The unglamorous software that lets glamorous rooms get paid for.
EST. 1985 / LOS ANGELES, CA / INTERIOR DESIGN OS
Picture the scene most people never see. The mood board is gorgeous. The client is thrilled. And the designer is at a desk at 11pm, reconciling a vendor invoice against a deposit against a markup against a sales-tax line on a sofa that shipped to the wrong coast. The glamour of interior design is real - but it sits on top of a mountain of sourcing, proposals, purchase orders, and accounting that has nothing to do with fabric swatches. That mountain is what Studio Designer was built to carry.
Studio Designer is the business management platform for the interior design industry. Not a rendering tool, not a Pinterest board - the system of record that runs the firm. Project management, product sourcing, branded client proposals, payments, and designer-specific accounting, all in one place. Around 20,000 designers use it, and roughly $5 billion in furniture, fabric, lighting, and furnishings flows through it every year. It is, quietly, one of the most important pieces of software in a famously un-quiet industry.
1985 is an unfashionable year to start a software company for interior designers, which is exactly why it matters. There was no consumer internet, no SaaS, no app store - just a market of creative professionals who were brilliant at design and, understandably, allergic to bookkeeping. Studio Designer began life as Studio Webware and grew up alongside every technology shift since: the spreadsheet, the browser, the cloud, and now AI. Four decades is a long time to stay useful to the same demanding customer.
Founder Keith Granet brought a rare combination to the table. He was a consultant to leading interior design and architecture firms and wrote The Business of Design - effectively the field's textbook on getting paid. He didn't build software for designers from the outside. He built it from inside the problem, having spent years watching talented studios struggle with the part of the work that doesn't photograph well.
The modern chapter opens in 2022, when private equity firm Serent Capital made a growth investment. What followed was a deliberate consolidation. In April 2023, Studio Designer bought Toronto's DesignDocs, an accounting and financial management tool for designers. In July 2024, it acquired Mydoma, a project management and design platform. The strategy is unsentimental and effective: rather than out-feature the competition, bring it into the fold and cover designers at every stage - from the solo practitioner on Mydoma to the established studio on Studio Designer.
The company launches to serve interior designers - before the consumer internet existed.
A growth investment kicks off an acquisition-led expansion strategy.
Toronto-based accounting and financial management software for interior designers joins the family.
A project management and design platform - together serving ~20,000 designers across the US and Canada.
Catalog with 300,000+ products and AI visualization; integrated payroll via Gusto; ~$5B in annual orders.
The pitch is simple: stop running a design firm out of seven disconnected apps. Here's the toolkit.
A browser tool that pulls vendor items, pricing, and images from any website straight into a project. The product clip-board designers always wanted.
Branded, customizable proposals shared as PDFs or interactive documents. Clients review, approve, and pay online - no chasing.
All-in-one tracking and expediting so tasks, timelines, and team collaboration live in one system instead of a dozen email threads.
Industry-specific billing, expense tracking, accounts receivable, and reporting - built for markups and deposits, not generic ledgers.
A shared space where clients approve proposals, make payments, and follow progress, keeping decisions documented and moving.
A library of 300,000+ products with AI visualization tools to specify and present items without leaving the platform.
Studio Designer sells the way modern B2B software does: a per-user subscription, reportedly running from roughly $64/month for the Starter plan up to $99/month for Premier. On top of seats, the platform earns from payment processing on the proposals and invoices flowing through it - which, at $5 billion in annual orders, is a meaningful river.
The reviews are honest about the trade-off. Users praise the depth of the financial and project tools; some flag a steep learning curve. That's the signature of software built for professionals who need power over simplicity - the heavy machinery of the design business.
It started in 1985 as Studio Webware - older than the consumer internet it now runs on.
Founder Keith Granet literally wrote the book on the field: The Business of Design.
Roughly $5 billion in furniture, fabric, and furnishings is sourced through the software every year.
The Catalog carries 300,000+ products - more SKUs than most warehouses hold.
It grew by buying its rivals: DesignDocs and Mydoma both became part of the family.
The customer base spans the US and Canada and the full range of the trade - from one-person practices to large, well-known studios. Named clients reported by the company include Ken Fulk, GP Schafer Architect, and Kati Curtis Design. The competitive set is a who's-who of design software: Houzz Pro, Design Manager, Programa, DesignFiles, and Ivy. Two former rivals, Mydoma and DesignDocs, are notably absent from that list now - because they're inside Studio Designer.
Return to that desk at 11pm. The mood board is still gorgeous. The client is still thrilled. But the invoice has already reconciled itself against the deposit and the markup and the sales-tax line. The proposal the client approved this afternoon is paid. The sofa - the one that shipped to the wrong coast - has a tracked purchase order, a vendor on record, and an expediting note instead of a panicked text thread. The designer closed the laptop an hour ago.
That's the whole point. Studio Designer doesn't make the room more beautiful - the designer does that. It makes the business behind the room boring, in the best possible sense. After four decades, two acquisitions, and $5 billion a year flowing through it, the most interesting thing about Studio Designer is how invisible it gets to be. The glamour stays on the walls. The logistics finally have somewhere to live.