Summary
The number of interior designers in America is not a fact that most people have on the tip of their tongue. The question leads to, if not a simple answer, a simple place to start looking: the government agency tasked with collecting and sharing information about employment in the U.S.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has three estimates of how many interior designers are working in the U.S. The BLS relies on a series of surveys to get raw numbers, then applies data science to extrapolate takeaways. Its numbers are rigorously calculated, but they are still estimates.
The American Society of Interior Designers estimates that there are 123,000 designers in the U.S. The BLS data doesn’t distinguish between commercial and residential designers. The barrier to entry is so low that there must be thousands of designers who are flying under the radar.
If you’ve made your way through this many acronyms and numbers, you might be wondering whether it really matters how many designers there are in America. Because there is no single answer, the number someone chooses to use often tells you something about the person citing it.
The American interior design industry is growing. The amount of designers has roughly doubled over the course of the past decade. For designers already in business, more newcomers may seem like a bad thing. But an expanding industry is rarely one where a growing number of people fight over the same slice of pie.
This is no longer an ultraniche profession known only to the ultrarich. It's simply a job that a lot of people have. There’s strength in numbers. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next. It will be interesting.
