The short answer: the published record on how interior designers use AI shows a working tool, not a revolution. Adoption roughly tripled between 2023 and 2025, from 9 percent to 29 percent of designers, according to a 1stDibs-commissioned study reported by WWD. The uses that show up again and again in trade interviews are unglamorous: renderings and client presentations, mood boards, and the writing that eats a small firm’s week. New York firms quoted in Business of Home range from enthusiastic adopters to a Manhattan studio that still prefers the phone. This piece pulls together what named designers and industry surveys have actually said, with every claim traced to a published source.
Key takeaways
- Designer AI adoption tripled from 9 percent (2023) to 29 percent (2025), with another 20 percent planning to adopt, per the 1stDibs-commissioned study reported by WWD.
- Mattoboard’s 2025 State of AI and Interior Design report (300+ designers surveyed) found 85 percent use ChatGPT to support design work, and 69 percent have used AI to visualize ideas.
- A Houzz report covered by Business of Home put AI’s productivity value at roughly $75,000 a year for firms that use it, with about a third of the industry on board.
- The dominant published uses: renderings and presentations, concept imagery, and business writing. Nobody in the trade press claims AI is designing rooms end to end.
- Business of Home reported in August 2025 that it had yet to hear from a designer who lost a real client to AI.
What the surveys actually show
The numbers are more modest than the hype and more consistent than you would expect. Beyond the 1stDibs tripling figure, Mattoboard’s survey of more than 300 designers, run July through September 2025, found ChatGPT far ahead of purpose-built tools: 85 percent of designers use it to support design work, against 38 percent for Canva, 33 percent for Photoshop, and 28 percent for Midjourney. It also surfaced a telling split: 69 percent have used AI to visualize design ideas, but only 21 percent consider creativity AI’s biggest advantage. Fifty-seven percent named speed and efficiency instead. The adjacent professions track the same way: an AIA study covered by Dezeen in March 2025 found only 6 percent of US architects using AI regularly even though more than half had experimented, and a Chaos survey of roughly 800 architects and designers, covered by Dezeen in May 2026, found 64 percent had experimented and 86 percent of workplace users reported time savings.
| Survey | Who | Headline finding | Reported by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1stDibs / Surveys & Forecasts | Interior designers | AI use tripled: 9% (2023) to 29% (2025) | WWD |
| Mattoboard State of AI report, 2025 | 300+ interior designers | 85% use ChatGPT; 57% cite speed as the top benefit | PR Newswire |
| Houzz | Design and construction pros | ~$75K/year productivity value; about a third using AI | Business of Home |
| AIA, March 2025 | US architects | 6% regular AI use; 53% have experimented | Dezeen |
| Chaos, May 2026 | ~800 architects and designers | 64% have experimented; 86% of users save time | Dezeen |
How interior designers use AI, in their own words
The clearest picture of how interior designers use AI comes from Business of Home’s Trade Tales interviews, where firms describe their workflows on the record. Rachael Stollar of Studio SFW in New York was candid about limited adoption: beyond some AI-generated flyer graphics made with Adobe’s tools, her firm still runs on long-standing fabricator relationships and the telephone. “Picking up the phone is still the best way to communicate,” she told the publication in 2024. That is a real data point, not a failure: a segment of Manhattan’s high-end studios sees no workflow gap for AI to fill.
Others have found specific niches. Christine Gentile of New York firm Ashbourne Designs told Business of Home back in early 2023 that she used ChatGPT to source a list of concerns parents have when designing a nursery, research that once meant hours of forum reading. Just across the river, Shelley Cekirge of Shelley Cekirge Interiors in Tenafly, New Jersey described renderings as the payoff: photorealistic 3D images that show clients the direction of a project before a dollar of it is installed. Cheryl Luckett of Dwell by Cheryl Interiors described the back-office version of the same win: ChatGPT for performance reviews, social copy, and client communication. And in mid-2023, Business of Home profiled three more designers, Melissa Grovenburg, Autumn Pochiro, and Honey Collins, experimenting with Midjourney and ChatGPT for concept work and research. The pattern across every interview: AI compresses the presentation and paperwork layers of the job, and stays out of the sourcing, site, and client-trust layers. The city’s top studios still win on the latter, which is why our guide to the interior designers defining downtown Manhattan reads the way it does.
