Introducing Interior Design’s 2025 Rising Giants

It’s been a strong year for the Rising Giants, with overall positive momentum despite a few mild dips in the numbers. And where there are slight declines, they can often be attributed to the natural volatility that comes with smaller firms—one company’s big swing can skew the larger picture and create outsized statistical impacts.

Fee income saw a modest 5 percent drop year-over-year, with design fees falling from $586 million to $555.5 million. But even with this down-tick, fees remain well above pre-pandemic levels, and when looking at all 200 Giants together, the overall trend is one of growth. More importantly, 2025 is shaping up to be a strong year, with Rising firms forecasting a 14 percent increase in fee income. While confidence in those forecasts is down slightly, it’s still plenty high enough to consider these projections reliable.

When it comes to sector performance, the story for the Rising Giants diverges from that of the top firms. Among the 100 Giants, hospitality is up, while corporate work remains sluggish, but it’s the opposite for this group. Hospitality is down—dropping 18 percent year-over-year and still 4 percent since pre-pandemic levels—whereas corporate work has finally inched back to pre-pandemic numbers, marking a full recovery. This is a significant milestone for Rising Giants, which have always been more corporate-heavy than their larger, more diversified counterparts.

Note: “blank cells” = did not report data

While there’s been a slight decline in furniture, fixtures, and construction dollars, last year’s FF&C numbers were skewed by a single firm. If you remove that anomaly, the decline is less dramatic. Even with that drop, FF&C spending has grown 21 percent since 2021. Similarly, project volume dipped slightly to 21,534, but that’s still an 80 percent increase from prepandemic days. Looking ahead, firms expect to take on even more projects next year—to upwards of 25,000—though the size and scope of those projects remain an open question.

Geographically, overseas work has tapered slightly (from 12 to 8 percent), which aligns with the historically domestic focus of these firms. The bulk of their international projects remain in Canada and Asia, with a small presence in Europe. Domestically, the Southeast and Southwest continue to be the hottest markets, and some 96 percent of Rising Giants predict continued U.S. growth in 2025.

Staffing trends bespeak recovery and expansion. Since the pandemic, there’s been a noticeable increase in principals and partners, with project managers making a particularly strong comeback—up 90 percent [since 2019]. Non-design staff, including roles in HR, accounting, and sales, have also seen a sharp increase—up 60 percent year-over-year and 40 percent since pre-pandemic. Salaries are similarly on the rise. Everyone from principals to designers is making more than they did the previous year, with the biggest increases going to “other” interior design staff. These salary bumps likely reflect cost-of-living adjustments and, perhaps, a bit more workload.

In many ways, these firms are facing the same big-picture challenges as their larger counterparts: finding the right talent, maintaining profitability, and educating clients on the value of their work. But given the strong forecasts, steady hiring, and growing fees, 2025 is shaping up to be another promising year.

Interested in learning more about Interior Design’s 2025 Giants of Design? Check out our report for Top 100 Giants.

Workplace Trends

Reflecting a broader shift toward experience-driven spaces, the hospitality influence is continuing to drive workplace design, with firms incorporating elements like lounges, cafés, and elevated finishes to entice remote workers back. Flexibility remains paramount, manifesting in adaptable furniture and spaces that users can modify, free-address seating, and varied work settings—all of which help justify real estate costs while supporting hybrid work patterns. As budget pressures mount, firms are ramping up their focus on maximizing value. Meanwhile, digital integration is transforming both physical spaces and project execution, with virtual collaboration tools both accelerating design processes and increasing the demand for tech-enabled environments.

Note: “blank cells” = did not report data

Senior Living Fees By Sector

Most Admired Firms

Editor’s Note: Take a look at recent coverage of our Rising Giants most admired firms of 2024 below. Rockwell Group tops the list followed by Gensler, AvroKO, Yabu Pushelberg, and Perkins&Will.

Top Recruiting Tactics

Finding the right talent has been an enduring challenge for firms, and the hiring landscape has only gotten more competitive. Rising Giants rely on a multipronged approach to recruiting, citing relationships with universities—through teaching positions, sponsoring studios, and day shadowing programs—as the most effective way to cultivate employees, followed by word-of-mouth referrals, particularly staff recommendations. (Some have rolled out incentive programs for this purpose.) While third-party recruiters remain a common means to identify promising candidates, many Rising Giants find them less effective in today’s market, or out-of-reach financially. Firms have had more luck building flexible talent pools of interns and freelancers who can be quickly onboarded, and by doubling down on work/life balance to keep hard-won staffers from leaving.

