The 2025 Guide to Setting Sustainability Goals for Your Interior Design Business

Aligning Your Interior Design Business Goals with Sustainability

As we close our first month in 2025, it is important to remember there is no right or wrong time to set sustainability goals for interior designers. That said, most of us tend to set our goals at the beginning of the year, and I hope to capture your attention to help you incorporate eco-friendly practices and sustainable design practices as part of your business goals moving forward. In this article, I will cover some general goal-setting principles that I have found helpful over the years and the areas where you can make small changes that will have a lasting, positive impact on your business and the planet.

Achieving Success with Meaningful and Attainable Sustainability Goals

Setting goals means nothing if you cannot meet them and feel successful. Before you set your goals, it is important to take some time to reflect on your current position and think about what is meaningful to you. If you aren’t passionate about making changes, you will likely not prioritize efforts toward goals that don’t align with your heart. Once you have an idea of what goals you want to set, it is important to define your sustainability goals clearly, ensure they are measurable, set a deadline for each, and write them down as if they have already happened. If you have a gratitude practice, you can also add a sprinkle of gratitude to each goal. Here is an example of a current green design goal I am working on, written in this way to help you understand: “I am so grateful that on every project we produce in 2025, we install at least one reclaimed or repurposed piece.” Clearly defined: install reclaimed pieces. Measurable: at least one in every project. Deadline: this will be our standard practice by the end of 2025. Gratitude: I am already thankful for being able to accomplish this. The last thing I want to mention before I give you some focus areas to evaluate in your business, is that your goal does NOT have to be big. Did you notice how I am committing to “at least one” piece instead of committing to “at least one piece in every room” or “at least ten pieces?” Set yourself up for success. Once I get good at doing one piece in every project, I can increase that to two, five, or whatever feels right. Many people fail when they set goals that are too ambitious. Give yourself some grace so you can win!

Prioritizing Sustainability in Your Interior Design Business

Let’s cover the various segments of your interior design business so you can start to think about attainable sustainable business practices. We will break this down into back-office practices, client intake practices, sourcing, contractors and installers, and setting clients up for success at the project’s close.

Back Office Practices

Before you can start expecting to create dramatic changes in your work, you need to look closely at how you run your business behind the scenes. Set examples by leading. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Recycling / Composting: This may sound silly, but are you practicing waste diversion in your eco-friendly office? Recycling paper is great but know that only about 9% of plastics get recycled. Start looking for zero-waste office supplies, like pens made from wood or craft paper instead of plastic. Remember that recycling is a two-way street. It only works if you are also buying recycled goods. Your printer paper, envelopes, packing tape, etc., are small things you can change. Set your business up on subscriptions to take the thinking out of it.
• Energy Use / Carbon Emissions: Can you buy green energy solutions or credits to offset your electricity use in your area? How about your carbon emissions? In my interior design practice, we contribute to projects planting mangroves for every invoice paid—it helps us offset our CO2 emissions and is relatively inexpensive.
• Digitizing your work: I know that many designers come from the days of printing and cutting out catalog photos for presentations, but think about whether you can present on a screen moving forward. Every little bit of waste adds up. A PDF design board for each room or fixture displayed on a screen for a presentation gets the message across just as well. It saves a ton of time, too.
• Sampling: This is one of the most wasteful aspects of an interior design studio. Look around your studio and consider how many of your samples have been collecting dust over the past few years. Start leveraging platforms like Material Bank to make sampling carbon neutral and more sustainable – plus, you’ll get about half your shelf space back as a perk. If you can’t find your samples online, talk to your reps about ordering single memos, checking out samples, etc., rather than keeping an entire collection in-house. For the samples you decide to get rid of, donate! There are art schools, senior centers, etc., in your area that would love to make crafts out of your sample materials.
• Banking / Investments: Consider checking your bank or investment accounts to see what your dollar is supporting. Several new financial institutions are out there that are transparent about divesting from oil and will make you feel good about your financial position.

