Interior Designers: Instagram Is Not Dead!

instagram 2025 instagram for interior designers instagram tips 2025 reels vs stories Jan 26, 2025

In a Hothouse* meeting this week, the group firmly agreed that a healthy and inspirational Instagram account remains critical to a designer's relevance and credibility. 

Your Instagram Account is often a prospective client's first stop to check out your services. Instagram gives you the opportunity to build engagement with future clients through real-time updates. 

It provides an opportunity for you to prove yourself across three key categories of performance

  1. The quality of your portfolio - your 'house-style'
  2. Your business and project-management prowess
  3. Your personality - how well you'll gel with the clients looking on

The notes from our broad-ranging meeting follow below. This group will meet regularly with each of us setting our commitment levels to Instagram. We will hold one another accountable, and share tips and learning as we go. Future meetings will deep-dive a narrower agenda to tie to the group's needs. 

*Hothouse is a business accelerator for ambitious interior designers, we force the growth of our businesses through intentional target-setting, monitoring, reporting, adjusting. It's free to join - find us here!

NOTES FROM THE MEETING: 

Why Use Instagram? 

  • Critical for credibility and presence as a designer.
  • First stop for potential clients to check out services.
  • Builds engagement through real-time updates.

The Importance Of Your Unique Lens 

  • So many interior designers' accounts look the same. Stand out by identifying your USPs - for example, sustainability, colour expertise, well-being, your location, your values - and by sharing content as viewed through that unique lens or perspective.
  • This clear focus attracts ideal clients, and inspires content creation. It brings clients - overwhelmed by generic blah - down off the fence. 

Content Strategy 

  • Plan your content when you plan your business week, be sure to note all upcoming opportunities to capture content.
  • Capture design process, site visits, showroom/maker visits, inspiration.
  • Make time to film B-roll - atmospheric silent video of you going about your business, you can reuse this regularly, overlaying text tips, advice, and information, etc. 
  • Avoid posting other designers' work: never introduce your prospective clients to the competition.
  • Curate a polished appearance by establishing consistent brand assets (colours, fonts, graphics) and making decisions on style .
  • Experiment, and review the performance of your content (more below).

Instagram Appearance 

  • Professionalism is one of three key performance categories, and your grid matters; a polished appearance is best, albeit this could be informal and in your 'house' creative style.
  • Use covers for reels to keep grid tidy, or move messy reels to the ‘reels only’ view after they've done their job (click the three dots above the reel, and choose ‘remove from profile grid’).
  • Be the "face of your business": appear at least every 12 posts, and ideally in video (on average, my reels collect 4 times as many viewers - mostly non-followers - compared to posts).
  • The goal is: get clients to know / like / trust you. At the very least clients must be able to:
    • find your name.
    • see your (smiling) face.

Client Journey 

  • As they progress through the stages of attraction/conversion (your sales funnel stages of: Reach Engagement Nurture Convert), clients' appetite to hear from you grows.
  • Mix up short and long content for varied client needs (reach = max 3 seconds, whereas nurture = up to 30 mins).
  • Include calls to action (CTAs) to increase engagement (see notes filed in Hothouse 'files' section for examples).

Posts, Reels, Stories 

 

  • Reels: Great for before-and-afters (actually, make that afters-and-befores - because the pretty ‘after’ picture goes first, so it's the one seen for posterity on your grid). 
  • Posts: serve up wisdom in short digestible chunks via carousels, show inspirational schemes in house-style, again - afters-and-befores, share delightful visual reportage, or explain your processes and the progress of client projects.
  • Stories: Share casual, behind-the-scenes content, the messily authentic stuff that you don't want cluttering your grid. 
  • Stories can drive traffic to posts, so always trail new posts and reels in stories.

Commercial vs Residential Clients 

  • Commercial: Focus on design process.
  • Residential: Showcase finished results.

Safety & Accessibility - this was a major group concern! 

  • A significant minority of designers have experienced unwanted advances (unrelated to interior design practice!), it's a sad side-effect of fronting your business. Here are some tips to minimise the chances of this happening to you:
  • Avoid listing personal info like your address. Consider getting a business address from which mail is forwarded.
  • Add “For the safety and security of our staff, all calls may be monitored or tracked" as a note (in small print) to your website so that you can cite this, and threaten call-tracking to any heavy breathers. You should then include a notice in your privacy policy about how calls are handled and why.
  • Report unwanted contact if it is concerning.

Instagram Account Types 

  • Business: If you want to run Meta ads, or install a direct sales button, e.g. a ”book an appointment" button.
  • Creator: Has most of the business functionality with better music options.
  • Both Business and Creator offer insights to track performance.
  • Personal: Is not appropriate. 

Hashtags 

  • Use specific and broad hashtags.
  • Include business name and location with profession. e.g. #Cheshireinteriordesigner - you’ve got to be in it to win it. 
  • Avoid overly broad hashtags with millions of followers, be sure to choose some with smaller cohorts.
  • Always post #yourbusinessname

Boosting Posts 

  • Observe which posts/reels perform best by monitoring organic engagement. Use either the ‘Professional Dashboard’ link from your profile, followed by, “Content you shared’ data. Or, click the ‘view insights’ information attached individually to every post and reel. 
  • Boost popular posts for wider reach. If on an iPhone, boost instead from your laptop to avoid an Apple surcharge (+30% on top of the Meta fee). 
  • Anecdotal evidence suggests that organic strategies yield better-quality results (a higher percentage actual clients vs spammy bots and troublemakers).

Tips 

  • Commit to consistent activity: Ideally 3-5 posts or reels each week.
  • Experiment with content and observe audience reactions. A/B test your content using data from Insta to follow popularity. Bear in mind that you might get different results from posting at different times of day, or on different days. 
  • Plan weekly content and use a scheduler - the Meta business page (via a web browser) has one built in. 
  • When ‘clients’ do dive into your DMs, ask them to enquire by email - get them off Instagram. This helps to sort genuine interest from vexatious (who will just disappear).
  • Remember: clients who contact you via another platform may originally have discovered you on Instagram - always ask your clients how they first became aware of you. 

Next Steps 

  • Join Hothouse to benefit from accountability and group initiatives. You will be warmly welcomed at any time of the year.
  • Plan your Instagram strategy and experiment with it for the next month.
  • Report progress and share feedback in the Hothouse group.
  • Additional resources are available in the Hothouse group.

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