Percentage of Rising Giants Reporting These Challenges As The Biggest They Face

Projects By Type

Methodology

The Interior Design Giants annual business survey comprises the largest firms ranked by interior design fees for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2024. The listings are generated from only those surveyed. To be recognized as a top 100, Rising, Healthcare, Hospitality, or Sustainability Giant, you must meet the following criteria: Have at least one office location in North America, and generate at least 25% of your interior design fee income in North America. Firms that do not meet the criteria are ranked on our International Giants list. Interior design fees include those attributed to:

1. All aspects of a firm’s in­terior design practice, from strategic planning and programming to design and project management.

2. Fees paid to a firm for work performed by employees and independent contractors who are “full-time staff equivalent.”

Interior design fees do not include revenues paid to a firm and remitted to subcontractors who are not con­sid­ered full-time staff equivalent. For example, certain firms attract work that is subcontracted to a local firm. The originating firm may collect all the fees and re­tain a management or generation fee, paying the remainder to the performing firm. The amounts paid to the latter are not included in fees of the collecting firm when determining its ranking. Ties are broken by rank from last year. Where applicable, all per­cent­ages are based on responding Giants, not their total number. 

All research conducted by ThinkLab, the research division of SANDOW Design Group.

Introducing Interior Design’s 2024 Rising Giants

While many overarching industry trends recounted in the previous essay apply to both the top and Rising firms, including full pandemic recovery and generally healthy vital signs, there are some nuances between the two populaces worth highlighting.

First, Rising Giants took a bigger hit during COVID, so have farther to recover. Second, their design fees are less than a tenth the amount of the top 100 firms’ ($576 million compared to $5.9 billion), so small changes in their numbers can result in more significant swings percentagewise. Not to mention that one huge project or a single market performing extremely well or poorly on any given year can make the data look more volatile than it truly is.

All that a prelude to say: The Rising Giants had a good 2023. Fees have grown 11 percent since 2019 (and 8 percent yearover year), while FF&C value rose 15 percent in that same time period. The number of projects firms worked on increased 9 percent from 2022 to 2023 and more than doubled since 2019. (Top 100 Giants’s projects increased only 13 percent in that interval.) Not to mention that 24,956 is a heck of a lot of projects for the Rising firms!

Note: “blank cells” = did not report data

Remember we mentioned the roster of employees shrank 16 percent for the top 100 firms? That’s the exact same percentage that Rising Giants staff grew, which is concrete evidence of how much further they had to build back up after pandemic downsizing. It makes sense we’re seeing positive recovery in greater percentages for Risers than for the top 100 because of the deeper hit they took. To get more specific, the number of principals/partners is up 109 percent since 2019; project managers are up 61 percent; and designers are up 36 percent. (Remember, these figures include new hires and promotions.)

Interested in learning more about Interior Design’s 2024 Giants of Design? Check out our reports for Top 100 Giants, Sustainability Giants, and more.

Overall, salaries rose 11 percent but billable rates only grew 2. Translation: Rising Giants are doing more projects and paying their staffers more but not increasing their billable fees to compensate—likely due to the competitive nature of the work they’re trying to win.

Forecasts are another arena where top and Rising Giants diverge, with the latter trending a bit more optimistic. Last year, the top 100 projected a decline (which did not come to pass) while the second 100 firms anticipated an uptick (which did occur—although even more forcefully than anticipated). For 2024, Rising Giants are forecasting less of a slowdown than the top 100 are predicting, their rosier expectations evidence of a very different recovery trajectory.

*New this year is data centers, a vertical that also encompasses mission critical and advanced facilities.

Note: “blank cells” = did not report data

Most Admired Firms

Editor’s Note: Take a look at recent coverage of our Rising Giants most admired firms of 2023 below. Gensler tops the list followed by Rockwell Group, AvroKO, Yabu Pushelberg, and Rottet Studio.

