Interior Designer Resume: How-To Guide with Free Sample

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As an Interior Designer, you’re used to seeing a space and knowing exactly how to make it look interesting and presentable. Are you having trouble doing the same with your resume? If that’s the case, use our resume template to give your resume the perfect look.

Interior Designer Resume Example MSWord®
Create an aesthetically pleasing design with our Interior Designer Resume template in Word format.

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ResumeGiants » Examples » Interior Designer Resume

You know how to design a room to make an impact. Now it’s time to do the same for your skills and experience. If you want to become the next great interior designer, you first have to prove you have what it takes to potential employers with an amazing resume!

Naturally, designing an effective resume is a bit different than designing a room. But luckily, your friends at ResumeGiants are here to help! We might not know Feng Shui, Contemporary, or Art Moderne design trends, but we can definitely help you get your resume into shape.

In this guide, we’ll go over all the essentials of creating the perfect interior design resume to wow any employer, including:

• How to write the best possible resume for interior designers.
• Crafting an interior design resume summary or objective.
• Completing your experience and education resume sections.
• Adding relevant interior design skills.
• Tips, tricks, and advice to help you start your new interior design career.

Since interior designers like to see how things turn out, we’ll include plenty of examples for you to draw resume inspiration from.

However, if you’re already confident with your resume-writing abilities, try our free online resume builder.

If you’re not sure where to start with the resume design, that’s okay too! Keep reading for plenty of resume-building tips, tricks, and advice to whip your interior designer resume into shape.

Finally, you can browse dozens of professional resume templates to help you get started. Just choose the one that fits your style, fill in your information, and you’re ready to apply for those dream jobs.

Before we dive into the exciting world of resume building, let’s take a look at an example to get an idea of what a good interior design resume might look like:

Resume Example

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Wallace Paper
[Interior Designer]
4056 Clawfoot Ave., Bassett, VA 24055 | 276-555-9255 | wall.paper@email.com

>> Summary <<
Award-winning interior designer with CIDQ certification and 8+ years of experience working with property owners designing residential and commercial spaces. Highly skilled with Adobe Suite and AutoCAD software, as well as project management and space planning.

>> Experience <<
Pretty Properties Design Co. | Roanoke, VA
Interior Designer
2018 – 2022
* Worked with commercial and residential property owners to design and deliver 100+ of efficient interior designs.

• Stayed on time and under budget for 98% of projects.
• Created designs for homes and offices up to 8,000 square-feet and budgets of up to $200,000.

Freelance Interior Designer
2016 – 2018
* Worked on 12 interior design projects for residential and commercial property owners.

• Received a 100% satisfaction rating from clients.
• All projects were completed on time and under budget.

>> Education <<
The Best College of Interior Design | Roanoke, VA
Bachelor of Fine Arts
2012 – 2016

>> Skills <<
* Communication
* Creativity

• Problem solving
• Time management
• Detail-oriented
• Artistic
• AutoCAD
• CAD
• Adobe Suite
• Technical drawing
• Sketching
• Project management

>> Certifications <<
* LEED Certified

• CIDQ Interior Design Certification
• NARI Kitchen and Bath Remodeling Certification

>> Additional Activities <<
* Regular guest on The Chaise Lounge Podcast for interior design
* Published guest author on numerous interior design blogs
* Scored in the top 1% on NCIDQ exam
>> Languages <<
* English (native)

• Spanish (fluent)
• French (proficient)

Just like with interior design, there’s no single “best” format that works for every resume. It all depends on the style and the background you want to showcase.

While you might have complete creative control to choose a resume format that fits your style and goals, there are a few universal resume guidelines you should follow:

• Use reverse-chronological order for your experience and education sections.
• Leave space between sections to prevent clutter.
• Keep your resume to one page (you can go to two if absolutely necessary).
• Include headings and bolded titles for each section for easy scanning.
• Use a professional font like Calibri, Arial, or Cambria.
• Choose an easy-to-read font size between 11-12 for body text and 13-15 for headings.
• Remember saving as a PDF prevents formatting issues and makes your resume easy for ATS to scan.

