If you’re reading this, you’re probably not in the market for an interior designer. But if you go looking for them on Instagram—as this editor often does—you might notice something new: Designers have started advertising there. A lot. Amid ads for Pelotons and pants, firms of all sizes and experience levels are showcasing their work through sponsored content.

This isn’t new exactly, but the phenomenon seems to have picked up steam recently. “We started helping with paid social six years ago, but it’s really ramped up for designers in the past two years,” says Laura Bindloss, founder of Nylon Consulting, an agency that specializes in PR and digital strategy for designers and industry brands. “People are talking about it at events and cocktail parties and it feels like the word is out.”

The surge is probably the result of a few overlapping forces. For one, Instagram itself has changed. As part of its ongoing battle with TikTok, the platform has nudged its recommendation algorithms toward favoring vertical video, throttling organic growth on everything else. You can still go viral if you’re making Reels, but beyond that, finding success on Instagram is pay-to-play.

At the same time, the design industry has cooled off. The end of the Covid home boom hit retailers first and hardest, but it has caught up at the high end as well, and tariff-induced stock-market tumbles have done nothing to help. Anecdotally, many designers across the country are looking for ways to refill the pipeline.

These ads might be a product of the moment, but it’s also a natural shift on a platform that has always made sense for designers. With its emphasis on aesthetics and visual impact, Instagram is already the industry’s digital town square. At the same time, the simple ad interface and low barrier to entry (you can spend as little as $5 to boost a post) offer up an easy way for designers to dip their toes into advertising.

A more subtle benefit: In an industry where the conventional marketing wisdom is to cultivate leads through networking and word-of-mouth and then wait for those to pan out, boosting Instagram content can give designers a much-needed sense of agency.

“So much of our business is referrals and press, but even press—you don’t know when it’s coming out, or who’s going to see it,” says New York designer Reilly Townsend Dinzebach, who has been experimenting with boosting posts on the platform since last year. “Instagram ads feel like the only thing we really have control over.”

The Results

Does advertising on Instagram actually work? The results, predictably, are mixed.

Nicole Fisher of Hudson Valley–based BNR Interiors is a fan. Fisher began putting some money behind Instagram posts six months ago and immediately saw paid content get in front of a much larger audience. She refined her approach over time, boosting hooky educational content, and found that spending about $400 per month translates to roughly 10 inquiries from potential clients during the same period. Not all of them turn into real projects, but some do.

“Social is 100 percent the best return on investment that I’ve seen,” she says. “[At first] it was more vendors getting in touch to show me their stuff. But as my following increased, and I started getting more tailored about the stuff I was putting out—people are [making inquiries] knowing what they’re looking for.”

However, getting a good ROI takes more than simply putting dollars behind posts. Fisher has hired an outside consultant to maintain her account and make videos—a cost investment, but also a time sink, as developing ideas diverts time and energy from her firm. “People have been most interested in educational content—one of the biggest videos was on paint colors,” she says. “And it’s harder to be consistent about coming up with those topics than just showing behind-the-scenes stuff.”

Los Angeles designer William Graper has had a mixed experience with Instagram ads. After a decadeslong career in fashion editorial, he began pivoting toward interior design near the start of the pandemic. He spent a few years building his portfolio and finessing his website, then felt ready to start getting the word out. A couple of months ago, he began paying a few hundred dollars a month to promote dreamy videos designed to evoke the vibe of his firm’s work.

“I think more than just saying, We’re here, we’re designers—none of that seemed as appealing as capturing [an audience through] a feeling, where you want to fall into the lifestyle for a moment in time,” he says.

The posts have not yet netted him new clients, but they have had a real impact on his reach—the spend has garnered a few hundred new followers, and Graper is still experimenting. “I’m on the fence about whether it’s really worth doing,” he says. “Tons of people come to my page, but does it translate into a paying client? We’ll have to wait and see.”

The methods

Bindloss says that Instagram advertising, like any other marketing initiative, tends to work best with a clear call to action in mind. Once you decide whether you’re looking for more followers, leads in a new market, or visitors to a retail shop, you can line up the pieces of the puzzle—your ad spend, your profile, your website—to create a clear pathway.

“Let’s say you’re based in Chicago, but you want to get more work in Palm Beach,” she says. “You can run ads targeting Florida, but if someone clicks on the ad, do you have Palm Beach listed in your bio? If they go to your website, do you have Palm Beach projects there? Those kinds of things are so simple, but if they’re not right, the ad won’t convert. … If you spend all this money boosting, but the audience can’t see what it’s like to work with your firm, it’s not going to translate into anything beyond a number.”

Of course, what you promote matters just as much as how you promote it. Bindloss advises clients to start by posting organically for 90 days and tracking analytics. Once you see what’s connecting with your audience, putting money behind it is a good bet. Iteration is also a good idea.

“I started by seeing what posts resonated the most, then I went off that initial data—like, ‘Oh, that image did well. I think it was the wallpaper, so I’ll try more wallpaper,’” says Dinzebach. “I had a yellow room that did really well, so I boosted a different view of the same room, which also did well. I don’t necessarily have a grand master plan; I’m following what happens organically.”

The amount spent on Instagram ads can be relatively small—most designers reached for this article spend a few hundred dollars a month. The targeting doesn’t have to be wildly complicated either. While Instagram provides tools that allow users to drill down on a specific demographic (45-to-60-year-old female Texans who like Architectural Digest, for example), the platform also has an AI-assisted “let Instagram do it” setting that designers say tends to outperform their own tinkering. A simple “boost post” option gets similar results.

Most of Bindloss’s new clients come to her firm without paying for Instagram ads, but end up trying it out. The results can be explosive (viral content, exponential follower growth, sponsorship deals) or more modest (some promising leads), but she says the ROI is usually there for those who go about it strategically. “It’s so much easier than people think—you carry your phone around all day, every day; you can buy mics for $25 to make great content. [Spending] $500 a month on boosted posts is a dream—it doesn’t even need to be that much,” she says. “If you do it properly, it can really work.”

Whatever results individual designers may get, the rush toward sponsored content has had an interesting side effect on the industry as a whole. A stigma that has long dogged designers—the idea that they aren’t supposed to advertise—seems to be losing its bite. Whether it’s a subtle generational shift or the realization that the industry’s platform of choice has become a coin-operated machine, there seems to be less and less sensitivity around the issue with each passing month.

“I used to feel like it’s cheating—you can’t be a luxury designer and do these types of things,” says Fisher. “But I think that landscape has changed. If you want more eyeballs on what you do, and you want to attract more interesting clients, it’s part of the game.”