Percentage of Rising Giants Reporting These Challenges As The Biggest They Face

Methodology

The Interior Design Giants annual business survey comprises the largest firms ranked by interior design fees for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2023. The listings are generated from only those surveyed. To be recognized as a top 100, Rising, Healthcare, Hospitality, or Sustainability Giant, you must meet the following criteria: Have at least one office location in North America, and generate at least 25% of your interior design fee income in North America. Firms that do not meet the criteria are ranked on our International Giants list. Interior design fees include those attributed to:

1. All aspects of a firm’s in­terior design practice, from strategic planning and programming to design and project management.

2. Fees paid to a firm for work performed by employees and independent contractors who are “full-time staff equivalent.”

Interior design fees do not include revenues paid to a firm and remitted to subcontractors who are not con­sid­ered full-time staff equivalent. For example, certain firms attract work that is subcontracted to a local firm. The originating firm may collect all the fees and re­tain a management or generation fee, paying the remainder to the performing firm. The amounts paid to the latter are not included in fees of the collecting firm when determining its ranking. Ties are broken by rank from last year. Where applicable, all per­cent­ages are based on responding Giants, not their total number. 

All research conducted by ThinkLab, the research division of SANDOW Design Group.

Interior Design Reveals the 2023 Rising Giants

There’s rising and then there’s Rising. Our list of the second 100 largest firms injected the moniker with helium in 2022. Total fees came in at $532 million, a 50 percent increase from 2021—well above the recent low of $314 million in 2020, and a hair above pre-pandemic numbers.

“-“ did not report data

As for the breakdown of business segments, hospitality is to the Rising Giants what corporate projects are to the top 100: the big money driver. But while that sector remained a solid number one last year, it’s down to 30 percent of overall fees ($162 million) compared to 38 percent two years ago. Corporate is second, at 25 percent ($131 million), followed by residential at 17 percent ($89 million), and healthcare at 9 percent ($46 million). The Rising Giants predict only gentle fluctuations in this breakdown for 2023, forecasting a slight drop in corporate and a rise in residential, with hospitality holding firm.

Meanwhile, furniture, fixtures, and construction products appear to be booming—more than doubling, to $35.8 billion—but that figure is driven by large totals from a single firm. Still, FF&C had already been rebounding well from a pandemic low of $10 billion in 2020, and the Rising Giants forecast $38 billion for next year.

Furnishings & Fixtures vs. Construction

As with the 100 Giants, the relationship between number of projects and total square footage is somewhat imbalanced. Projects truly popped, at almost 23,000—up from 15,000 in 2021 and nearly doubling the pre-pandemic figure of 12,000 in 2019. Square footage, at 188 million, doesn’t track with it, however. That’s a slight bump from 2021 but a pipe dream compared to 301 million in 2019, likely resulting from firms diversifying their services (more consulting and branding projects), plus hybrid work affecting client’s spatial allocations.

Risers, like the 100, have seen an influx of new talent to execute this work. Design staff members, which had hovered around 2,600 for the past three years, jumped 62 percent to nearly 4,200 in 2022. The all-employee total also increased 27 percent.

Recruiting and retaining qualified staff remains the biggest challenge, so salaries have also risen since 2019. Most employees have seen a 14 to 16 percent raise (project managers/directors excepted), and the average designer salary has climbed to $80,000—the highest since we’ve tracked this data.

Will all this good business hold? This group has offered a healthy 2023 forecast of $583 billion in total fees, a 10 percent increase. And while most are confident about this prediction, fewer are saying they’re “very” or “extremely” so. Semantics? Perhaps. But the Rising Giants are rising indeed.

See the 2023 Top 100 Giants here.

Most Admired Firms

Editor’s Note: Take a look at recent coverage of our Rising Giants most admired firms of 2023 below. Gensler tops the list followed by Rockwell Group and AvroKO.

Methodology

The Interior Design Giants annual business survey comprises the largest firms ranked by interior design fees for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2022. The listings are generated from only those surveyed. To be recognized as a top 100, Rising, Healthcare, or Hospitality Giant, you must meet the following criteria: Have at least one office location in North America, and generate at least 25% of your interior design fee income in North America. Firms that do not meet the criteria are ranked on our International Giants list. Interior design fees include those attributed to:

1. All aspects of a firm’s in­terior design practice, from strategic planning and programming to design and project management.