For interior design, you always want to make the most impressive piece the focal point of the room. The same idea goes for your resume. Since people (including hiring managers) read from top to bottom, you want to put the most important information (your most impressive piece) toward the top of the page to entice them to keep reading. 

In other words, no matter how you organize your resume formatting, be sure to put the most important information at the top. That’s what you want potential employers to see first.

Now that you know what goes into a great interior design resume, let’s take a deeper look at each section individually. Since we hope you already know your personal information, let’s jump right to the resume summary or objective.

First things first, what’s the difference between an interior design resume summary and a resume objective?

• Resume summary – Two or three sentences describing your professional work experience and skills.
• Resume objective – An overview of your career goals and a few of your unique skills or accomplishments.

Although they sound similar, they’re as different as Shabby Chic and Mid-Century! It’s important to know when to use each.

Interior Design Resume Summary Example

A good resume summary should go over your past professional experience in two to three short sentences. Think of it like the teaser trailer before the epic movie that is the rest of your resume. It’s supposed to draw hiring managers in and entice them to keep reading. 

The best resume summaries are short, sweet, and to the point with plenty of detail and specifics. For you visual learners, here’s what a good interior design resume summary example might look like: 

Detailed, concise, and specific. This applicant checks all the boxes with their interior design resume summary. They talk about their years of experience and a few specific key skills. That should be enough to make potential employers want to buy tickets to the rest of the show!

How to Write an Entry-Level Interior Design Resume Objective

If you don’t have professional interior design experience, a resume objective is the way to go. A resume objective is simply an overview of your career goals and a few skills that would make you a great interior designer. 

Since it’s always best to learn from other peoples’ mistakes, let’s take a look at what not to do with your entry-level interior designer resume objective:

Do you think any potential employers would be impressed with this resume objective? Likely not! There aren’t any details or specifics about their skills. 

Instead, take a look at how this entry-level interior design applicant wrote about their objectives:

Those projects might have been for friends and family, but freelancing projects count as experience nonetheless! It’s not difficult to come up with a few nice interior design projects to add to your resume to give yourself an edge over the other applicants.

As an added bonus, this applicant threw in the employer’s name. That shows they took the time to personalize their resume instead of just copying and pasting the same old resume for every job. That’ll earn some serious bonus points in the hiring process!

Think of your resume’s experience section like space in an interior design project: It’s arguably the most important part!

Saying you have the skills to get the job done is one thing, but your experience section shows that you know how to put those skills into action — and that’s really what potential employers want to see.

There are three pieces of information your interior design resume experience section should cover:

• Work history
• Key accomplishments
• Responsibilities

While you can easily go on and on about your extensive relevant professional experience, it’s important to keep this section (and all other sections) short and concise. Provide enough detail but not too much. It’s a fine line, but an interior designer as good as yourself can easily do it!

Want to make your experience section stand out like a design by Elsie de Wolfe? Follow these tips:

• Include concrete numbers and statistics.
• Customize your work experience to the position you’re applying to.
• Keep information concise and to the point.
• Use keywords from the job description. 

For example, if the job description mentions the firm prefers a contemporary design style, be sure to mention all the past contemporary projects you’ve worked on — even if they’re not a part of your “standard” resume. 

Always customize your experience to match the job you want. The closer of a fit you seem, the more likely you’ll get hired!

Interior Design Resume Examples: Experience

Now that you’re an expert at writing a resume experience section, let’s take a look at some examples. First, here’s what you shouldn’t do with your interior designer resume experience section:

Applying for a job is a competition with the other applicants. If you don’t stand out, you probably won’t get hired.

There’s nothing special about this experience section that would make an employer take notice. Pretty much every other interior designer in the world could use this experience section without many edits.

Your interior design resume experience section should be detailed, concise, and specific — just like all the other sections. Show off what makes you unique and back it up by hard numbers and facts.

With that in mind, here’s what a good interior design resume experience section example might look like:

See all those specific numbers and stats? They’re going to go a long way with potential employers. Other applicants might have designed rooms, but have they designed 8,000 square-feet? That’s why specifics are so good for making you stand out from other applicants.

