When it comes to choosing a career, it’s always best to finalize your decision based on your interests.
If it involves a love for interior and product design, becoming a furniture designer just might be your calling.
Sounds interesting?
Good news: now is one of the best times to get into the industry.
The furniture market is booming.
A Straits Research market report notes increasing consumer demand for customized, sustainable, and multi-functional furniture will drive it to grow in value from $710 billion to more than a whopping $1 trillion between 2023 and 2032.
That means you’ll be able to get in on plenty of action as you embark on this career path—including the fact that, thanks to this exponential market growth, Indeed lists this job as one that earns an average salary of nearly $67,000 a year.
But how does one become a furniture designer in the first place?
Here’s a quick guide you can refer to as you take on this exciting career:
Table of Contents
Get Your Degree
It’s always great to begin your journey by earning the right degree, especially since your first employer will most likely require you to have it.
Aside from getting a specific degree in furniture design, other relevant majors for this career include interior design, product design, and architecture.
Some of the best places you can enroll include the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Rhode Island School of Design, with institutions like Appalachian State University making furniture design programs more accessible by providing multiple scholarship opportunities.
Gain More Experience
Once you’ve got your degree, it’s time to start working.
Though plenty of employers hire fresh graduates, they’re also wary of the furniture industry’s growing skills gap, which may be due to the fact that increasingly fewer schools offer workshop classes.
Since your job responsibilities involve testing both digital and physical prototypes as well as overseeing or even spearheading production efforts, you may want to take a furniture design apprenticeship to gain more hands-on experience regardless of your skill level.
These apprenticeships can be particularly crucial for your career, with award-winning furniture designer Joseph Holmes crediting what he learned through them as being a cornerstone of his success in the industry.
They’re what allowed him to start running the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Art Fabrication Space in 2018, where he paid things forward and mentored students taking up art degrees.
By the time COVID hit, he was experimenting with various furniture designs, eventually coming up with a table that could fold up like an accordion.
The piece ended up winning the best of show award at a competition run by Innovation + Design, as well as a Green Leaf Award for sustainable design.
Joseph himself won a Maker/Designer Award from the organization that same year.
Taking the time to brush up on your skills can help improve your chances of coming up with designs that establish your career.
Start Networking
Take your career to new heights by connecting with others in the furniture industry.
By networking, you can access more opportunities for better jobs and even collaborations with major furniture brands.
Just look at Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent, celebrity designers who now host their own HGTV reality show.
Nate started working in design straight out of high school, and Jeremiah spent his first year in LA living with friends and in his car.
Nate then pursued internships with major firms, while Jeremiah redesigned the homeless shelter right across one of his first apartments—giving them the stepping stones they needed to build their skills and contacts.
Today, the couple is known for releasing furniture lines with various companies, including a huge collaboration with Living Spaces.
They’ve worked with the brand over six times to release sectional sofas, coffee tables, and California King bed sets with useful features that embody their penchant for coastal aesthetics.
The Porto bed, for example, comes with additional storage space, while the Voyage set comes with a dresser that boasts additional USB ports.
That exemplifies just how much it can help to attend industry events like conventions—and meet as many people as possible.
Keep Learning
Upskilling is crucial for any job, and furniture design is no exception.
With consumer preferences changing all the time, picking up new skills can help you keep up with and cater to various design requests, so you can keep pursuing this line of work for longer.
Our post adds that learning new skills can go beyond encouraging you to reach new heights by adding an extra oomph to your resume, giving you more opportunities to embark on newer and more exciting projects.
In fact, that drive to upskill and break industry barriers is what helped designer Fernando Laposse release innovative Totomoxtle furniture collections.
Since 2016, he’s been working with Santo Domingo Tonahuixtla, a Mexican indigenous community, to create the marquetry veneer Totomoxtle in line with the growing demand for sustainable furniture.
He’s used this new material, which is made from the colorful husks of heirloom corn, to design truly unique pieces for the living room, bedroom, and beyond, with models like the colorful Lovebird cabinet and Resting Place chaise longue boasting attractive feathered and hexagonal designs never before seen by the market.
Once you’ve established yourself as a furniture designer, follow his example and never stop learning.
The efforts you put into continuous upskilling, whether it be by attending workshops or getting a professional designer to mentor you, can help you come up with new designs and even techniques that can boost your career prospects even further.
