William Shakespeare may have once penned “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” – but as anyone who has started an interior design business knows, there’s a lot that goes into naming your firm (as well as a lot of agonizing over if you’ve made the right choice!) And why not? It’s an incredibly important part of your business that will frame your identity and either help or hinder your effort to market yourself.
You might already have some creative ideas that you like, or maybe, you’re still struggling to come up with something you love – but chances are you’re feeling a little angst over the whole thing. Not to worry! We’re gonna break down how to choose and vet the perfect name for your interior design company.
The last thing you want is a potential client struggling to remember the name of your interior design company, or having a hard time finding you online. So avoid super long names or acronyms (which could turn up something else when you search for it!) You’ll also want to refrain from using creative spellings of existing words, like “Designr” or “Deezine” Think about how your potential client would sit down and search for you. If they remember your business is called “Deezine Group”, chances are they won’t remember how you’ve spelt it, and they’ll end up searching for the correct spelling (Design Group) – which means you might not show up in the search results!
While it can be tempting to jump on a trend in business names, the boost you’ll get from it will be short-lived, and you’ll date your business pretty quickly. Take for example when the iPhone released, and then there was a trail of “i” businesses in the wake of it – those business names seem really cheesy, cliché, and super dated now.
Likewise, don’t base your name on today’s algorithms. Why it might be tempting to include keywords in your business and domain name, algorithms change and change quickly – so chances are by the time you’ve gotten everything ready and launched the business, the algorithm you’ve catered to no longer exists.
While you may want to include specifically what you do for your interior design company’s name (ie: Jane Smith Kitchen & Bath), or where you’re located (ie: Chicago Design Company) for marketing purposes, know that you’ll put a limited shelf-life on your name if you want to expand the business. Maybe eventually you’ll expand outside of Chicago, or, you’ll take on more projects than just kitchen and bath. If your future clients are outside of the parameters you’ve set in your name, you could create confusion, or, they might perceive (regardless of how true or not it is) that you’re not right for them.
If you have every intention of just staying within a lane like that, feel free to ignore this point. BUT, if there’s any chance that you might expand your borders, or your offering, then be sure to shy away from doing it!
Once you have some great contenders for your interior design company’s name, it’s really important to see if there’s anyone currently out there using it, and, that you can get any social handles that you may want to help market your business. Do a simple search to see if there’s another business using that name, and more importantly if there’s another interior designer using that name. You want to save yourself legal issues over trademark infringement, or issues with setting yourself up as a corporation or LLC (depending on your state or province’s naming guidelines!) If you’re in the US, you can use the United States Patent & Trademark Office’s website to do a search.
You’ll also want to check to see if you can get the name as a domain for your website, as well as the @ handles on social media sites like Facebook or Instagram. Nothing’s worse than having to add on additional words to the URL or social handles to make it work (and adding on another layer of complexity for potential customers looking for you!)
And the final piece of advice, after you’ve run the gambit of making sure it’s memorable, simple, not limiting, and available – make sure that it’s really something you love. At the end of the day, the name you’ve chosen for your interior design company is something that will stick with you for awhile – so make sure it’s something that makes you beam when you say it out loud!
Try introducing it to yourself in the mirror, run it by family and friends. Is this a name you’re proud to say and resonates with other people? Sometimes it can be hard to get that perfect Venn diagram of factors for it, but trust us, it’s worth getting right the first time (re-brands can be a ton of work and money!)
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