Four jobs called designer. Which one is yours?
Furnishings designer. Remodeling designer. Draftsperson. The architectural track. They all get filed under the same word, and they are four different careers with four different days.
Most designers have never seen them laid out side by side. So some apply for a job they have pictured wrong, and some walk past the one that would have fit them better than anything they have done so far.
I have been in this trade since 1992 and I have interviewed designers from every one of these paths. This puts all four on one map, shows you where you land, and tells you plainly whether we are the right kind of firm for you, or what kind is.
Seven questions. None of them has a right answer.
Every path on this map is a good career, and the only way to land in the wrong one is to answer like you are being graded. Nothing is sent anywhere. This runs in your browser and we never see your answers.
Where you landed
Three more, and this gets specific.
If you landed on remodeling, these decide which of our two design seats your answers point to. If your answers came out split, they break the tie. Either way it is about a minute.
Three more. The last one is about where you are, not what you like.
Same rule as before. Answer for the job you want, not the one you have.
Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team, Scottsdale. We built this for the designer taking it. If it tells you to work somewhere else, it did its job.
What are the different kinds of interior design careers?
Most residential design work falls into four paths that share one job title. A furnishings designer selects and places furniture, fabric, lighting and art in finished rooms. A remodeling or design build designer plans changes inside an existing house, produces the construction documents, and stays with the project through the build and the year after it. A technical designer or draftsperson turns somebody else's design direction into precise, buildable drawings. The architectural track designs buildings and usually leads to a license. The biggest difference between the four is not taste. It is where each job ends.
Written by Scott Hochuli, who has been in residential construction since 1992 and founded Hochuli Design & Remodeling Team, a design build remodeler in Scottsdale, in 2001. Reviewed October 2026.
Four paths, side by side.
Here is the comparison nobody hands you in design school. Same six questions asked of all four careers, so you can see where they agree and, more usefully, where they do not. Read it even if the tool above already gave you an answer. You will know which card is yours by the second line.
Furnishings designer or decorator
- What you design
- Furniture, fabric, rugs, lighting, art, window and wall coverings, and the styling that ties them together.
- Where your week happens
- Clients' finished homes, showrooms, vendors and your desk. Rarely a job site with the walls open.
- Who makes the call
- You do, on taste. This is the most taste forward of the four.
- Who says the number
- Often you, for the furnishings budget. Rarely for construction.
- When you are finished
- At the reveal, when the room finally feels like the people who live in it.
- Look for
- A residential interior design studio or a design led furnishings showroom that does full service installs.
Remodeling or design build designer
- What you design
- Space plans inside walls that already exist, cabinet and tile layouts, plumbing and lighting locations, and every finish, specified and ordered on a schedule.
- Where your week happens
- Your desk, the showroom, the client's kitchen table, and the job site while it is being built. Boots and a dust mask a few times a month.
- Who makes the call
- You, together with the homeowner, inside a budget and around a load bearing wall that is not moving.
- Who says the number
- You, early. Including the conversation where it is $240,000 and not $160,000.
- When you are finished
- A year after move in, when you call to ask how the house held up through its first Phoenix summer.
- Look for
- A design build firm where the designer stays with the project through construction instead of handing the drawings to production.
Technical designer or draftsperson
- What you design
- The drawing set itself. Plans, elevations, details and revisions, built from somebody else's direction.
- Where your week happens
- Mostly at a desk, in the software, with headphones on more often than not.
- Who makes the call
- The designer or architect you draw for. You make it precise and buildable.
- Who says the number
- Somebody else, almost always.
- When you are finished
- When the set is issued and the field never has to call you about it.
- Look for
- Architecture firms, cabinet shops, engineering offices, and larger design build companies with a dedicated drafting seat.
The architectural track
- What you design
- Buildings, usually from the ground up, inside zoning, code and structure.
- Where your week happens
- The studio, the drawings, the city, and the site at the milestones.
- Who makes the call
- The licensed architect, which is what most people on this track are working toward becoming.
- Who says the number
- Usually a builder or a cost estimator, with the architect shaping the design to it.
- When you are finished
- It is less a project ending than a career shape: school, experience hours, exams, a license.
- Look for
- A residential architecture firm where your hours count toward licensure.
If you came from a kitchen and bath showroom
You already know every noun on card two. Cabinets, tile, layouts, lead times, the client who changes the door style twice. The difference is where the job ends. At a lot of showrooms the designer is finished when the order is placed.
