The name you choose for your newly minted interior design business can help make or break it. Names that are too basic or filled with interior design jargon get lost deep in the web search results of competing interior firms. Overly complex, esoteric names only confuse potential clients, making your business just as difficult to find.

The best names fall somewhere in between: they are straightforward, but creative; and they are specific to you and your business.  The best interior design business names are those that people easily remember, immediately signal the services you offer, and rise to the top of a simple web search. Watch the video above to hear successful designers discuss how they nailed down their business name to start feeling inspired!

This guide to naming your interior design business offers tips for choosing the best name, five steps toward a perfect name, and advice from other interior design pros. Click on a link below to jump to the section you're most interested in:

• What makes a good interior design business name?
• Why is your interior design business name so important
• How to name your interior design business
• How other interior design professionals picked their business name
• How to know if a business name is available

What Makes a Good Interior Design Business Name?

A strong name for an interior design business starts with these attributes:

• Make it easy to spell and pronounce
  Don’t make it hard for potential clients to find you. If it makes their head hurt to remember your business name, they will move on to your competitors. They, too, will avoid trying to say hard to pronounce words for fear of embarrassment of getting it wrong. Make it a name that rolls easily off the tongue. 
  
• Match the services being provided
  You want future customers to easily understand what you do so that they do not confuse your services with other, unrelated types of businesses.
  
• Avoid odd names
  Making people feel good about the work you do starts with conveying to them a positive vibe through your name.
  
• Make it easy to remember
  Have you ever met someone at a party and asked the name of their business only to forget it by the time you got home? Pick a name that sticks in their head in a positive way.
  
• Double check the name is not in use
  Conduct some web searches to make sure the names you are considering are not taken. 
  

Why is your interior design business name so important

Your business name is likely to be the first contact potential clients have with you, your design aesthetic, and the services offered. It reflects your brand and even the future of your business. Making it too limited could restrict the number of clients who seek you out, while making it overly broad can confuse them. 

A name is how customers find your business, and make choices of whether to click further on a business profile or website. If it is hard to spell or pronounce, clients may not be able to find you. They may have heard the name, but when they go to search for it, no intuitive spelling appears. Similar difficulties arise if they search for your business, and find others with similar names and therefore end up with another designer whom they thought was your business. 

That is why picking a name should be serious business. Choosing a funny name may make you laugh, but it will be unlikely that customers will take the business seriously. 

How to Name Your Interior Design Business - A 5-Step Guide

It’s true, picking a name for your interior design business is not a task that happens overnight. Making such an important decision will take time. Here are five steps to get started on your naming journey.

1. Consider your long term business goals

While you may not know exactly how the future will play out, spend some time considering your dreams and goals for upping your design game over the next few years. Then, pick a name that does not tightly limit your option. For example, if you choose to use home interiors in your name, expanding into other interior design types such as commercial or retail will be more challenging because your name will not reflect your services. 

2. Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm

Creativity should know no limits when you start making your list, and it should even be fun. Think of it as the naming version of a mood board. Don’t over edit yourself in the beginning; just start by making a list of names. The best brainstorms involve a whiteboard, some sticky notes, and an unfettered imagination. Just have an eraser and wastebasket nearby for when you reach the point of narrowing down your choices. 

• Use your name or some version of it: Some interior designers use their initials and creatively combine them with a business descriptor, such as interior design. Maybe you want to use the name of a favorite grandmother or friend. Avoid this option if your name is so common that your business will fade in a sea of similar names, or is too hard to remember, pronounce or spell. 
  
• Make the design business descriptor broad: consider using phrases like Interior Design, Interiors, Design Studio, etc. to avoid being boxed in. 
  
• Evoke emotion & good energy: Consider what type of feelings you want your work to be associated with. Some to consider: excitement, surprise, calm, natural, industrial or modern. 
  
• Replace a design descriptor with words that mean something special to you, and of course, sound good. But choose wisely - the nickname you have for your partner might be special to you, but it is unlikely to resonate with your clients.

Here’s how one designer from the Washington state area combined a sense of emotion and the region she serves by picking a name that has meaning to both her and her clientele. “We live in this great community called Fairwood. We thought about trying to incorporate the town name, but there’s a lot of businesses with Fairwood in the name,”  says Jolene Irons. 

“We looked for something else that represents the area. There are a lot of Cedars in Western Washington (we’re known for them) and we live by the Cedar River. We were working at a dining room table, and in the corner was a fiddle-less fig tree, which is how we came up with Cedar & Fig. It clicked, and it felt right. Whether we decided to get into  staging design, if we had a storefront or even if we moved and took the company somewhere else, it could still work. It just really evokes a Pacific Northwest feeling we felt." -Jolene Irons, Interior Designer at Cedar & Fig in Renton, WA

• Highlight a niche if you have a specialty. (Residential interiors, modern designs, etc.)
  
