I’m sure you already understand the importance of having a website. I mean, it’s the 21st century, the Internet is more powerful than ever and to use at least a bit of that power, you should have a website, especially if you’re running a business. You might also want to know how to create a website if you're an interior designer. But if somehow you’re not sure whether you need a website or not, go ahead and read the article I wrote, about why having a website is essential in the interior design business.
You might think ‘ok, I know I need a website and I want one, but I’m not a website designer, I know nothing about HTML, CSS, and all those strange-sounding internet thingies… how am I going to create one?!’. Fear not as there are ways to deal with that and I’m about to show them to you. Oh and I don’t plan on pushing you to spend thousands of dollars on a designer that will do it for you. Although, it’s a valid option, provided you have the budget for it.
If you’re more of a DIYer when it comes to your business, like me (at least in the beginning), this comprehensive guide on how to create a website if you’re an interior designer is perfect for you. I’m going to walk you step by step through the process and help you get your site up and running in no time! And since you’re an interior designer, I will show you how to create a website that is designed with style. Ready? Fasten your seatbelts and let’s go!
First Things First - A Domain Name
A domain name is basically your website address. It’s the words that come after www. up there in the address/search bar. For example, my domain name is aleksandranorman.com. For your domain name, you can choose either your name (like me) or the name of your company (or whatever you wish for that matter). I have another domain called normanstudio.eu as NormanStudio is my interior design company name. You probably noticed that it doesn’t end with .com. Well, unfortunately, the .com domain with my company name was already taken… I chose .eu instead as I do my designs mostly in Europe.
Checking Availability
To make sure that your desired domain name is available, you can go to the website called Namecheckr. This site will show you not only the domain name availability but also various social media handles. This could come in handy if you’d like to create any social media accounts with the same name as well. Which is highly recommended by the way. Go ahead and give it a try!
As you can see there are plenty of platforms, websites, etc. where you can create an account. For now, focus especially on the .com, then, if you wish, verify also Facebook, Instagram, and perhaps Pinterest. If there are other platforms that you’re interested in, then by all means, it’s all up to you.
Also, don’t get discouraged if you notice that your desired domain name is already taken. There is a chance it might be a glitch on the website, but just to be safe, try another variation of it, to see what comes up.
Right, if you’ve checked the availability of your name, now it’s time to register it!
The First Step To Creating A Website - Registering A Domain Name
It’s not enough to have checked the availability of your name. To make sure that it’s yours and actually be able to use it - you need to claim it, a.k.a. register it. In other words still - buy it. Don’t worry, domain names usually don’t cost much.
To claim your domain name, I highly recommend using Namecheap. I’ve been using it for all my domains ever since I started my adventure with websites (which was almost 10 years ago and believe you me, normanstudio.eu and aleksandranorman.com were not my first websites 😉).
What you want to do when you go to the Namecheap page is to type in your desired domain name to check the price.
As soon as you open the page, put in your desired domain name, as shown in the picture below, and click on the search button.
Once you do it, Namecheap will show you all the possible extensions you can get. Surprise, surprise, .com is not the only extension there is. In fact, there are almost 500 of them. Some are dedicated to specific countries, like .it for Italy, .pl for Poland, etc. Don’t get overwhelmed though, you don’t want to go too crazy with the extension choice. If .com is not available for your domain name, I suggest you either use the one that applies to your country, or .design, .studio, or .co if they could work. Ditch all the others as you risk that it won’t be memorable or won’t seem professional.
The prices shown are for a whole year, 365 days of using your domain name. You can straight away register for a longer period but there’s also an option for auto-renewal so that you don’t have to think about it. If you’re sure that the name you chose is the one that you want to stick to for longer, however, I recommend extending the subscription period as it comes with price advantages.
Once you add your chosen domain name to the cart, Namecheap will propose a bunch of additional elements you can get. They are not necessary if you don’t want any of them. Your website will function anyway. What I do recommend adding, though, is Business Email.
This feature will let you create an email like contact@yourdomainname. You have to admit that it looks much more professional than, let’s say yourdomainname@gmail, right? So don’t hesitate, do your business a favor and get a professional-looking business email address 🙂
You might have noticed that there are some hosting and WordPress options as well. We will use WordPress hosting in further steps. If you’d like, you can add it to the cart now, but before you click the purchase button, please read the WordPress With Namecheap - A Match Made In Heaven step of this guide.
