Your photographer’s email finally lands in your inbox — your project photos are ready! You can’t wait to share them. But wait…

How and where should you share them? Blog, newsletter, social? What will have the most impact on bringing in new business? (And require the least effort from you?)

In my experience, most designers are strapped for time. They pick a photo once a week, then tap out the first caption that comes to mind. Or they ask AI to describe the image for them. (“We adore this timeless space filled with rich earth tones, natural woods, and cozy textiles. Perfect for a rainy day.”)

Between us, this sort of content doesn’t do you any favors. While I love rainy day vibes as much as the next gal, it lacks strategy and human connection.

My suggestion? Don’t just post photos and call it a day. Take 10-15 minutes to think about the story and narrative FIRST and the rest will flow effortlessly.

When a plan comes first — one that has strategy and connection at its heart — your words have real impact. They convey the depth your expertise and speak to the right potential clients, without even trying hard. (I’ll show you how below.)

This makes it easy to write a blog post, highlight the project in a newsletter, or share across social, because you already know what to say. 

Below, you’ll find our guide to sharing interior design projects across your marketing, based on the hundreds of project-related blog posts and newsletters we’ve written since 2017. Enjoy.

1. The #1 Most Important Question to Ask

Before you take the time to craft (or outsource) your content, you MUST ask this question: Is this a project you would genuinely want to do again? Was the scope right? The project’s style? Do you love the way it turned out? (Or did the clients micromanage a bit and lead the project somewhere you don’t really love?)

If you answered “no” to most of these questions, think carefully before creating marketing around the project. The goal isn’t simply to show everything you’ve completed. It’s to give more visibility to your work, expertise, and client experience. If the project matches what you want your firm to be known for, go for it. If not, skip it.

Further Reading: 4 Questions to Ask Before Choosing Content Topics

2. Choose the Main Storyline

Once the project has made the cut, your next task is to figure out the most interesting, relatable story inside it. Every project has one, even if you have a hard time seeing it, and most revolve around the people who live there. Here are some examples:

• the family needed the home to work completely differently
• you solved a difficult architectural problem
• the clients wanted something highly personal
• you were brought in early and influenced the building plans
• a historic home required thoughtful modernization
• the clients wanted to entertain differently
• an empty-nester home represented a completely new stage of life

Again, the storyline you choose should align with what you would want more of. If you modernized a historic home and love the project, but you wouldn’t really want to do that again, choose a different storyline. (Marketing is like a mirror; you get back what you put out.)

3. How to Structure the Blog Post (or Newsletter, or Social Posts)

Now that you have the storyline, you’re ready to map out the structure of the post. Here’s what we recommend:

• Introduce the project, clients, and the story
• Dive deeper into the specific challenges faced
• Explore your design thinking in approaching them
• Showcase the solutions you came up with
• Share the impact and final result
• Optional: End with a client testimonial and how they live now

This approach goes much deeper than, “Here’s a photo and here’s a description of the sofa, table, and art we selected.” Why? Because it showcases your expertise, and it helps future clients get inside your mind and the way you think. It’s also humanizes your content (which you’ll hear me talk about constantly), because you’re talking about real people and giving real examples.

In a blog post, this would be the complete storyline. In a newsletter, you could spread the storyline across 1-3 emails to space it out, if you’d like. For social media, these bullet points could all serve as posts of their own to really stretch your content out.

4. How to Talk about Your Clients

Most interior design clients value discretion, and we never want to share any client details that are identifying or that might make them feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. In your blog post, you can show them the same love and care they received throughout the project, while still making it easier for other, similar potential clients to connect with them.

• How did they want to live?
• What wasn’t working?
• What mattered deeply to them?
• What did they ask you to make possible?
• How did their personalities/tastes affect the design?
• What pieces in their finished home hold particular meaning?
• Did they originally reject something and later love it?

Of course, always share this information in a way that feels empathetic and positive.