• Be a wordsmith: Use words creatively. Alliterations are easy on the eyes and ears and puns can make people smile. One warning: Done badly or overdone cliches, and puns have the opposite effect of making people roll their eyes. 
  
• Use words that resonate with target clients whether it is an aesthetic or style such as luxury, modern, traditional. 
  
• Shake it up: Make a list of potential words - think throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. Then play with the words like a set of Legos, arranging and rearranging in different orders and phrases and lengths to see where you land. 
  
• Imitation is the best form of flattery: Be a detective and see how other interior designers picked the name for their business. The goal, of course, is not to steal their name, but to understand the anatomy and taxonomy of their choice.

How Other Interior Design Professionals Picked Their Business Name

Here’s some tips from four other seasoned designers to help you choose the name for your interior design businesses:

Shine with a Speciality 

“I have a unique name, Kirby, and I just knew that had to be in the name somewhere– and I like my name. I knew I wanted to specialize in residential, so Kirby Homes made sense (homes, plural – not homes, singular because I do more than one project). I kind of put myself in a box – I have done some commercial projects, but ultimately I think it’s important to specialize in what you love.” -Kirby Foster Hurd, Interior Designer at Kirby Home Design in Oklahoma City, OK

Capture a Name’s Essence 

"My name is Ekaterina, so it starts with an “E”. I just started looking for names, playing with different combinations, looking at how other people named their design businesses, and found a way to work my “E” in there." -Ekaterina Groznaya, Interior Designer at Studio E Designs in Magnolia, TX       

Keep Options Open

"I actually spent a lot of time on this one because most designers named their firms using their names, but my last name doesn't sound the way it's spelled. It's always created confusion growing up, and my mail is always misspelled. I really wasn't sure that was the best idea. But then, another friend of mine who's a very successful real estate developer had said, use your name and use "studios". Don't say “design” because at some point, you might want to do more than design and “studios” is an all-encompassing word. If you decide to do fabric design, you might want to license the company and do some furniture design. Just call it Mike Rataczek Studios. I did and it's never been an issue. I think your name is powerful.” -Mike Rataczack, Interior Designer at Mike Rataczack Studios in Washington D.C.

Consider what Inspires You

“I lived in Asia and I was so inspired by the yin and the yang. Everything in our industry is either matte or gloss. I like the combination of matte and the gloss because it helps a design become a unified element. You need both of them to unify something.” Milena Fay, Interior Designer at Matte and Gloss Interiors in Glencoe, IL

3. Narrow Down Your Top 3 Business Names

Ok. So you’ve come up with your list of business names. After you set it aside for a few days and revisit it, and revise, you are ready to pick your top three favorites (ok, five at the most). Apply the same discipline you bring to the table when helping your clients narrow down their long design dream lists. Which are the most relevant? Do they convey the type of services your interior design business offers? Are they inspiring? Do they evoke the type of feeling and professionalism that you strive for? Does it reflect your brand? Are the names flexible enough to handle the evolution of your interior design business?

Once you choose the names that will be the most hardworking for you, go back to search engines, social media, and other online platforms to find out what happens when you type the names in. Do they bring up pages and pages of results? Do any unrelated or questionable types of businesses pop up? 

Since the ultimate goal is to have your interior design business name pop up high in web search results, reconsider those that do not drive through the naming clutter. 

4. Seek feedback

If you want more objective help, hire a professional such as a copywriter to help craft and choose the best name for your interior design business. 

Another option is to share the favorites list with trusted friends and mentors for feedback. Just remember, this is much like asking family members for suggested baby names. It can get tricky and ultimately, they are not the ones who will be living with the choice you make for years to come. 

5. Double Check 

Re-review our list of what makes a good interior design business name at the beginning of this article and make sure the top names you’ve picked checks those boxes:

• It is easy to pronounce
• It reflects your services
• It evokes a good vibe
• It is simple but creative
• Is it clear?

Search your business name with variations of staging, real estate, home and improvement to spot any similar brand names from other companies.

How to know if your interior design business name is available

Congratulations! Now that you have chosen the name for your interior design business, here’s how to ensure the name is available and how to acquire the domain:

• Search the name on a domain name provider to see what domains are available
• Explore social media platforms to see what handles are available
• Buy the domain and get the handles immediately when you see they’re available
• Your domain and social handles don’t need to match your business name exactly, but the closer they match the better. If you are using your name as part of your business name, for example, you can add letters or words to the end of it to get a domain that is similar. 
• If the domain is not available, ask to purchase it from the owner or see when it will expire and try to grab it when it does.

Preserving the Perfect Interior Design Business Name

After devoting so much work into picking just the right name for your interior design business, you may want to consider registering your name as a trademark. Stay tuned for our next guide to learn more here about Whether to Trademark the Name of Your Interior Design Business.