Interior designer salary by state: what the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for May 2025, state by state

What did the Bureau of Labor Statistics report for interior designers in May 2025?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 71,500 interior designer jobs in the United States in May 2025 under Standard Occupational Classification 27-1025, with a mean hourly wage of $35.84, a mean annual wage of $74,540 and a median annual wage of $67,190. The figures come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program, whose May 2025 tables are published on the BLS OEWS tables page and through the BLS public data API, which the editorial team used to pull the national and state series for this article.

OEWS counts wage and salary employees only. Self-employed designers, who run a large share of residential studios, are not in the 71,500 and their income is not in the wage distribution. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook uses a broader employment base of 97,100 jobs for 2025 because it includes the self-employed, which is why the two BLS publications show different job counts for the same year.

Key figure: $67,190 median and $74,540 mean annual wage for 71,500 wage-and-salary interior designers in May 2025 (BLS OEWS, occupation 27-1025).

How is interior designer pay distributed from the 10th to the 90th percentile?

Interior designer pay in May 2025 ran from $41,420 at the 10th percentile to $114,140 at the 90th, with $51,840 at the 25th percentile, $67,190 at the median and $85,740 at the 75th, so the top tenth earned 2.76 times the bottom tenth. The spread reflects the mix of industries, from retail furniture showrooms to architecture and engineering firms, as much as it reflects seniority.

Percentile (May 2025, national)	Annual wage
10th	$41,420
25th	$51,840
50th (median)	$67,190
75th	$85,740
90th	$114,140

The Occupational Outlook Handbook breaks the May 2025 median down by the four industries that employ most interior designers: $78,340 in architectural and engineering services, $67,870 in specialized design services, $63,330 in construction, and $50,560 in retail trade. A designer employed by an architecture firm therefore earned $27,780 more at the median than a designer employed by a retailer in the same year.

Which states pay interior designers the most and the least?

Washington DC led every jurisdiction in May 2025 with a $98,450 median and a $102,040 mean across 620 jobs, followed by Wyoming ($96,100 median, 90 jobs), California ($80,230, 8,500 jobs), Massachusetts ($80,110, 1,580 jobs) and Colorado ($78,390, 2,300 jobs); the lowest medians were Mississippi at $43,740, West Virginia at $49,800 and Iowa at $58,040. Small-employment states such as Wyoming and Alaska carry wide sampling error, so a state with fewer than 200 jobs should be read as an indication rather than a benchmark.

Rank (May 2025)	State	Median	Employment
1	District of Columbia	$98,450	620
2	Wyoming	$96,100	90
3	California	$80,230	8,500
4	Massachusetts	$80,110	1,580
5	Colorado	$78,390	2,300
6	Washington	$76,570	1,330
7	Illinois	$76,290	2,570
8	New York	$75,580	5,340
9	New Jersey	$74,020	1,670
10	Minnesota	$73,270	1,220

Four of the ten highest-paying jurisdictions (Washington DC, Illinois, New York and New Jersey) regulate the profession, and DC is one of the five jurisdictions that license practice. The regulated-state list is in the article on interior design license requirements by state. Two states, Idaho and Nevada, reported employment (350 and 590 jobs) but no published wage estimate for May 2025, which BLS does when the estimate fails its quality thresholds.

What are the employment and wage figures for every state?

Every state and Washington DC appears in the table below with its May 2025 OEWS employment (the Jobs column), annual mean wage and annual median wage for occupation 27-1025, sorted alphabetically; Idaho and Nevada show employment only because BLS withheld their wage estimates. Employment is rounded to the nearest ten by BLS.

