Closet designers: is your flat design fee really covering the project?
Compare your instinct to the math. Undercutting your own quote is the most common way designers lose money.
All defaults are editable starting points, not industry rates. Adjust every number to match your own experience.
Independent closet designers compete against franchises that offer free design consultations, which puts real pressure on what you can charge for design alone. This calculator checks whether your flat design fee actually covers the project. Enter your target hourly rate, the margin you want on design work, and your minimum fee. Pick the project preset that matches the job: reach-in, walk-in, or dressing room. Each preset loads starting-point minutes for the consultation, design and drawing, 3D rendering, revision rounds, travel, and install-day follow-up. Change every number to match your own experience.
The key setting is the free consultation toggle. If your consults are free, those minutes still cost you. Turn on the spread toggle and the calculator prices the unpaid consult hours into every paid project using your booking rate: the lower your conversion rate, the more free hours each paying client must cover. Design software is priced the same way, spread monthly cost across your paid projects. The result is a recommended fee that covers labor, travel, software, and your margin, plus an effective hourly rate and a verdict on the fee you planned to charge.
Example only, not typical pricing. A walk-in project with a 90-minute consult, 4 design hours, 2 hours of rendering, 2 revision rounds at 45 minutes each, 40 minutes of travel, and 30 minutes of install-day follow-up totals 8.7 hours. At a $75 target rate with 20% margin, plus travel and software spread, the true cost is about $677.60 and the recommended fee is $825. If your gut quote was $650, you are $27.60 below true cost before margin and you left roughly $175 on the table, effectively earning about $75 per hour on a fee that should have been higher.
That is the central pricing question in this trade. Many independents charge a consult fee that is credited toward the project, which filters out price shoppers while staying competitive. Whatever you choose, make sure the consult hours are priced somewhere: in the fee, in a paid consult, or spread across paying clients at your real booking rate.
There is no standard number, which is exactly why revisions leak money. State the included rounds in writing and price extras per round. This calculator prices the rounds you enter; if clients routinely need a third round, your fee should include it.
Hourly protects you from scope creep, but many clients prefer a flat number they can budget around. A flat fee works fine when it is built from real hours the way this calculator does. The danger is a flat fee guessed from what competitors charge.
Yes. Design work and installation are different cost structures: design is time, installation is labor plus materials. Bundling them into one number hides which side is losing money. This tool prices the design side only.
Unpriced revision rounds and free consultations with low booking rates. A designer doing four free 90-minute consults to book one project carries 6 unpaid hours per paying client before the project even starts.