A client you designed a primary bedroom for in 2023 calls in 2026 wanting the same treatment for their guest wing. You’re thrilled. Then you remember your hourly rate has gone up twice since you last worked together, and you have no idea how to bring it up without sounding like you’re punishing them for coming back.
This is a different problem than raising rates on new leads. New clients only ever see your current number. Repeat clients remember what they paid last time, and that memory becomes the anchor for what they expect to pay again. If you don’t manage that anchor deliberately, the client manages it for you, and usually in your favor.
Interior Design Community recently put this question to its members: how do you tell a client your hourly rate is going up? The responses split into two camps almost immediately, and the split itself is the useful part. Some firms handle it entirely through the contract. Others handle it entirely through the conversation. The best answer borrows from both.
Why Repeat Clients Are the Rate Increase Nobody Plans For
Most pricing conversations happen once, at the start of a relationship, when a prospective client is deciding whether to hire you at all. You quote your current rate, they accept it, or they don’t, and the number is settled before any work begins. Repeat clients break that pattern. They’re not deciding whether to hire you. They already know your work, they already trust your process, and they’re coming back specifically because the first project went well. That goodwill is real, and it’s also exactly what makes designers hesitate to bring up money.
One member offered a framing that cuts through the hesitation:
“We have a clause in our contract that says if the project lasts longer than 24 months we reserve the right to raise the fees to be in line with our current rates. For an old client with a new project, I just tell them that our rates have gone up since the last time we worked together and this is the new rate. It’s best to just be straightforward and frank. If you make a big deal out of it they’ll think it’s a big deal. If you just tell them your new rate and move on then it just is what it is and they move on too.”
@lsi_workshop
That last line is the operating principle worth pulling out on its own. Clients take their emotional cue from you. If you deliver a rate increase apologetically, hedging and over-explaining, you signal that the number is negotiable and that you expect pushback. If you state it plainly and keep moving, most clients treat it as a fact rather than a debate. The confidence isn’t a communication trick. It’s a direct result of having decided, ahead of time, that the increase isn’t up for discussion.
What It Costs You When You Wing This Conversation
Designers who don’t have a policy for repeat-client pricing tend to default to one of two costly habits. Either they quietly honor the old rate to avoid an awkward conversation, which trains long-term clients to expect below-market pricing indefinitely, or they raise the rate on the fly without warning, which can read as opportunistic even when the increase is completely justified.
The first habit is the more common one, and the more expensive. A designer who has raised rates twice since a client’s last project, but never says so, is effectively subsidizing that client’s second project out of their own margin. Multiply that across a handful of repeat clients over several years, and the gap between quoted rate and actual rate charged becomes a real drag on profitability, one that’s invisible on any single invoice but shows up clearly when you look at revenue per hour across your book of business.
The fix starts with deciding, in writing, where a rate increase actually belongs. See our breakdown of what belongs in a contract versus a welcome packet for where that line usually falls.
Put the Rule in the Contract, Not in the Moment
The clearest thread running through the responses is that firms that feel calm about rate increases are the ones that decided the policy in advance, in writing, rather than deciding it on the spot when a client calls. One member’s firm builds the clause around project length rather than calendar time between engagements, which matters for designers whose projects routinely run long:
“Our projects often span 3-4 years and therefore our contract indicates that our firm reserves the right to adjust our hourly fees for services after 24 months of signing. This of course does not impact our package fee agreement for services and only applies to hourly rates for procurement, design revisions, or any additional design services beyond the package that may occur.”
@reginasturrock
Notice the precision here. The clause doesn’t affect the package fee the client already agreed to; it applies only to hourly work that falls outside the original scope. That distinction protects the client’s trust in the deal they signed while still protecting the designer’s ability to price ongoing hourly work at current rates. It’s a model worth copying regardless of whether your firm bills primarily hourly, on a flat fee, or on a hybrid basis, because almost every contract has some hourly component tucked into procurement, revisions, or additional services.
Educational content, not legal advice. Any rate-adjustment clause should be reviewed by an attorney familiar with your state’s contract law before it goes into a client-facing agreement, since enforceability and required disclosures vary by jurisdiction.
