Interior Design Spotlights 2024 Healthcare Giants

Healthcare maintained its edge over hospitality as second-largest sector, a mantle it first achieved in 2020. The category continued to experience solid growth in 2023, defying a predicted levelling-off. In fact, design fees increased 26 percent last year, and the dollar amount—$880,469,047—reflects a very healthy 45 percent jump since 2019. The total number of projects ballooned as well: a 19 percent uptick, marking a 105 percent increase over 2019 numbers.

Holding steady as the top three subsectors are acute-care facilities, outpatient care, and clinics—a trio projected to carry the healthcare category yet again in 2024. The vast majority of those proj- ects are located in the U.S., the hottest growth area being (no surprise) the south. The 10 percent sliver of overseas work is concentrated in the same three regions that dominate other verticals: Asia, Canada, and Europe. About a third of Giants predict growth in international healthcare markets this year.

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Of the 50 Healthcare Giants ranked, 10 names are new, which reflects market growth and diversification. A number of firms had big movement last year, including LS3P, which jumped up 15 places in the rankings to number 31, reflecting a healthcare income increase from $1.6 to $4.3 million.

Digging into FF&C value, we were happy to see a 23 percent year-over-year increase—and a wowzers 50 percent more than 2019 numbers. Overall for the top 200 firms, the ratio between FF and C has been skewing more heavily to furniture and fixtures in recent years; healthcare has been the sole exception and remains so again this year, despite slowing construction, rising costs, and clients pivoting to more refresh projects.

When Healthcare Giants gaze into the crystal balls to predict how they’ll fare in 2024, they anticipate another 20 percent FF&C growth. But this optimism is not reflective of overall positivity. In fact, despite the all-good news regarding last year’s tallies, Healthcare Giants predict a 16 percent decline—perhaps because of economic uncertainty and volatility, perhaps because long-gestating projects that kicked off during the pandemic are winding down. In fact, the 2024 design-fee figures Giants are expecting for healthcare and hospitality sectors mark a closing of the gap between them, to just a few million. Stay tuned to find out which segment takes the No. 2 mantle.

Read more about Interior Design’s latest Giants of Design, including Top 100, Sustainability, Rising, Hospitality.

Project Categories

Firms With the Most Fee Growth

Editor’s Note: Take a look at recent coverage of our Healthcare Giants most admired firms below. Perkins&Will tops the list followed by EwingCole, NBBJ, CannonDesign, and HKS.

Percentage of International Work by Region

Methodology

The Interior Design Giants of Design 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 percent 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 percent ages are based on responding Giants, not their total number.

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

Innovative Projects by Interior Design’s 2023 Healthcare Giants

Following the pandemic, there was no question that hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare settings were bound to evolve. Case in point, the increase in smaller design projects for more specialized facilities by Interior Design‘s 2023 Healthcare Giants. The physical design of healthcare spaces is skewing toward a better experience for both employees and patients, prioritizing wellness as much as health. Whether a storybook-like children’s facility, the trauma-informed design of a community clinic, or an overhaul of spaces for collaboration in research, all of these spaces by Healthcare Giants make a doctor’s visit just a little more pleasant.

2023 Healthcare Giants Showcase the Latest in Healthcare Design

ZGF Helps Transform Children’s’ Healthcare Design for the Better

Say goodbye to basic white walls and heavy fluorescents. For new eight-story diagnostic and treatment facility, part of a 1-million-square-foot campus expansion at Seattle Children’s Hospital, ZGf upped the whimsical. A trail map in the main lobby illustrates how the hospital’s four wayfinding zones—forest, river, mountain, ocean—connect, with easy identification of the easiest path to each destination. Charming details unfold chapter by chapter, so to speak, from backlit 3D dioramas tucked into wall niches to tiny paw prints embedded in the terrazzo floor. Read more.

A Community Clinic Built With Trauma-Informed Design Elements

In 2022, the growing clinic of Family Tree relocated to a 17,000-square-foot new building in south Minneapolis by Perkins&Will. A community clinic offering sliding-scale reproductive healthcare to Twin Cities students since 1971, Family Tree is a haven for marginalized folk. Comprehensive services include STI testing and treatment, birth control, gender-affirming care, and even legal aid for queer and trans people. Utilizing a trauma-informed approach to design, careful attention was given to the structure of the space from the very start. Read more

An Innovative Laboratory Brings Multidisciplinary Scientists Together

For the design of a facility for a renowned research center that employs thousands of the nation’s top scientists and engineers for work in homeland security, biomedicine, air and missile defense, and other hush-hush but very important endeavors, CannonDesign had to think big. The team oversaw the creation of the Applied Physics Laboratory’s new Building 201. The fourth floor of the five-story structure cantilevers on an asymmetrical forest of mirror-finished stainless-steel columns. Inside, the team combined labs and workspace for the 650-person Research and Exploratory Development Department into a collaborative network of spaces. Read more.

Interior Design Spotlights 2023 Healthcare Giants

What’s most interesting about the Healthcare Giants isn’t the numbers so much as how the business has evolved during the pandemic—and in general. Consider colonoscopies, tonsillectomies, and other minor procedures that were always a little too major to happen outside a hospital setting. The rise of skilled-care facilities and those dedicated to a single function, such as outpatient procedures or diagnostic imaging, have resulted in lots of smaller design projects. In 2019 the Healthcare Giants worked on 3,200; in 2022 that number rose to 5,500—a 73 percent increase partially attributed to smaller COVID-related projects that may not have otherwise happened. But there’s no question that the design of the physical environment is changing.

And yet, hospital design work remains a stalwart: Acute-care hospitals accounted for half of 2022’s $698 million fees—a bit below the COVID-boosted $790 million in 2020, but handily beating the $607 million pre-pandemic dollars. (The most growth, however, is projected for behavioral health and walk-in/urgent-care clinics.) Furniture, fixtures, and construction products also now outstrip 2019 numbers—$17.8 billion versus $14.6 billion.

But there’s a catch: forecasts. The Healthcare Giants predict $562 million fee income and $14.9 billion FF&C income in 2023, both healthy drops. Whether this is something to fear or just the nature of a market over-boiled by a public health emergency and point-of-service changes remains to be seen. This odd combination of instability and prosperity might just stay with us a while longer.

Project Categories

Growth Potential Over Next Two Years

Editor’s Note: Take a look at recent coverage of our Healthcare Giants most admired firms of 2023 below. CannonDesign tops the list followed by Perkins&Will, and ZGF.

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.

Healthcare Giants 2022

We gather here today to look back at the stabilizing effects 2021 had on the Interior Design Healthcare Giants. But in doing so we find we just can’t quit 2020. In our tracking of business trend data for the group of top 40 firms doing significant work in the healthcare arena since 2019, we have seen huge fluctuations driven by the pandemic. But within those ups and downs, we are just now beginning to see what normal business for the sector might look like.