5. How to Talk about Your Design Thinking

When it comes to discussing the challenges of the project, it is essential to showcase your expertise. This is more than, “The client wanted this” and “here’s the outcome.” In reality, interior design clients aren’t just investing in a finished project but in the process of getting there. (And affluent clients especially know that a beautiful portfolio is no guarantee of a smooth design process.)

Here are some general questions you could cover when talking about your approach to the project:

• What did you notice?
• What decisions did you make and why?
• What alternatives did you reject?
• What constraints affected the final decisions?
• How did the clients’ lifestyle change the answer?
• What did you do differently in this project compared to others? Why?

Weave some of these into your explanations — following the outlined structure proposed in section 3 above — and potential clients will have a much better understanding of you and the value you could bring to their future project.

6. How to Talk about the Outcome & Impact

When talking about the finished result, I love to give this example — anyone, including AI, can look at a photo and describe a room. What they can’t know is why choices were made for that specific client, how those choices solved problems, or what details are especially meaningful to them.

For example, they don’t know that the sofa is a reupholstered heirloom from the client’s mother. They don’t know that you chose that particular dining table to solve a circulation issue they were experiencing. They don’t know that the art in the dining room came from the clients’ trip to Mauritius. You do.

• How did specific design choices solve their challenges?
• How do specific items or features impact their daily lives?
• What pieces are particularly meaningful to them?
• What did the clients tell you about living in the finished home?

These are the details that make a story feel real and make you the expert who delivers exceptionally thoughtful design.

FAQ: Should You Include “Before” Photos?

When it comes to your portfolio pages, I would not recommend sharing “before” photos, as they can drag the aesthetic of the whole website down. However, blog posts are a great place to share a few, if you and your clients are comfortable with it. (If it’s going to make your clients feel embarrassed, then don’t.)

We recommend including just a few “before” photos in the early sections of the blog post, especially when discussing the home’s challenges or changes the clients requested. These can also be presented as smaller photos, to not overwhelm the reader. By comparison, the final professional photos will feel larger and more immersive.

FAQ: Could I Turn My Project into Multiple Blog Posts?

Absolutely. If your project is a full-home or other large-scale reveal, there’s no need to put the whole project into one blog post. A large project may contain several stories worth telling, and forcing all of them into one enormous reveal can actually make each one less interesting. “The important part is that each post has a distinct story or idea worth exploring—not simply a different set of rooms.”

We’ve often split up project by “entertaining spaces” (kitchen, living, dining) versus “personal spaces” (bedrooms, bathrooms, laundry), though you could absolutely split it however you want. A good guide is to ask yourself if you could follow the suggested outline in section 3 for your proposed space(s). Would it create a blog post that’s different from the others?

FAQ: Where Should I Share My Interior Design Project?

Here are the steps we recommend for creating content around your interior design project in a way that preserves your time and/or stretches your marketing investment. Note: If you don’t use one of these marketing platforms (ex. blog vs. newsletter), simply skip it.

1. Create a blog post about the project (fabulous for SEO, AIO, and attracting future clients)
2. Repurpose the blog content in your newsletter (past client, future clients, warm leads, even partners should see it)
3. Repurpose the content across social media (and LINK to your blog post or portfolio page)
4. Add the project to your website portfolio (more on interior design portfolio summaries here)
5. Create a “read more” link from your portfolio page to your blog post

Further Reading: How to Repurpose Your Interior Design Blog Posts

Content Marketing Support for Interior Designers

We provide ongoing content marketing for a select roster of established interior design firms, helping determine what’s worth sharing and turning their projects, expertise, experiences, and ideas into blog posts, newsletters, Google Business posts, and more.

The results? Our long-term clients have achieved strong organic search visibility, newsletter open rates of 40–50%, click rates of 3–10%, and reported increases in repeat clients and referrals. Nearly every designer we work with has also told us their content has sparked conversations and strengthened relationships offline—which is one of the reasons we believe so strongly in content for connection.

To learn more about this service, get in touch here.

Until next time,
Jaquilyn