Whichever structure you use, the clause only works if it matches how you price the rest of the engagement. See our comparison of flat fee, hourly, and hybrid pricing models before you write it.
Not every firm draws the line the same way, and that’s worth showing rather than smoothing over. One member locks in the rate the moment a proposal is signed, full stop, regardless of how long the project runs:
“I would never raise rates on a client who signed a proposal for a specific rate. But new clients, I just raise my hourly & adjust my proposals accordingly.”
@whittneyparkinson
That position is a defensible business decision, not just a personal preference. Locking rates for the life of a signed proposal is simpler to administer and easier to sell to clients who value predictability. Building in a time-based or scope-based adjustment clause, like the one above, protects margin on long or reopened projects instead. The choice should follow your typical project length and how often your clients come back for second and third projects, not a general sense of what feels fair.
How to Deliver the News Without Making It a Big Deal
A contract clause tells you when you’re allowed to raise a rate. It doesn’t tell you how to say it out loud to someone who liked working with you and is now hearing a larger number. That’s a separate skill, and the responses offered two useful pieces of it: give the client lead time, and deliver the message through a real conversation rather than a surprise line item.
One member described giving clients, past and present, a heads-up before the new rate takes effect:
“I did. And have a few times. I work a little differently as a rendering gal to interior designers, but I believe it’s the appropriate thing to do. I also have my clients past and present a 30 dayish heads up. If they need to find someone else that was more affordable they had some time to look around or adjust estimates and budgets.”
@oarhaus.interiors
The lead time matters less as a courtesy and more as a practical safeguard. A client who’s blindsided by a higher number mid-conversation reacts emotionally. A client who gets 30 days of notice has time to process the change privately, run their own numbers, and come back to you having already decided to move forward. You get a calmer conversation because you removed the moment of surprise.
Another member’s firm went further, formalizing the notice into an actual letter sent ahead of a fixed date, specifically because the original question wasn’t about mid-project changes at all:
“It’s not about raising the rate mid-project, I asked the question for repeat clients mainly. We finish a project and 6 months later they come back and want me to do their 2nd home and now my rates have increased. I have already increased any new clients but would never increase in the middle of a project. This is more about future projects with repeat clients…I think my CFO/COO and I have come to the conclusion that we send out a letter to all potential repeat clients that starting Jan. 1, 2027 that our hourly rate will increase.”
@candetodesigncompany
That clarification is worth sitting with. A written, dated notice sent to your full list of past clients does something a one-off conversation can’t: it makes the increase feel like a business policy rather than a decision about that specific client. Nobody feels singled out when the letter clearly went to everyone. It also gives you a clean, referenceable date to point back to if a client tries to negotiate down to an old number months later.
For more on how to phrase that first conversation, see our scripts and talk tracks for pricing conversations.
For the actual delivery, one response distilled the method to two steps that work whether you’re using a letter, a clause, or neither:
“Always over the phone first with an explanation of why, then with a follow up email so it’s documented.”
@jenniferhutton_pro
The phone call handles the relationship. The follow-up email handles the record. Skipping the call and going straight to a written notice can feel cold to a client who thought of you as a partner, not a vendor. Skipping the email and leaving the increase as a verbal understanding leaves you without documentation if a dispute comes up later. Doing both costs you fifteen minutes and closes off most of the ways this conversation can go sideways.
The Number Isn’t the Hard Part
None of the designers in this thread struggled with the math. Nobody was unsure about their new hourly rate. What separated the confident answers from the anxious ones was whether the rate increase had already been decided, in writing, before a client ever asked about it.
If you take one thing from this thread, make it the sequence, not the script. Set the rule first, in your contract, tied to either time or scope. Give clients real notice before it takes effect, whether that’s a 30-day heads-up or a dated letter sent to your full client list. Then deliver it the way @jenniferhutton_pro does: say it out loud, follow up in writing, and move on. A rate increase you’ve already decided on stops being an announcement you have to justify and becomes a fact you’re simply sharing. Clients notice the difference, and so does your margin.
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