they'll notice every time they drive past one.
Whatever you post, bring value to your ideal client. That doesn't mean leading with hot takes all the time, because a feed full of opinions isn't the goal. Sit down and think about who your ideal client is, then think about the types of problems they'd want solved for them, on a really specific level. The more specific you get, like that mudroom for the plantation owner, the more your ideal client feels like you're talking straight to them.
And skip the typical spaces. Everyone has seen a hundred living rooms. Go for the rooms and moments your ideal client is quietly obsessing over, designed at the scale they'd actually build. A few ideas to get you started:
The perfectly designed laundry room for a suburban family home
The perfectly designed scullery for someone who loves to cook
The storage I always add to a primary bath
The extras I love adding to a primary bath
How I'd plan a suite for aging parents so they get their own little living space
How to actually use the space under a sloped roof upstairs
How I'd design the entry into a primary suite so you never see the bedroom door from the living room
Carousels can be great too, but only if you're telling a story. If a carousel isn't telling a story, it isn't worth posting.
Try these three posting prompts this week
None of these work until you know exactly who you're talking to. Not "homeowners." A real person. Are you speaking to a mom of five with a husband and a house that never stops running? Or a single guy in tech who just bought his first house and wants it to feel like his personality, but still feel comfortable to come home to? Those two people need completely different posts, even when the topic is the same. Your ideal client can change over time, but you have to start with one, and you have to know them that well.
1. Design one room for one person. Pick a room your ideal client actually cares about and design it for exactly how they live. Say it's the laundry room for that mom of five. The room is the same either way, but how you frame it depends on the kind of project your ideal client is in, so here's what that looks like both ways.
If you're in a renovation-heavy area, your client already has a laundry room and it's driving her crazy. So speak to the house she's living in right now. Open with something like, "If you're redoing your laundry room and want it to work ten times better, make sure you include these features." Then walk through what you'd do inside the space she already has. Pulling in a few feet from the hall closet next to it, running a folding counter right over front-loading machines, adding a hanging rod so clothes come out of the dryer and go straight onto hangers, and giving each kid their own bin so the sorting is already done.
If your ideal client is building new, she gets to decide where the laundry room goes in the first place, and that's the post. Open with, "If you're working on a new home design, make sure you're fitting these into your laundry room." Then walk through placement first. Put it close to the bedrooms, or connect it to the primary closet, so nobody is hauling baskets across the house. Size it for a family of seven, with room for a utility sink, a counter for folding, and a spot where the kids drop sports gear before it ever hits the floor.
Same room, same mom of five, and two completely different posts. The renovation client sees herself in the first one, the new construction client sees herself in the second, and whichever one you post tells the right person you were talking to her.
2. The thing I always add. Tell your ideal client the one thing you'd never leave out of a space they're planning. The storage you always add to a primary bath. The extras you love putting in a scullery. Make it a list they'd screenshot and send to their spouse, and say who it's for right in the first line, so the right person stops scrolling.
3. Something true about you. Share a real piece of your life that tells your ideal client you're their kind of person. Alison's PCT video did this. It had nothing to do with design, and it still brought in two people who want her to design their forever homes, because they saw themselves in it. If your ideal client loves the outdoors, show them you do too. Just make sure it ties back to design, so the hike becomes what it taught you about how a home should open up to the land, not a vacation recap.
Talent doesn't matter if people can't see you have it
Remember those architects I opened with. I'm friends with a builder, and we talk about this all the time, because it's hard to watch. These are people I'd rank among the best residential architects I've ever seen, and they're calling him asking if he has any clients to send their way.
They're not missing skill. They're missing visibility. They never put the effort into social media, so the clients who would love them have no way of finding them or getting a feel for who they are. Being great at the work and being findable are two completely different things now, and you need both. That's the part that should scare you a little, because it means talent alone will not save you, and it should free you a little too, because it means you don't have to be the best designer in your city to win. You have to be the one people can find and feel they know.
Four years in, and posting still doesn't feel natural
I want to be honest about this part, because I think people assume it came easy to me. It never did. Putting myself out there was never comfortable and never easy, and for a long time it was very, very hard. But I knew that if I did it, I was so much more likely to end up with the life I wanted, working for myself, on projects I love, with clients I actually enjoy. And that's held true.
So before everything else, before you feel ready, before the portfolio is perfect, you have to start pushing yourself to show up. There's no workaround for this. Ready doesn't exist anyway, and I get into why in do you need a degree to become a residential designer.
Be the designer they feel like they already know
Posting random pictures you like is not going to cut it. Inspiration images with music over them and no you in them tell a client nothing about who they'd be working with.
It comes down to two things. Show your personality, and show how you problem solve. That's it. Do those two things consistently, aimed at the person you actually want to work with, and you're going to attract clients you love working with, and clients who love working with you. If you want the bigger picture on positioning yourself once you're posting, that's in how residential designers actually get clients.
So here's the choice. You can be the designer waiting by the phone, hoping the work eventually speaks for itself, or you can be the one a stranger feels like they already know by the time they reach out. One of those is Alison, three weeks in, 1,200 followers, 15 people asking her to design their homes. The other is a room full of brilliant, licensed architects asking a builder for scraps. The work matters, but it can't introduce you. Only you can do that, so start before you feel ready, because you never will, and post anyway.
If you're ready to design a home from the first sketch all the way to a full set of plans, with me reviewing your work along the way, you can apply to the Home Design Academy, or start with my free course to see how I teach first.
Frequently asked questions
Do residential designers really need social media? If you want to work for yourself, yes. It's the first place a potential client goes to get a feel for you, and without it, even a warm referral often won't book.
How many followers do you need to get design clients? Far fewer than you think. One of my students had around 1,200 followers when she'd already gotten 15 inquiries in three weeks. Showing your personality and thinking matters much more than follower count.
What should a residential designer post with no finished projects? Your thinking. Talk through small design problems and how you'd solve them, share your sketches and process, and let people see how your brain works. I booked hundreds of consultations without showing a finished project.
Do residential designers still need a website? It isn't a priority anymore. If your social is strong, I lean toward you not needing one at all. I haven't had a website up for my design business in a year and a half. Ten or fifteen years ago, a website with your best work was the proof. Now people want to feel you out first, and social media is where they do that.
Should designers share personal content, or only design work? Share it, but it has to tie back to design. Personal stories show clients who you are and what you care about, which is often what makes them reach out, but your feed isn't a photo album. Don't post your dog, unless you're talking about the design solution you made for them. Don't post your kid's graduation photos. Every personal post should still say something about how you think about a home, and it should all speak to the same ideal client so your profile doesn't feel scattered.
What should an interior or residential designer post on Instagram? Problem solving and teaching that speaks directly to your ideal client. Walk through how you'd solve a real problem in the kind of home they live in, and use carousels only when they tell a story. Every post should be intentional, even if it isn't perfect.
