Market Sizing

There is little doubt that interior design enjoys a booming market in Hong Kong. In any convenience store one can easily find three or four different magazines devoted to interior design, and there is information on the topic in other media including television and newspapers. In many parts of the city, one can see different shops and companies offering interior design services. This survey aims to find out in a scientific way the number of interior design firms in operation in Hong Kong and the number of practitioners in the industry.

As mentioned in the methodology section, the first step in this process was gathering the names and contact numbers of interior design companies from various sources including the Yellow Pages, TDC Directory, interior design magazines/ publications, HKIDA directory, HK Design directory, HKIA  website, and other websites such as Yahoo. Due to resources limitations, we cannot target every single sector in Hong Kong, but effort has been made to place inquiries with industries that have close relationship with interior design such as property groups, retail chains and restaurant chains. Telephone calls were then made to these companies to verify their existence and their nature of business, as well as gain basic information about the number of staff employed and their basic functions.

Based on our survey, we found that there are approximately 1104 companies engaged in interior design business in Hong Kong. For those companies with more than one office/ branch, each office/ branch will be counted as one establishment. The number of interior designers in Hong Kong is projected to be 6569.

Of these companies, 56% employ 1-5 permanent staff, while another 24% employ 6-10 staff, and only 20% employ 11 or above staff. This shows that most interior design firms (80%) are small companies employing fewer than 10 staff. When asked how many of their permanent staff work in interior design positions (including those involved in design, drafting, and project planning), 66%of companies report that they employ 1-5 designers, 19%employ 6-10 designers, while 14% employ 11 or above interior designers.