Entry-Level Interior Design Resume: Experience Section

Every great interior designer has to start somewhere. If you don’t have much (or any) professional experience, that doesn’t mean you can’t have an experience section.

Many interior designers start their careers as freelancers, and luckily that counts as experience, too! Adding your freelance interior design experience to your resume follows most of the same rules as standard full-time experience.

Here’s a quick example of what a good entry-level interior design freelance resume experience section looks like:

Potential employers don’t care if your interior design experience comes from working with friends and relatives, as long as you have completed at least a few interior design projects. Just showcase the specific details about your experience, and you’re good to go!

While experience is definitely what employers consider the most important part of your resume, they still want to know that you have the knowledge to back it up. That’s why it’s important to get your education section just right.

Your interior design resume education section doesn’t have to be this long, drawn-out section. It just needs to mention three key pieces of information:

• Where you went to school
• Your dates of attendance
• Your degree

Get those three pieces, and your resume’s education section is as good as gold!

Interior Design Resume Education Section

You know what goes into a great resume education section, now let’s look at all the parts in action. Here’s a quick example of what a good interior designer resume education section looks like:

It’s as easy as that! You can also add your GPA or any academic accomplishments you achieved at school, but only if they’re impressive and relevant to the position.

Your experience and education sections are important, but there’s probably more you want to say to round out what you have to offer. That’s what a skills section is for! 

There are two types of skills you can put on your resume:

• Hard skills – Measurable, concrete, learned skills.
• Soft skills – Universal, harder-to-define skills, such as analytical skills or communication.

You want to seem well-rounded, so it’s a good idea to include a healthy mix of both hard and soft skills in your resume skills section. Here are just a few of the skills that look great on an interior design resume:

You probably have hundreds of skills you want to show off, but no employer wants to read pages upon pages of bullet points. Keep your skills list to only the most impressive and relevant to the position. Everything on your resume should be short and sweet.

You love to brag about yourself — and rightfully so! When there’s more you want to show to potential employers, add some other sections.

Other sections are exactly as they sound. They’re simply additional sections with information that doesn’t quite fit into the other sections on your resume. 

The only restriction on what other sections you can add is that you don’t want to go over one page and that you want to make absolutely sure all sections are essential and relevant to the position you’re applying to. 

For example, adding a coding languages section might look great on a front end developer resume (and quite impressive), but it won’t help you with an interior design job. That’d be a good other section to skip on your interior design resume.

Interior Design Resume Sample “Other” Sections

Not sure what kind of “other” sections to include on your interior design resume? Of course, you’re welcome to add whatever sections you see fit, but here are just a few suggestions that look great on any interior design resume.

Certifications

• LEED Certified
• CIDQ Interior Design Certification
• NARI Kitchen and Bath Remodeling Certification

Additional Activities

• Regular guest on The Chaise Lounge Podcast for interior design
• Published guest author on numerous interior design blogs
• Scored in the top 1% on NCIDQ exam

Languages

• English (native)
• Spanish (fluent)
• French (proficient)

Now that you know how to design a great interior design resume as well as you do a room, it’s time to get to work! You’re ready to showcase your skills and experience to potential employers to nab that dream job you’ve always wanted.

To make sure your resume stands out from the pack, make sure to follow all resume design best practices:

• Customize your resume to fit the job description.
• Add specific details about your background and experience.
• Match your skills and experience to suit the position.
• Provide concrete numbers and statistics to back up your experience.
• Add your professional certifications, along with any relevant activities.
• Choose a clean and easy-to-read layout.
• Pick a professional format.
• Save your resume as a PDF.

With all those tips in mind, it’s time to start designing your new resume!

If you need a little creative inspiration, head over to ResumeGiants and browse through some of our modern resume templates.

All our templates fit with the above tips, so you can just fill in your information, download your new resume, and you’re ready to start sending.

With a great resume in your back pocket (digitally, of course), you’ll be well on your way to starting your dream interior design job in no time!