Free template + example
Free Interior Design Proposal Template (with a filled example)
The proposal you write at 11pm, guessing what they'll say yes to. This one has the structure decided and a six-room example filled in, so your job is the thinking, not the formatting.
The proposal you write at 11pm, guessing what they’ll say yes to
You had a good first meeting. They liked you. Now it’s late, the proposal is due tomorrow, and you’re staring at a blank page trying to work out how to put a number on it. Too high and they walk. Too low and you’ll spend the next eight months quietly resenting the job.
So you open the last proposal, change the names, and hope.
This template is the version you’d write with a clear head. The structure is already decided: what you heard, what’s in scope, how the work runs, what it costs and how the money works, what happens next. Your job is the thinking, not the formatting.
And because a blank template is only half useful, there’s a filled example inside the same file. A six-room residential job, real-looking numbers, the fee page written out in full. Read the example, then write yours.
What’s inside
What’s inside
A cover page, then six sections. It opens in Word, Google Docs and Pages, and it’s yours to edit.
1. The brief as we heard it.
Three or four paragraphs playing the client's own words back to them. This is the section that wins the job, because it proves you listened.
2. Scope: rooms and what's included.
A table, one row per room, with what you're doing in each and what you're not. "Not included" written down here is what stops the "oh, we assumed the laundry was part of it" conversation in month four.
3. How we'll work.
Five phases, discovery to installation, with what the client receives at the end of each one and an estimated timeline. Clients say yes faster when they can see the shape of the whole thing.
4. Investment.
Two fee options side by side (a flat fee and an hourly estimate, or any two you prefer), what's included and what's not, a plain sentence on how purchasing works and how pricing is shown, and an estimated furnishing budget range by room. More on this page below, because it's the one they read twice.
5. Next steps.
Accept, sign the letter of agreement, pay the retainer, kickoff. Four steps, so saying yes is easy.
6. Terms summary and validity.
The handful of terms a client needs before the contract, and a date the proposal expires.
The filled example is “Harborview Residence”: a six-room project for a family, with a flat fee of $18,500 against an hourly alternative, and a furnishing range of $140,000 to $190,000 broken down by room. Same demo project as our budget template, so if you use both, they read like one studio’s documents.
Peek inside the file
Download the proposal template
Free. Email required, and we’ll send the Word file. One file, two versions inside: blank and filled. It opens in Google Docs and Pages too.
Proposal, quotation, contract: which one is this?
A quotation prices the work. A proposal sells the approach, with the price inside it. A contract, or letter of agreement, sets the rules after the proposal is accepted. This template is the proposal, and the range it carries becomes the live budget once the job starts.
The one page clients read
Clients skim the brief and nod along through the phases. Then they get to the Investment page and slow right down.
Most proposals get this page wrong in one of two ways. Either the fee sits alone with no sense of what the furniture will cost, and the client finds out in design development that the sofa is $9,000. Or the designer pastes a spreadsheet in, trade cost and margin columns and all, and spends the rest of the project being asked why the chair costs more than the website says.
The template does neither. The fee has its own table with what’s in and what’s out. The furnishing budget is a range by room, low and high, with no cost column, no margin column and no supplier names, because none of that belongs in a client document. And there’s one sentence on how purchasing and pricing work, written in plain English, so the client knows how the money moves before they sign rather than after.
Designers tell us the hardest part of a proposal isn’t the writing. It’s putting the number down. Industry coaches have a name for the reason: the money story, the thing that makes you shave $2,000 off a fee nobody asked you to shave. A clear structure doesn’t fix that on its own, but it helps. When the fee is a table and the budget is a range with a reason behind it, you’re presenting a plan, not asking permission.
If the number itself is the hard part, the fee calculator turns a scope and a rate into a flat figure, and the client approval scripts cover the “can you do it for less?” conversation. The guide to interior design quotations walks through what to include and what to leave off.
Why we’re giving it away
A proposal is where the money conversation starts
Mortar is project and budget management for interior designers. A proposal is where the money conversation starts. Mortar is where it continues: every room has its own budget, and adding, swapping or approving an item updates the room total straight away, with your client seeing the same number in a portal they open from a link, no account needed. You choose what pricing each client sees (full item pricing, totals only, or none), and trade costs and margins never appear in the portal.
So the room figures from your proposal become the room budgets on day one of the job, and they stay true as the selections change. The template is free either way. A few emails on proposals and fees, then we leave you alone.
FAQ
- What's the difference between a proposal, a quotation and a contract?
- A proposal is the document that persuades: here's what we heard, here's how we'd approach it, here's what it costs. A quotation (or quote) is the pricing part on its own, a fixed figure for a defined scope, and in the UK and Australia it's often the word used for the whole thing. A contract, or letter of agreement, is the legal document you both sign after the proposal is accepted. This template is the proposal; it points to the contract as the next step. The full breakdown is in our guide to interior design quotations.
- Should a proposal include the furniture budget?
- Yes, as a range by room, not as a fee and nothing else. Clients who don't know the furnishing budget until design development are the ones who stall at approval. A range lets you be honest about the unknowns while still giving them a number to plan around. The template includes a room-by-room range table and an example of how to word it.
- How long should an interior design proposal be?
- Four to six pages, plus a cover. Long enough to show you understood the brief and to answer the money question properly; short enough that they read it in one sitting. The Harborview example runs to five pages. If yours is heading past eight, you're probably writing the design concept into the proposal, and that's work they haven't paid for yet.
- Do I charge for the proposal?
- Most designers don't charge for the proposal itself, but many charge for the consultation that comes before it, and some credit that fee against the design fee if the client proceeds. The template has a line in the Terms section for this either way. What you shouldn't do is give away concept work inside the proposal: describe the approach, don't design the room.
- How long should a proposal be valid for?
- Thirty days is common. The template's cover page has a "valid until" date, and the Terms section says what happens after it: fees may be revised, and the timeline moves with the start date. A validity date isn't about pressure; it protects you from a client coming back in six months expecting the same fee and the same calendar.
Run your next project on one list. Get your evenings back.
Load a real project into the trial. Paste a product link and watch it fill itself in, then open the portal your client would see. You'll know within a week.
- Fully self-serve
- Cancel anytime