Should you charge a flat rate for your landscape designs?
Yes
If you read my earlier post, “How To Make Money As A Landscape Designer”, you know I believe in charging a flat rate for landscape designs. I have never, and will never, take on a project at an hourly rate. Why?
A flat rate design fee, paired with a very structured design process, keeps you in control of the process. There are a certain number of revisions (just two in my agreements) in a certain amount of time (six months from acceptance of the proposal). The client is responsible for responding to revisions and making some decisions. The designer isn’t sitting around waiting to reach a certain benchmark so they can bill hours that have already been spent on the project.
A flat rate design fee allows you to charge a higher hourly rate. Yes, you have an hourly rate. But it is for you to use when working up design agreements, not for your client to know. It would be a challenge for me to charge $350 and hour for landscape design, but I have no problem selling designs for $3500 that will take me 10 hours or less.
A flat rate design fee makes it possible to budget your money and your time. How can you take on clients not knowing what exactly they will be paying or when you will be collecting? Having a well defined process means that I know that I can have 5-7 design clients at any one time. If someone wants to hire me but I am fully booked? I know when I will be done with a project so that I can start theirs. And yes, most people will wait.
A flat rate design fee means you sometimes get paid for work you don’t do. This might make you uncomfortable, knowing that some people will get part of the way through the design process and then ghost you. But isn’t that better than having a client go silent when they owe you for 2 hours of design work? Design work you hadn’t invoiced yet because you invoice for hours at certain checkpoints?
These are just a few of the reasons you should charge a flat rate fee for landscape designs. Combined with a well structured design process contract you will be well on your way to actually making a living designing landscapes!