2. Fees paid to a firm for work performed by employees and independent contractors who are “full-time staff equivalent.”

Interior design fees do not include revenues paid to a firm and remitted to subcontractors who are not con­sid­ered full-time staff equivalent. For example, certain firms attract work that is subcontracted to a local firm. The originating firm may collect all the fees and re­tain a management or generation fee, paying the remainder to the performing firm. The amounts paid to the latter are not included in fees of the collecting firm when determining its ranking. Ties are broken by rank from last year. Where applicable, all per­cent­ages are based on responding Giants, not their total number. 

All research conducted by ThinkLab, the research division of SANDOW Design Group.

10 Questions With… Heidi Painchaud

On a quiet afternoon in January, the second floor of a Midtown Toronto studio is buzzing with activity just a few days into the new year. While some concentrate on their flat screens, others in the pantry catch up on holiday accounts with impromptu discussions about projects. It is clear that iN STUDIO Creative walks the walk, operating by letting inspiration ebb and flow, similar to how the team collaborates on corporate design projects. It is no wonder that some of its clients include the biggest and most progressive household names.

In 2022, partners Heidi Painchaud, Guy Painchaud, and Anthony Orasi broke out the champagne when the 35-strong Canadian firm ranked 49th on Interior Design’s Rising Giants list. Not bad for a company established seven years ago with a handful of people and an internet connection.

Interior Design sits down with iN STUDIO co-founder Heidi Painchaud to dive into the nature of today’s workplace post-pandemic. She shares thoughts on returning home after a decade in the U.S., opening a new studio in her hometown of Calgary, working with her husband Guy, and nurturing the next generation of creatives—including their teenager, Roene—through endeavors as diverse as contributions to a design textbook and an artist-in-residence program in Provence.

Heidi Painchaud Talks Workplace Design and More

Interior Design: What were the main reasons you studied interior design?

Heidi Painchaud: My mother is an interior designer—she trained later in life and graduated from Mount Royal University in Calgary four years before I graduated from The University of Manitoba. I got a ringside seat. For me, the most interesting part was building spaces on paper. And I saw that there were so many types of designers—so much potential in the industry.

I must give credit to UofM for the passion it instilled. I love that I learned about design under the umbrella of design for the built environment. When I graduated, I had an underlying respect for the craft of architecture and that we, as designers, are not in it alone.

ID: You got your start in the States. What were some of the biggest lessons learned there?

HP: I first worked in Minneapolis at The Wheeler Group before it joined Perkins&Will. Gary Wheeler was and is still my mentor. Then I moved out to NBBJ in Los Angeles. Perkins&Will was very diverse and excellent in executing designs, while NBBJ was a big global firm that provided great groundwork for the design process. I learned to listen first before I drew. I then worked for Wirt Design Group (WDG), a small L.A. firm that concentrated on corporate design. I found that I liked the structure of corporate design, and wanted it to be more adventurous. I saw the ramp to get us there.

For big firms to survive, they have to offer a lot of different design disciplines and services. In the States, the relationship between architecture and interior design is a much closer marriage than in Canada. In Toronto, we can sign drawings, for example. I also saw how important project managers were in the States, when that role was still in its infancy in Canada in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Project managers have really evolved here—they are like snow plows that allow designers to do our best work.

ID: Why return to Canada and start from scratch?

HP: Although I loved living in L.A., Guy and I are Canadian and we knew it was time to come home by the mid-2000s. We opened Habitar, our first practice, and a major client wanted us to move our studio across the border. We relocated to Calgary in 2006 and landed in a boom. B+H Architects took notice and acquired our practice. We moved to Toronto in 2008 and started iN STUDIO in 2015.

To operate a creative studio, you have to be brave. We are always reinventing ourselves. While we know how to navigate the details of delivering something completely bespoke every time, the hardest part is staying inspired. I think that comes from knowing a client well enough so that inspiration flows naturally.

ID: Biggest challenges and rewards of working with your spouse?

HP: When we both first graduated from UofM, it was unacceptable for a married couple to be employed at the same firm. Guy also interviewed at Perkins&Will but he decided to take a job at Ellerbe Becket. Now, after nearly three decades together, we know how we complement each other. It is instinctive since we are partners. Guy is the fearless creative while I interpret client needs and make sure we meet at the finish line.

Though we try to avoid shop talk at home, sometimes our dinner table conversation revolves around plumbing fixtures. Our home is like a lab where we explore new materials and experiment on design details.

ID: How has workplace design evolved, particularly during and post pandemic?