Once you add everything that interests you, go ahead and view the cart. Here you will be able to extend the registration period from one year to even ten years if you wish. There’s also the auto-renew option I wrote about earlier. I’d keep that on. Don’t worry, Namecheap will send you reminders when the renewal is about to happen, before charging anything.
You surely noticed that aside from your domain name and the business Email (Pro Email), there are other items in the cart. Namecheap doesn't charge for them unless you enable it. You might want to look into the PremiumDNS or SSL services and add them if they interest you.
All done? Great! After you click the Confirm Order button, you will be asked to log in (if you have an account already) or register. To create a new account, simply fill in the form with the necessary information and click the button at the end. Then you will be redirected to the checkout page.
A Quick Side Step - Creating a Business Email
Once you’ve purchased everything, you can go to the dashboard and set up your Business Email. To do so, simply click the ‘Manage’ button next to your domain name and scroll down to find the Private Email section, and click ‘Add Mailbox’.
To read the full instruction on how to set up your business email - click here or here.
Congratulations! You now have an official website address and a professional mailbox to go with it!
Don’t pop the champagne just yet, though, this was only the beginning. Let’s continue!
Where Does Your Website Live?
Ok, now that you have the domain name, you need somewhere to host your website. A hosting platform is a place that will keep your website online, providing storage for all your content. After all, websites are not floating in thin air. Who knew? 🤷
The hosting platform I recommend is… Namecheap 🙂 I’m a huge fan of having as few accounts as possible so if I can have both my domain and my hosting in one place - you bet I'll do it. With all the social media, banks, apps, etc. we already have a bazillion accounts everywhere. Why add more? Plus, Namecheap has a huge database of guides and tutorials on how to do everything there, so you won’t get lost. If you do, though (as we all do sometimes), the customer service is suuuper helpful and replies almost instantly, providing step-by-step solutions to any problem you might have. That’s just another reason why I like them so much.
WordPress With Namecheap - A Match Made In Heaven
Have you heard about WordPress? It’s usually associated with the blogging world but it can serve everyone. This is the platform you will create your website on.
I know it’s a lot to follow, but trust me, it’s easier than it seems.
Basically, WordPress is the platform that allows you to create and control your website, its pages, galleries, etc. and Namecheap hosting will provide storage space for all of it. Once it’s all set up, the only thing you will use is the WordPress dashboard. You might occasionally need to go to your Namecheap dashboard as well, but WordPress will be your day-to-day tool.
So how do you go about setting up the hosting? It’s super simple. Click here to go to the dedicated Namecheap website.
*If you’ve added it to your cart while purchasing your domain name - go ahead and in the cart, open the drop-down menu, and choose ‘Starter Monthly Trial’. This will give you one month of WordPress hosting for free! Now you can go back to where you were :)*
You can also get one month free when you click the link I provided before and simply choose the ‘Try For Free’ option.
Once you click it, you’ll be asked to log in, if you’re not already. Then, you’ll need to provide a valid payment method (you would anyway when purchasing the domain name). You can see that you can cancel anytime before the month is up and you won’t be charged. But trust me, you’ll definitely want to stay 🙂
Now you should be inside the EasyWP (WordPress) Admin and asked to set up your account. First - you need to choose the name of your website. I’d suggest you type in your interior design company name.
Then you need to choose a domain. Since you’ve just purchased one, choose the ‘Your Domain On Namecheap’ option and choose the domain name you bought.
And now comes the Theme picking time. As the setup tells you, you can always change it later, you can even skip this step. I’d say choose whichever from those three themes. It doesn’t really matter as we will use another tool to design your own later.
The next step is about Plugins. This is what WordPress is famous for - the possibility to add various plugins. They provide additional functionality to your website making the design potential practically infinite. But since we’re only starting, you can skip this step.
This was the last step in setting up your WordPress site. In the end, you just need to review the info you put in, and this way Namecheap hosting set up your WordPress site for you. See? It was quite simple, right? Great, now let’s move on to my favorite part.
Designing your WordPress website
I know it might seem like a lot of work but trust me, it’s all worth it! If you’re getting discouraged, think about the money you’re saving on a professional website designer. And about the endless personalization possibilities that WordPress gives you. I mean, really, once you get into the WordPress world, you’ll see what I mean. But let’s cut to the chase - let's create a website for your interior design business.