The tool landscape shifted under the industry’s feet
The most useful single piece of reporting on this subject is Fred Nicolaus’s August 2025 Business of Home feature, which declared the consumer AI design app race over with no winner. The 2023 wave of photo-restyler startups, including Palazzo, the app launched by Venus Williams, largely stagnated; several pivoted to selling tools to real estate agents, brands, and furniture retailers instead of consumers. Newer trade-facing launches like DecorX and Presti AI target manufacturers and retailers directly. Meanwhile ChatGPT quietly became the best general design assistant available: ELLE Decor’s April 2025 survey of the field called it the clear winner, “something closer to an actual design consultation.” For working designers the implication is blunt. The threat never materialized as a rival service; it materialized as a better-informed client who arrives with chatbot renderings and opinions.
What no one is claiming
Read enough of these interviews and the silences become the story. No designer in the trade press claims AI runs projects, manages contractors, or replaces site visits. Nicolaus wrote that he had yet to hear from a designer who believed they lost a real client to AI, and his litmus test holds: the technology cannot get the painter to show up on time. The published anxieties are narrower: generic output (models generate “something like a mathematical average” of their training data, as Business of Home put it), hallucinated products, and, in Mattoboard’s survey, originality worries that run highest among the youngest designers, 66 percent of those aged 18 to 24, even though that cohort uses AI daily at the highest rate. Skepticism and adoption are rising together, which is roughly what a maturing tool looks like.
What this means if you are hiring a designer in New York
Ask the AI question in the first meeting, and treat any answer as fine as long as it is specific. “We use ChatGPT for schedules and Midjourney for early concepts, then everything real is verified” is a good answer. So is Studio SFW’s “we mostly don’t.” What you are listening for is whether the firm knows where the tools break. Expect AI-assisted renderings in more presentations this year, expect faster mood boards, and expect fees to reflect the parts of the job AI cannot touch: sourcing, supervision, and judgment. For where the work itself is heading, see our reporting on NYC interior design trends for 2026 and the new wave of Brooklyn design studios, several of whom came up in a post-software generation and treat these tools as unremarkable.
FAQ
Do most interior designers use AI now?
Depends on the definition. Regular, integrated use is still a minority position: 29 percent of designers in the 2025 1stDibs study. But casual use of ChatGPT for support tasks is nearly universal among AI-friendly firms, at 85 percent in Mattoboard’s survey.
Will AI replace interior designers?
The published evidence says no. Business of Home reports no known cases of designers losing real clients to AI, and every survey shows the technology absorbing presentation and admin work rather than design judgment, procurement, or project management.
Which AI tools do designers actually use?
Per Mattoboard’s 2025 report: ChatGPT first by a wide margin (85 percent), then Canva (38 percent), Photoshop’s AI features (33 percent), and Midjourney (28 percent). Purpose-built consumer design apps barely register in professional workflows.
Sources
- Fred Nicolaus, “The AI interior design race has a surprising front-runner,” Business of Home, August 6, 2025
- Aidan Taylor, “Are you using AI?” Business of Home Trade Tales, April 12, 2024
- Business of Home, “How will ChatGPT change the design industry?” March 2023
- Business of Home, “Here’s how 3 designers are putting AI to work,” June 2023
- Business of Home, “A new Houzz report says AI can save designers $75K”
- WWD, “A Study by 1stDibs Shows Artificial Intelligence Use Tripled Among Interior Designers”
- Mattoboard, “The First State of AI & Interior Design Report,” PR Newswire, 2025
- Dezeen, “Only six per cent of architects regularly using AI says AIA study,” March 2025
- Dezeen, “Chaos survey finds AI is becoming an active collaborator,” May 2026
- ELLE Decor, AI interior design tool survey, April 2025
