Reviews and referrals
for a design studio.

Why interior studios have so few reviews

Restaurants collect reviews because the transaction is public, brief and repeated. An interior project is the opposite: it takes months, it happens inside somebody's home, and when it finishes the client moves in and gets on with their life. They are frequently delighted. It simply never occurs to them that anybody else needs to know.

Which means the entire problem is asking. Studios with fifty reviews are not better loved than studios with three; they have a habit.

The timing that works

There is a narrow window — roughly the week after handover, and specifically just after the client has said something spontaneous about how the space feels. That is the moment of maximum goodwill and minimum distance from the work.

Before that, during snagging, you are asking somebody to praise you while a list of defects is open. Long after, the project has been absorbed into ordinary life and writing a review has become a chore about something that happened months ago.

What to send

Short, personal, one link, and an explicit statement that two lines is enough — because the real obstacle is that people think a review must be an essay.

Hi [name] — really glad the flat is feeling like home. If you have a minute, a short Google review would genuinely help other people in [area] find us. Even two lines about how the process went is plenty. [link]

Send it individually, from the person the client actually dealt with. A bulk message and an automated request both produce a fraction of the response, because the client can tell the difference.

Reply to every one

Replies are visible, they are a signal Google states it considers, and they are the one place where the phrase describing your work and your city can legitimately appear again. Two sentences, specific to that project, no template. A studio that replies reads as a practice that is present.

Negative reviews follow the same rule and matter more. A calm, specific, non-defensive reply to a complaint persuades future readers more effectively than the complaint damages you — and an unanswered one-star review is read as an admission.

Referrals: be easy to vouch for

The largest projects in most studios' books arrive through somebody else's recommendation — an architect, a contractor, a furniture supplier, a past client. These people are asked for names regularly, and they recommend whoever is easiest to remember and least risky to vouch for.

Three things make a studio easy to name. Being straightforward to work with, which contractors talk about among themselves far more than clients realise. Crediting collaborators publicly on published projects, which costs nothing and is noticed immediately. And sending work outward first — the fastest way to be recommended is to have recommended.

Formal referral fees are usually unnecessary at this scale and can make an architect uncomfortable, since they may have their own obligations to disclose them.

Where the reviews actually land

Google Business Profile first, because that is what feeds the map results a client sees when they search with a locality attached. It is also the profile most interior studios have never filled in properly. The local search side is here.

Questions studios ask