The EasyWP setup left you in the admin dashboard. You want to bookmark this page as it will let you easily log in to your WordPress dashboard. Go ahead and click on the WP Admin button to open the WordPress dashboard.
I’m not going to go through all the WordPress functionalities, there are tons of videos and articles about that on the internet, like this one that explains the basic WordPress Settings. So go ahead and look for some if you want to see the specific WordPress guide. I will focus on the tool that I mentioned before. And it’s the Brizy Builder.
The link will take you to the Brizy website. You can go ahead and click the 'Get Started Now button'.
Now you have two options. Either use the free plugin or go Pro. The free plugin is free forever - it’s not a trial version. It is good for the start (I started with it) but I’m sure you’ll soon realize that the Pro version is the way to go 😉
If you choose the free version, the site will ask how you plan to use Brizy and to type in your email. If you choose the Pro version right away - it will ask you to choose your plan. The way to go here is the Personal plan.
Both ways will let you download the Brizy plugin (check your email for the link, if the download hasn’t started right away). So now you need to go to your WordPress dashboard to install it (leave the plugin as a .zip file). To do so, open your dashboard and click the Plugins section.
Then click ‘Add New Plugin’ and ‘Upload Plugin’ (it will appear more or less in the same place as the Add button). Once you do, a possibility to browse your computer will show up.
Go ahead and click the 'Choose file' button, go find the .zip file you downloaded and click 'Choose'. Then, click the 'Install Now' button.
Check your Plugin list to see if the Brizy plugin is active. If not, activate it. Now you’re able to use Brizy Builder to create your own beautiful website, yay!
When you open the Brizy menu that’s on the left, you will get a bunch of options to configure the plugin. If you go to the 'Starter Templates' option, you will be able to choose one from many of the templates that Brizy prepared for you. But! That’s not what we’re here for. We want to create a website of your own, something that will reflect your interior design branding and style. So! You can choose one of the templates as a base to further configure it according to your taste. I personally started with Bizgo but you can see that my website doesn’t resemble the Bizgo template one bit. So no worries if you don’t really like anything here. I’ll show you all the tools that Brizy has, to make it your own.
*Hint - if you don’t have the Pro version, click the 'Free' filter to see the templates available to you.*
When you click the Install button under the chosen template, Brizy will ask you whether you want to keep the existing content or delete it. Since you have no content yet, go ahead and choose the Delete option to start fresh!
Great! Now let’s go to the Pages menu in the WordPress dashboard, to create your first website page. There’s probably one already there called Home, Welcome, or something like that. Notice that when you hover over it with your mouse, additional options appear. Go ahead and click the 'Edit with Brizy' option.
When it loads (the first load might take a little longer), you’ll notice the Template page you installed. Any pictures that the template contains, will show up in your Media Library. Make sure to delete all the unused pictures from it as they unnecessarily take up space.
Notice the menu bar on the left-hand side. Here’s what the options are:
- The design elements - those are the elements/widgets you will use to create your website. From text and image boxes to forms, maps, and a lot more! All drag-and-drop style.
*Hint: the red dot next to an element means it’s available only with the Pro version*
- The blocks section - here you can move around the blocks you created.
*Hint: Blocks are the sections of your website. Notice I’m linking video tutorials from Brizy that will help you get the gist of it all!*
- The Styling section - this is the place where all your branding colors and fonts will live.
*Hint: that’s one of the many features I love Brizy for - you can set up your colors, Heading styles, etc here in one place so that you don’t have to define them for each element from scratch. You can simply choose from the pre-set-up configuration you make. Also, when you change a color or a headline font - it will automatically change throughout all the elements that you assign that style.*
- The little computer icon is the feature that lets you switch between Desktop, Mobile, and Tablet views, to make sure your website looks great on all devices
*Hint: you should start with building all the pages in desktop mode and then adjust the other views. Why? Because the desktop mode is the base that gives you all the options and functionalities. When you go to the mobile view, the configuration choices will be limited and based on what you did on the desktop. However, all the adjustments you make in mobile mode will be visible only in mobile mode. Or Tablet for that matter. So if a certain font size is not well visible in mobile mode - you can make it bigger. You can change the position of the text and many more, and they will only work in the mobile view. So no worries to mess up the main design. Isn’t that cool?*
- The page view lets you choose between the templates that you want to base your current page on if you’ve created any templates before. To create them, you should go to Brizy options in your WordPress dashboard and choose Templates.