State	Jobs	Annual mean	Annual median
Alabama	620	$62,200	$61,050
Alaska	40	$73,320	$63,320
Arizona	1,600	$69,240	$61,460
Arkansas	740	$80,310	$69,990
California	8,500	$89,740	$80,230
Colorado	2,300	$86,940	$78,390
Connecticut	630	$71,730	$67,330
Delaware	190	$64,670	$60,360
District of Columbia	620	$102,040	$98,450
Florida	7,410	$65,980	$60,860
Georgia	3,050	$78,660	$71,760
Hawaii	270	$73,680	$63,780
Idaho	350	not published	not published
Illinois	2,570	$85,520	$76,290
Indiana	1,020	$65,460	$62,580
Iowa	510	$68,360	$58,040
Kansas	400	$66,910	$61,090
Kentucky	490	$63,620	$59,240
Louisiana	350	$59,410	$60,610
Maine	230	$64,440	$63,830
Maryland	1,440	$70,600	$65,070
Massachusetts	1,580	$83,670	$80,110
Michigan	1,930	$62,180	$59,340
Minnesota	1,220	$72,420	$73,270
Mississippi	330	$57,000	$43,740
Missouri	1,010	$67,280	$59,610
Montana	290	$63,500	$61,770
Nebraska	430	$70,220	$64,870
Nevada	590	not published	not published
New Hampshire	300	$64,750	$64,140
New Jersey	1,670	$79,580	$74,020
New Mexico	90	$70,320	$60,850
New York	5,340	$75,510	$75,580
North Carolina	2,610	$66,260	$61,400
North Dakota	160	$60,190	$59,190
Ohio	2,180	$70,070	$61,410
Oklahoma	490	$69,220	$68,520
Oregon	1,030	$76,170	$66,350
Pennsylvania	1,820	$67,890	$62,400
Rhode Island	550	$67,150	$58,100
South Carolina	940	$67,970	$63,790
South Dakota	150	$74,170	$65,220
Tennessee	1,530	$68,480	$63,660
Texas	6,450	$72,090	$65,160
Utah	1,110	$66,290	$61,740
Vermont	110	$72,660	$63,870
Virginia	1,550	$70,840	$62,560
Washington	1,330	$81,360	$76,570
West Virginia	90	$54,150	$49,800
Wisconsin	1,200	$70,280	$62,740
Wyoming	90	$89,250	$96,100

Three patterns stand out. First, the five largest states by employment (California 8,500; Florida 7,410; Texas 6,450; New York 5,340; Georgia 3,050) hold 30,750 jobs, 43% of the national total. Second, Florida, the largest regulated market with a practice act for commercial work, paid a $60,860 median, below the national figure, because its 7,410 jobs skew toward residential and retail employers. Third, the gap between mean and median is widest in California ($89,740 mean against $80,230 median) and Illinois ($85,520 against $76,290), which points to a long upper tail of senior and principal designers in those markets.

How does the NCIDQ Certificate and registration affect pay?

Certification correlates with higher pay in the two association surveys that CIDQ cites in its exam overview: the 2018 IIDA Interior Design Compensation Report found a $70,000 median for NCIDQ holders against $60,000 for designers without the certificate, and the ASID 2019 Interior Design Salaries and Benefits General Report found the median for certified designers $16,000 higher than for those holding no credential. Both figures appear in the CIDQ overview presentation hosted by ASID, and both predate the May 2025 BLS data.

BLS does not split wages by certification, so the state table cannot show the premium directly. The CIDQ Annual Report 2025 does show where certificate holders concentrate, and the overlap with the high-employment states is close: Texas had 1,540 active NCIDQ holders on November 3, 2025, California 1,251, Florida 1,017, New York 832 and Illinois 757, out of 17,429 worldwide. The cost of the credential, $1,375 in application and section fees for a first-attempt Route 1 candidate plus $85 a year to renew, is itemized in the article on NCIDQ exam sections, fees and eligibility.

State (2025)	Active NCIDQ holders (Nov 3, 2025)	OEWS employment (May 2025)	Holders per 100 jobs
Texas	1,540	6,450	23.9
California	1,251	8,500	14.7
Florida	1,017	7,410	13.7
New York	832	5,340	15.6
Illinois	757	2,570	29.5
Georgia	682	3,050	22.4
Virginia	645	1,550	41.6
District of Columbia	272	620	43.9

The ratio in the last column is the editorial team's calculation from the two sources and treats certificate holders and OEWS employees as comparable populations, which they are not exactly: a certificate holder may be self-employed or retired, and an OEWS employee may hold no certificate. The direction of the pattern is still informative. Virginia and Washington DC, both regulated title or licensing jurisdictions with large federal and institutional client bases, show the highest density of certificate holders per job.

What is the job outlook for interior designers through 2035?

BLS projects employment of interior designers to grow 3 percent from 2025 to 2035, about as fast as the average for all occupations, adding about 2,600 jobs to the Occupational Outlook Handbook's 2025 base of 97,100. The OOH lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry-level education, no prior work experience and no on-the-job training as typical, and notes that licensing requirements vary by state, with some states restricting the work to licensed designers and others allowing both licensed and unlicensed practice.

For a student or career changer, the salary data set three practical expectations:

• The national median of $67,190 in May 2025 is a mid-career figure; the 25th percentile of $51,840 is closer to an early-career wage-and-salary position.
• Industry choice moves pay by tens of thousands of dollars: $78,340 at the median in architectural and engineering services against $50,560 in retail trade in May 2025.
• State choice moves pay as much as industry: a $54,710 gap separates the Washington DC median from the Mississippi median in the same year.

Self-employed designers price their work differently, by the hour, by flat fee, by percentage of project cost or by cost-plus markup, and their income depends on the fee model as much as on the market; the models and the 2025 and 2026 price ranges are compared in the article on interior designer fee models and contracts.