Dear Sean,

I am fortunate to be fairly busy at the moment. I have projects at all stages and was looking forward to a stable, if not very successful, 2025. However, with all that is happening in the United States in the last few weeks, I am starting to panic. Several of my clients have already reached out to say that they might put their projects on hold, or have tried to maintain their current budgets so that they do not have to pay for tariff-related increases. What should I do, if anything?

Tariff Terrors

Dear Tariff Terrors,

First, a moment for all small businesses in the United States. What is happening is terrifying. For designers, price increases caused by tariffs, inflation worries and a weakening dollar all point to rougher times on the horizon. What is most concerning, though, is the uncertainty of it all. When nobody knows what is going to happen, people tend to hit pause regardless of their ability to fund a project. You are seeing that happen firsthand with your clients who, three months ago, were full steam ahead. So, what to do in the short, medium and (not so) long term?

In the short term, be proactive and communicate with your clients where you are with their project and how you intend to move forward. Design industry attorney Wendy Estela posted a terrific letter template on her Instagram page last week that everyone should adapt for themselves. Yes, you should have the conversation about what you are willing to do (for example, cap commissions) and what you are not (wholly redesign the project). The point is that we are all in it together. Nobody knows what will happen, and the risk will need to be shared.

Much more important is the medium and long term. I have been a broken record about the need for designers to become agnostic to the cost of production. Commissions (aka markups) just do not work well in our digital age of perfect information, and become even worse in an inflationary environment. What is happening today—with literal price shocks of upwards of 40 percent—pushes the conversation to the extreme. Yes, technically tariffs are taxes, but there will be tremendous pricing pressure, and whether or not these increases are commissionable will have to be discussed. In the medium term, can you offer to reconstitute what might remain of the project to fees that will honor what work needs to be completed—so that if price fluctuations continue, additional conversations can be avoided?

Long term, it is beyond time to abandon commissions on the cost of production to justify its expense. A percentage of purchases is a terrible way to determine the price of what you and your firm do to produce a project (procure, store and install FF&E). Different firms act differently, design differently and produce differently, meaning, say, 30 percent on $500,000 is not the same for a firm that does all custom work and takes eight months to produce a project and one that buys from amazing “to-the-trade” sources and takes four months. This much has always been true, but when both the 30 percent and $500,000 are being challenged relentlessly, we have to do better than a guess or say that it is just industry standard (it isn’t).

While the price to produce any project will always be the biggest number (just like an entrée at a restaurant), it is by far the least profitable (also just like an entrée at a restaurant). Production and installation are a ton of work that take a really long time and are fraught with challenging surprises. And yet this is what most designers fight to maximize in terms of their revenue—not design or even retail product sales, which are far more profitable (just like the bar at a restaurant). It has never made sense to me to behave this way, and today’s events make the point ever more painful. Time to let it go and work diligently to get what you need for production—no more, no less—and instead focus on the value of design.

I am not naive. There are incredibly rough waters ahead; ones I absolutely did not see coming —at least not to this extent. Let’s not add to the pain by fighting for something that will just keep you stuck. Instead, allow yourself to evolve closer to the expert you already are. The value lives there. Let the rest be a means to an end, not the end itself.

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Sean Low is the go-to business coach for interior designers. His clients have included Nate Berkus, Sawyer Berson, Vicente Wolf, Barry Dixon, Kevin Isbell and McGrath II. Low earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and as founder-president of The Business of Being Creative, he has long consulted for design businesses. In his Business Advice column for BOH, he answers designers’ most pressing questions. Have a dilemma? Send us an email—and don’t worry, we can keep your details anonymous.