*Hint: creating templates might save you lots of time if you know you’ll have several pages with the same layout. For example, all the projects pages, that showcase one project at a time. Note: Template builder is only available in the Pro version.*
- The bottommost icon gives you the option to go back to the WordPress dashboard, plugin settings, some info about the Builder, support, and the chance to go Pro.
- The menu in the lower right corner lets you Update the page once you’ve made all the changes, or save the page you’re working on as a draft. You can also undo and redo your steps, show hidden elements and preview the page.
- Each block has a separate menu to it, in its upper right corner. Here you can choose a background image for the entire block, change its background color, mark it as a favorite, change its styling and position, duplicate it, or delete it. You can also make a certain block global, which means it will appear on every page you create.
*Hint: the 'Favorite' button might come in handy if you want to be able to insert a certain block into another page but not all of them (as opposed to global blocks). If you save them to a cloud, you can use them with various websites. For now, you can skip that step. When adding a new block, you’ll be able to choose the 'Saved' section and from there - the blocks you marked as favorites.*
*Hint2: within the color section of each block options, you can add borders, shadows, make the background as gradient and much more*
Go ahead and play around with Brizy Builder for a while, just randomly click here and there, create blocks and elements (you simply drag and drop them), and see all the functionalities it has. To help you with getting familiar with it, Brizy developers created a whole bunch of videos that explain everything step by step. I’ve linked some of them before, here you can check the whole playlist.
To go back to your WordPress dashboard, simply click the door icon in the bottom left corner and click ‘Back to dashboard’. It will bring you to the WordPress editor of that page (don’t worry if it doesn’t show the page you’ve created, if you saved it - it exists 🙂 ). You need to click the WordPress icon in the upper left corner to go back to the dashboard completely.
To create a new page, go to the Pages menu and click 'Add New'.
Again, it will show you the WordPress page builder. Here simply put in the name of that page. This name will also become this page’s slug. Meaning its identifier in the address. The page you’re looking at now has a slug 'guide-how-to-create-a-website-if-youre-interior-designer' (phew, that was long...) meaning its address is 'https://aleksandranorman.com/guide-how-to-create-a-website-if-youre-interior-designer/'.
Then click Save draft. This will create the page but not make it visible yet. Then go and click “Edit With Brizy” and you’ll go back to Brizy Editor.
When you’re happy with your design - simply click Publish in the Brizy Editor, et voilà!
You might be wondering about how to create the Menu for your page.
If you’ve got the Pro version, you can use the Menu element, place it in a block, adjust, and save it as global. This element will load the menu you created in WordPress. To create one, you need to go to the 'Appearance' menu from the WordPress dashboard and choose 'Menus'. I will leave a link to a video explaining step by step how to create a Menu, right here (feel free to watch it at at least 1.25 playback speed 😅 ).
If you don’t have the Pro version, you will need some creativity 😉 You can create a block and put buttons in that will then link to your pages. It might work for you in the beginning but remember that you’ll have to adjust everything manually whenever you create a new page that you’d like to put there. The same goes for the Footer menu.
*Hint: in the free version menu, make sure all the links are correct. Since you’re inserting them manually, you don’t want to make any mistakes.
Great! Now that you’ve familiarized yourself a bit with WordPress and Brizy, go ahead and create the website of your dreams! It doesn’t have to be perfect straight away, you can customize it as you keep learning about all the functionalities. Remember to create all the necessary pages, like:
- welcome page - to greet everyone that comes to your website and quickly explain who you are and what you do
- services page - to write about the services you provide, the pricing, etc.
- projects page - your portfolio
- contact page - with a contact form so that your potential clients can easily reach you
The last one will come in super handy in your Client Onboarding Process. How? Read about it here.
I really highly recommend getting the Brizy Pro version. For the price of eight Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Starbucks, you get a whole year subscription to the Brizy Pro that comes with unlimited design options. Why not give it a go? 😉
I hope everything was clear for you in this comprehensive guide about how to create a website if you’re an interior designer. If you have any doubts or questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to help 🙂
Here’s a quick summary of what we did to create your website if you're an interior designer:
- check the availability of your desired domain name on Namecheckr
- go to Namecheap and register your domain name
- still at Namecheap, get yourself the Easy WordPress hosting (first month is free!)
- go to Brizy to get your Brizy Builder or Brizy Builder Pro plugin and install it in your WordPress dashboard
- start creating your pages with Brizy
Happy designing!
