A professional interior designer website in India usually costs ₹20,000 to ₹75,000. For that you get a portfolio site with project galleries, a services page and an enquiry form (PageTraffic, DigitalClouds). Basic template sites cost ₹10,000 to ₹60,000, bespoke agency builds can run to ₹4 to ₹17 lakh, and a self-managed WordPress site costs roughly ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 a year for hosting, domain and plugins (Hostinger).
If you've searched this before, you probably got pages about what interior designers charge their clients per square foot. That's a different question. This post is about the one you asked: what your studio should expect to pay for its own website.
How much does an interior designer website cost by type?
Prices run from about ₹10,000 for a template site up to ₹17,00,000 for a bespoke agency build. Most studios end up somewhere between ₹20,000 and ₹2,00,000. The spread is wide because "website" covers everything from a quick freelance job to a custom-built platform. These are the ranges Indian agencies publish:
| Site type | What you usually get | Typical price in India | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Template portfolio | Theme, 5–10 pages, a gallery, a contact form | ₹10,000–₹60,000 | OrangeMantra |
| Professional studio site | Custom look, project galleries, services, enquiry form | ₹20,000–₹75,000 | PageTraffic, DigitalClouds |
| Custom gallery site with SEO and blog | Designed galleries, SEO setup, a journal | From about ₹40,000 | Webknown |
| Semi-custom WordPress | Custom templates, structured project data, more integrations | ₹80,000–₹2,00,000 | Vedwix |
| Fully custom theme | Theme coded from scratch to your design | ₹2,00,000–₹5,00,000 | Vedwix |
| Bespoke agency build | Full strategy, design and development for an architecture or interior firm | ₹4,00,000–₹17,00,000 | Intileo |
Cheap quotes tend to leave things out. One Indian pricing guide points out that hosting, domain and later changes are usually billed on top of a low portfolio quote. So before you compare numbers, line up what each quote actually includes.
Most established studios sit in the middle rows. Your work is visual and has to look premium, so a stock template usually won't cut it. But you rarely need a codebase written from scratch either. For wider WordPress pricing, see my guide to WordPress website costs in India.
What features does an interior designer website need?
The short version: a structured project portfolio, galleries that load fast and an enquiry form that filters leads. A studio site has one job. It shows your best projects quickly and turns the right visitors into enquiries. Here's what does most of that work:
| Feature | Why it matters | How I'd build it | Effect on cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio custom post type | Each project gets its own page and URL, with a consistent layout | Custom post type plus ACF fields for location, scope, style and photos | Medium, but saves time on every project you add |
| Project galleries | Clients judge you by the photos | Responsive gallery with a lightbox, optional before and after slider | Low to medium |
| Filters by category | Visitors want to see kitchens, offices or 3BHKs, not everything | Taxonomy filters on the portfolio archive | Medium |
| Qualifying enquiry form | Budget, property type and city help you filter out poor-fit leads | Form that emails you and saves to a sheet or CRM | Low to medium |
| Fast images | Galleries are the heaviest part of the site | WebP or AVIF, responsive sizes, lazy loading | Low if planned early |
| WhatsApp button | Many clients prefer to message on WhatsApp first | Click-to-chat link with a prefilled message | Low |
| Reviews and testimonials | Proof from past homeowners and businesses | Google reviews feed or a testimonials section | Low |
| Journal or blog | Helps you rank for local and style searches | Standard WordPress posts | Low |
If you want enquiries to land in a spreadsheet your team already checks, WordPress forms can send each entry to Google Sheets as well as your inbox, which is how I set up lead capture on the Taxocity site. Then a full inbox or a spam filter can't cost you a lead.
Why does a portfolio custom post type matter so much?
Because it turns adding a project into filling in a form, and that's what keeps a studio site up to date. A lot of studio sites are built page by page in a page builder. Every new project means duplicating a page, swapping photos by hand and hoping the layout holds. By project 20, nobody wants to touch it, so the site quietly goes stale.
A WordPress custom post type fixes that. Adding a project means filling in a form: title, location, area, scope, a short write-up and a gallery. The template takes care of the design, so every project page matches, and filters and "related projects" just work.
