5 Best Apps To Organize Your Interior Design Business

In today’s day and age, where technology is an integral part of our everyday lives, we can use various apps to organize interior design business and help us run everything smoothly. Ever wondered how you can use technology to your business advantage?

I’m sure you’ve stumbled upon thousands of apps and software you can use. The number of possibilities can be overwhelming. So let me help you decide on what can work for you with my personal list of the best apps and software to use for your interior design business.

Ready? Let’s go!

Apps To Organize Your Interior Design Business

1. Asana

First on my list is the project management tool I use for EVERYTHING. At least admin organization-wise. I’m sure you’ve heard of it already. It’s one of the top management tools there is and that’s for a good reason. The great thing is that it has a powerful free version for when you’re only starting.

Asana is super versatile and can be used in many different ways. I use it for both personal and professional organization. In my interior design business, I use it to:

• have a list of all my clients with their contact info at hand
• have a list of all my projects, divided into ‘prospective’, ‘in progress’, and ‘done’ categories
• break down each of my projects with a list of tasks to do (again divided into several phases)
• have the brief with all the requirements at hand
• I also have a list of shops, contacts to contractors and vendors, etc. so that I don’t have to look for them every time I start a project
• obviously, I also have a list of tasks unrelated to projects but needed to be done for my business

With Asana you can assign tasks to various team members (if you have a team) or to clients. So you can make part of your task boards visible to your clients and assign homework for them or showcase parts of the projects for them to comment on.

If you’ve tried Asana and it didn’t work for you, you can try Spera.io, Plutio, or Podio. 

2. Timeular

In my previous blog post I wrote about the importance of time management skills in an interior design business. And again, there are tens of tools you can use for tracking and analyzing your time. I’ve tried plenty of them just to realize that all those apps that require me to click somewhere to start and stop a task simply don’t work for me. If I don’t see it, I forget about using it. I needed something that could sit on my desk and remind me to track my time. Just like the water bottle standing next to me reminds me of drinking. 

And then I found Timeular. It’s EXACTLY what I need. A pretty 8-sided tracker that can sit on my desk and be ready for me to use right away. It builds the time-tracking habit using muscle memory which for me works wonders. Having it in front of me, I always remember to switch its sides when starting/stopping or shifting between tasks. 

Also, it connects to an app on your computer and automatically saves the tracked time for you. You can assign each of the sides to different repeatable tasks. For me they are:

• 2D drawing
• 3D modeling
• emails
• phone calls
• break (because we need them sometimes)
• admin work
• learning/reading
• other

In the app, you can describe all the things you did for each task you tracked. You can also manually add time blocks if needed. Then you can analyze the overall time spent on each of them, so it makes your life much easier if you bill by the hour. The analytics might also come in handy when building systems and processes, to know how much time you spend on those repeatable tasks and to see which area might need improvement.

3. KISList

Now I’m sure you’re gonna love this one. It’s close to my heart because it was developed in Poland, where I come from. It’s a very powerful tool, created with interior designers in mind. With KISList (I always write KISS somehow 😅) you will have all the project elements in one place. 

If you’re tired of manually creating furniture, material, and light fixture lists for your project - KISList is for you. It helps you create product lists automatically, straight from your web browser using the dedicated extension. The app saves the name, the photo, the price, the link, etc. and after that, you can decide on the amount of the given item you want to include.

As a result, you get not only the complete list of all the elements but also the budget, which you can then verify by room or by category. You can then send those lists to the client, which gives them the possibility to accept or decline each of the elements and add a note or comment.

There is a free 30-day trial (no card needed) and then you can choose between three paid plans to pay either monthly or annually. You should definitely give it a try. 

4. Miro

This is a very visual app that is made for collaboration and teamwork. But no one forbids you from using it just for yourself. And it’s great if you’re a visual thinker but don’t have any paper at hand. If you’re not a paper lover, you’ll like the app even more. You can brainstorm ideas, create lists, mind maps, and many more. 

Try the post-it feature to create a note vision board that you can access anywhere, anytime.

5. Milanote

That’s another visual app created for creatives. Yes, it’s about us too (even though sometimes all the admin work makes me doubt that 😅). Milanote lets you create beautiful visual- and mood boards for the beginning stages of your project. Just like KISList, it offers the possibility to save pictures straight from your web browser, but you can as easily use it as a desktop app with the pictures you’ve gathered on your hard disk. 

You can log in to your Milanote account anywhere so whenever you get an idea or take an inspiring photo - you can just quickly put it there and keep everything in order and in one place. The variety of built-in tools makes it even more powerful than simply creating mood boards. You can add to-do notes, comments, descriptions, deadlines, create briefs, and so on.

In the end, you can export all your mood boards into PDFs ready to share, or share them directly from the app for your clients to comment on or view only.

How To Use Those Apps Together

I could’ve listed them in the order in which they can be used, but nothing is lost - I will just write it all here. So the way you can use those apps together to organize your interior design business (or the way I use them) is this:

• use Asana for all the back office organization for you (and your team if you have it), both professionally and personally. Write all the tasks, all the contacts, etc. 

You can also use it to write down all the systems and processes you create for your business in the form of a checklist or to share with other team members.

• for everyday brainstorming, either for a project but also for your business in general - use Miro, to keep all the notes at hand instead of scattered around the house or the office (or sometimes even the car…). 

You can also keep it as your note-taking app on your phone.

• when you’re at the beginning stages of your project design process, use Milanote to create mood boards, gather ideas and visually prepare for the further stages

• use Timeular throughout the whole process to track the time you spend on each design phase and other everyday business tasks 

• then, when everything is designed, use KISList to create the list of all the elements you want to use for the project, verify the budget and discuss with clients. It can serve as a shopping list for them or you, depending on who is responsible for purchasing.

Mix And Match

It’s not really about using one of the apps first, and then another. They might come in more or less handy depending on the phase of the project. But it all depends on your workflow and the way you decide to use the app itself. 

The important thing is, these apps will help you organize your interior design business and as a smart CEO as you are, you should try and use them to your advantage. Remember - it’s about working smarter, not harder.

Good luck with organizing your business!