HP: When COVID first hit, working from home made people develop habits that we are still feeling the effects of. The biggest change on this side of the pandemic is how lonely everyone is for human contact, and how it impacts collaborations. Water cooler conversations got lost. And a lot of unplanned learning also got lost without those accidental collisions. We are an action-reaction business; we need to read face and body language to understand people.

I see comfort coming back in a big way. There is less formality in the workplace. There is a lot of analysis on how to better utilize real estate, while balancing that with the on-going staff members’ fear that if they lose their desk, they will lose their job. There are a lot of delicate conversations going on.

Resi-mercial—or residential/commercial hybrid spaces—are more interesting post-COVID. People realize that they don’t need a meeting table to connect, or work at a formal desk or cubicle. One of our clients admitted that their most popular meeting space is a corner with living room furniture. Our job is to understand what our client’s staff members are doing while they are in the office and how to best use that space. It does not necessarily mean pool tables. Instead, we are getting more requests for quiet spaces. We are incorporating more tech and more tech-enabled rooms.

ID: How did you end up contributing to Designing Your Business, a textbook for professional interior designers?

HP: Author Gordon Kendall approached me to co-author the second edition of his book. He was a terrific coach and gave me a lot of guidance. I worked with an outline of topics that I then shared on-the-ground experience stories to help flesh them out. Until I wrote about them, I didn’t realize that 20 years of accumulated good stories made for a book. It was cathartic.

ID: Could you share more about your house in France and its artist-in-residence program?

HP: After 9/11, Guy and I put together a list of things that we wanted to do in this lifetime. The first thing was to restore a discarded property. We found a six-century-old villa in Provence when Roene was three. We sold everything we owned, bought the place, and it became our labor of love.

We now spend between six to eight weeks there every year, working remotely. Our internet connection in Provence is better than in Toronto! We just ask our clients to ignore the clinking of glasses filled with rosé.

One of our gallery friends in Canada suggested loaning the house to an artist. We love that we can give something back to the art community. Now we host three or four artists a year for a few weeks at a time. In exchange, we get a painting. My most prized possession is a 700-page guest book filled with stories from the artists who have lived in our house. Many have stayed in touch. And I now have a terrific art collection.

ID: Why do you think design matters more than ever?

HP: During the pandemic, people alone at home stopped solving problems and communicating the same way. Design helps to reignite basic human functions. It helps companies define what they stand for. Why staff members want to work for them. It allows clients to ask how they can supercharge staff members’ understanding. If people work in a vanilla box, they may not want to go into the office every day.

ID: What is next for iN STUDIO?

HP: We opened our Calgary office in 2022 at the invitation of our clients. Calgary used to be a very traditional city but it is evolving rapidly. It is really inspirational to see such a huge appetite for change there. Our clients there include an energy company, a law firm and a real estate office. Guy and I fly back and forth between Calgary and Toronto, and we have a senior staff member based there. All our Calgary staff members are local hires, which we strongly support.

ID: And Roene will become your family’s third generation of designers?

HP: Yes—they are 18 now and considering their university options in the States and Canada. I must admit: I asked if they really wanted to pursue a career in design after seeing what their parents go through. They are on a gap year right now and helping our marketing department. Having them here, I really think that the next generation will do a much better job at sustainability, inclusivity, and gender neutrality.

ThinkLab Explains Why the Luxury Residential Sector is Due to Slow-Down

The real-estate market is, by all accounts, still booming. And the Interior Design Rising Giants are bullish on residential, projecting 45% growth for 2022. But in contrast, the 100 Giants—despite experiencing a solid 9% category uptick in 2020 (amidst a 6% overall decline)—saw the luxury residential sector shrink 43% last year. And they expect 2022 to be just as dire in terms of category growth, predicting a shocking -37% change for 2019 through 2022. 

What accounts for this discrepancy between the two groups of Giants firms? Primarily it’s a matter of focus. The Rising studios have always skewed more residential, whereas the 100 are now re-directing their energy back into commercial verticals as those markets recover. 

“With all the procurement challenges, it’s harder than ever to be a designer now” – Traci Zeller, Traci Zeller Interiors

But ThinkLab data suggests we should all expect a resi slowdown, with single-family and improvements dipping the most. Clients and designers alike are unwilling to overpay for rising labor and material costs or to fight through the supply-chain issues severely compromising project delivery—meaning jobs are being put on hold to ride out the storm.