I'd say this is the real difference between a template site and a professional studio build. You're paying for a structure your team can keep using for years.
What did the IIID Inscape build teach me about design websites?
Mostly that structured content, built with custom post types and ACF on a mobile-first theme, makes an image-heavy design site much easier for editors to run. The client also reported faster page loads and quicker publishing. My closest first-hand example is IIID Inscape, the publication site for the Institute of Indian Interior Designers' magazine. It isn't a studio portfolio, but the problems were the same: lots of design imagery, regular publishing and editors who aren't developers.
I took a static publication and turned it into a dynamic WordPress platform. Articles and portfolios each got their own custom post type, set up with CPT UI and ACF. I built a mobile-first theme from the Figma design, then trained the admin team so they could publish on their own. After launch, the client reported:
40%
Faster page loads (client reported)
25%
More engagement (client reported)
50%
Quicker publishing (client reported)
The publishing gain came from the structure. Editors filled in fields instead of building layouts. An interior studio gets the same benefits from the same approach. The full IIID Inscape case study has the details.
How do you keep a photo-heavy portfolio fast?
Resize photos before upload, convert them to WebP or AVIF, lazy load the gallery and set image dimensions. Images are why most interior design sites are slow. Photos from a photographer's drive are often several megabytes each, and one gallery page can load dozens of them. On mobile data, that's the difference between someone seeing your best kitchen and leaving before it appears.
- 1
Resize before upload
Export photos at the largest size the site actually displays, not the camera's full resolution.
- 2
Convert to WebP or AVIF
Modern formats keep the detail in materials and textures at a fraction of the file size.
- 3
Lazy load the gallery, not the hero
Load images below the first screen only when needed, but let the main hero image load immediately.
- 4
Set image dimensions
Fixed width and height stop the layout jumping as photos load, which protects your Core Web Vitals.
For quick batches I built Under1MB, a free image compressor that runs in your browser. Photos never get uploaded to a server, which matters when they show someone's home. If your current site is already slow, my technical SEO and Core Web Vitals service can fix it without a rebuild.
What are the yearly running costs?
Roughly ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 a year for a self-managed WordPress site, before any maintenance work. You pay for the build once. Running costs keep coming. Hostinger puts hosting, domain and plugins at ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 a year for small to medium sites. If you have lots of high-resolution galleries, the cheapest hosting plan may struggle, so budget a bit higher.
Then there are updates, backups and small changes. Someone has to do them, either in-house or on a monthly maintenance retainer.
Should you choose WordPress, Wix or a custom build?
For most growing studios, WordPress. A solo designer who's just starting out can launch on Wix and move later. The big reason is structured project data. You also get full control over SEO, and you can change developers later without starting again.
I build these sites from your Figma design on Bricks Builder, Elementor or Oxygen, so your team can edit text and add projects without calling a developer. A fully custom code stack only makes sense if you're building something closer to a product, like a client portal or a design tool.
How long does an interior designer website take?
As long as your content takes. Development is rarely what holds things up. Page count and how custom the design is both matter, but the usual wait is for project photos, write-ups and service descriptions. The IIID Inscape work ran from August to December 2023, and that included setting up the content structure and training the editors. A studio portfolio has fewer moving parts, so it's usually quicker.
What should you ask a developer before you hire?
Ask how you'll add projects, what happens to your photos, where enquiries go, what's included and who owns the logins. These six questions catch most problems early:
- How will I add a new project? If the answer is "duplicate a page", expect the site to go out of date.
- What happens to my photos on upload? Ask about resizing, WebP or AVIF, and lazy loading.
- Where do enquiries go? Email alone is fragile. A copy in a sheet or CRM means no lead gets lost.
- What's included and what's extra? Hosting, domain, licences, content entry and post-launch changes.
- Who owns the hosting, domain and admin logins? They should be in your name.
- Can I see a live site you built and edited after launch? A screenshot isn't enough.
What's the next step?
List your 10 to 15 strongest projects, pick a few sample photos and note the pages you want. If you'd like help shaping that list, the free Project Scope Generator on my site turns a two-line idea into a structured scope. Then send it to me or book a discovery call. I'll tell you which tier your site fits and what it needs to bring in better enquiries.