Ours is a showroom too. Our designers keep going after the order: the site visits while it goes in, the punch list, and the calls to the homeowner at six months and at a year. If that sounds like the part you have been missing, card two is yours.
Where we sit on this map
We are a design build remodeler in Scottsdale, and every designer here is on the second path. That is the reason this page exists. Our applicants come from all four, and the ones from the other three were usually good designers who had pictured our job wrong.
We would rather you find your card here than spend a year finding it on our payroll.
What designers ask about these four paths
Answered whether you ever apply here or not.
An interior designer, in the way most people use the term, works mostly with what goes into a finished room: furniture, fabric, lighting, art, and window and wall coverings. A remodeling designer works on the room itself: where the walls go, how the cabinets lay out, where the plumbing and lighting land, and the construction documents a crew builds from. The remodeling designer is usually on site during construction and still involved after move in. Both are design careers. They are different days.
A design build designer plans the remodel and stays with it through construction, because the same company designs it and builds it. That usually means running the first consultation, measuring the house, drawing the plans and construction documents, developing the budget alongside the design, specifying every finish, visiting the job site while it is built, and following up with the homeowner after move in. At our firm that follow up is a check in call at six months and another at a year.
They share most of the vocabulary, and the difference is where the job ends. At many kitchen and bath showrooms the designer lays out the cabinets, sells the product and is finished when the order is placed. A remodeling designer at a design build firm does that same work and then follows it into the house: the installation, the punch list, and the months after. If you love the layout work and want to see it through, the second version is worth looking for.
Not hands on experience, but they do need construction literacy. You do not need to have framed a wall. You do need to know which walls can move, what a plumber needs to hear to price a fixture correctly, and why a tile layout that works on paper can fail on a floor that is out of level. Most of that is learned on job sites, which is one reason the job puts you on them.
At a design build firm, usually yes. Because the design and the budget are developed together, the designer is often the person who tells the homeowner what it costs, and tells her early, before the design gets ahead of the number. If the price conversation is the part of the job you would rather somebody else handle, a furnishings or technical path will suit you better, and that is a perfectly good reason to choose one.
It is a design career with a different center of gravity. A draftsperson or technical designer turns somebody else's design direction into precise, buildable drawings and keeps them current through every revision. It is mostly desk work and rarely client facing. Some people use it as a step toward design, and some discover it is the part of the work they love most and stay.
No. Every answer is scored in your browser and nothing is transmitted, stored or seen by us. There is no email field and no sign up. If it tells you to look somewhere else and you close the tab, we will never know you were here.
Because a designer who takes our job thinking it is a different job is unhappy by month four, and so is the homeowner she is designing for. We publish what our design seats pay for the same reason. If this tells you your path is somewhere else, you spent three minutes finding out instead of a year, and we did not hire somebody into a job they had pictured wrong.
Four things a quiz will never be able to tell you.
Knowing your path is the first half. It is not the whole decision, and I would rather say what this page cannot see than let a result on a screen carry more weight than it should.
Whether you like the people
You can be right about your path and wrong about a firm. The only way to find that out is to sit across from them, which is why our hiring process puts you in our showroom with me before anybody makes an offer.
Whether the dust bothers you in person
Reading about a job site at 7:30 in the morning and standing in one are different things. Our process includes an optional paid half day on our job sites after the offer, so you can check before you commit.
Whether you are early or ready
This can tell you which seat your answers point to. It cannot see your drawings. That conversation happens on the first call, and we will tell you where we think you land instead of making you guess.
Whether your path changes
Plenty of good designers start on one of these four and finish on another. A result here is where you are pointed today. It is not a verdict on who you are.
And the thing you should know about our design department
Lorrie, my wife and co-founder, built our design department over two decades and still holds final say on every project. She is also part time now, by her own choice, and most of the day to day design runs through me.
So whoever takes one of our design seats is not slotting into a finished machine. You would be learning this from me and helping rebuild the department around whoever turns out to be good at it. For the right person that is the most interesting part of the job. For somebody who wants an established studio with a senior designer down the hall, it is a fair reason to look elsewhere, and I would rather you know that now.
If it said furnishings, drafting or architecture, that is a good outcome. You found out in three minutes instead of a year, and I hope the map helps you find the right firm.
If it said remodeling, the two seats are below. Both pages publish the pay, the first ninety days in writing, who should not apply, and every step of what happens after you do.
Questions before any of that, call the office at 602.451.0323 and ask for Devan, our director of operations, or ask for me if you want to talk about the design side. You do not have to apply to ask a question.