Client Intake Practices

• Marketing: Are you marketing to the 80% of consumers who prioritize health and sustainability with your sustainable design marketing efforts? If not, you might be missing out on business. Now, don’t market something you can’t offer, but if you provide sustainable interior design, work that into your messaging.
• Initial Client Contact: Are you asking clients if their health conditions are a consideration for their project? Are you asking them if sustainable selections matter to them? Engaging eco-conscious clients starts with simple questions. You won’t know what you don’t ask. Whatever your initial intake process is – add a few simple questions and start tracking the responses you get. You may be surprised!
• Observe Their Environment: This might sound silly since you are already making a first in-person appointment to look at their current space, but are you looking at what is in their home? I’ll give you an example of something that happened to me at a first client meeting last week:

In the meeting with the client, it wasn’t apparent whether they prioritized health or sustainability because we were introduced by a builder we work with and skipped our first questionnaire. (Don’t judge me!) A big part of this remodel and addition is the kitchen, so I asked if I could see the pantry to gauge the space and their needs. Inside the pantry was organic coconut milk, grains, peanut butter, etc. I asked them, “What is important to you when cooking meals for your family?” The response was, “I need to know that I can use my non-toxic cookware because we do not support plastics or chemical coatings in our cooking.” BINGO! I then let her know we would be recommending induction cooktops because of the harmful effects of gas appliances, and so on. If your clients are buying organic food, fair-trade natural fiber clothing, using vegan makeup products, etc., then why would they NOT do the same for the finishes in their homes?

Sourcing Sustainable Design Products for Clients

This is where you need to assess your go-to accounts to see if you already have some sustainable lines on hand. If not, perhaps you need to make some goals to educate yourself in this area of your business.

• What to Ask Reps: This is a very complex subject, and you can check out our article on this topic HERE to dive deep. However, you can first ask where to find the company’s sustainability statement. If they don’t have one, ask what sustainability initiatives they are working on. You need to know where the goods are made and whether there are any harmful toxins in the product, at the very least.
• Know where things are made: This matters a great deal when sourcing sustainable materials. The farther something travels to get to your client, the higher the CO2 emissions. Check out our article on how important it is to source American-made goods HERE.
• Continuing Education: Plenty of programs will teach you these practice standards, and Interior Design greenList is one of them. We have 7 IDCEC-approved lessons to help you know what to look for and how to streamline these processes.
• Make a list of preferred vendors: This is where I started. Whenever I found a preferred eco-friendly vendor, I added them to my list for future reference. Eventually, I made this available to other designers like you, so you don’t have to do all the hard work and research. We offer all our members access to our sustainable sourcing directory. It is interactive and can be used anywhere, from any device, anytime. We currently have over 160 manufacturers on this list, which is continually growing. Check out our access levels HERE.

Partnering With Green Contractors and Installers

Our spaces do not come to life on their own. We must collaborate with others to make our clients’ dreams come true. Here are some ideas on how to find like-minded partners.

• Reuse: This could involve finding vintage shops, local furniture consignment shops, deconstruction shops, or building supply/salvage shops in your area. You can work with these kinds of businesses at the front end of your projects and source from them, too!
• General Practices: Regardless of the workroom, contractor, or installer, ask them if they are working to reduce waste, willing to divert construction debris, or employing sustainable business practices. Work with other companies that care about sustainable partnerships as much as you do. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” right?
• Set Goals Together: I get how hard it is to find new people to work with. Perhaps you can take your favorite contractors out to coffee and say, “I am working on reducing waste and chemicals in my projects and want to keep working with you. Is this something you are willing to work on together?” Acknowledge that you aren’t going to be perfect but want to try some new things and understand that in some areas, this might increase the cost or make the processes take a little longer until everyone is up to speed.

Setting Your Clients Up for Success

We are not the end users of the spaces we improve. Ensure that your clients know how to responsibly maintain, clean, and dispose of everything you sourced and installed with sustainable living tips. We have a Sustainable Cleaning and Care Guide we give to all our clients. This guide is also available to our greenList Interior Designer Members to download and re-brand so you can give it to your clients with your closing gift.

Your Next Steps for Starting Small and Finding Success

Now that we have covered the bases, schedule some time on your calendar to set these goals for your interior design business. Be sure you are in good headspace and that you aren’t jamming this in at the end of a day of stressful site visits, for example. Remember to set realistic sustainability goals and refrain from setting too many goals. I like to set 2 goals per quarter. If I don’t achieve them, I can keep working on them until I am ready to make new goals. I once read a book, The Power of Less, by Leo Babauta. In reading, I realized that I tend to take on too many things at once, and then I am never successful in any of them. The moment I started working on only one or two goals at a time, I started seeing massive success.

Support for your Sustainable Interior Design Goals

We at Interior Design greenList work on goal setting in our exclusive green design community Member Huddles every other month. If you are looking to learn about everything I covered in this article and connect with interior designers in our online community for support and guidance, we would love to have you! Book a free zoom call with me HERE to discuss your goals and how our community of interior designers can help you!