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Protecting interior designers with professional indemnity insurance from less than £55* per year
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Get a QuoteOur standard cover is:
Interior designer insurance covers a job with three separate ways to be blamed. The design can fail (a scheme that doesn’t work, a specification that breaches regulations), the site visit can go wrong (a client tripping over your samples, damage to a wall during a survey), and the things you supply can fail after you’ve left (the pendant light that falls, the fabric that wasn’t fire-rated). Most professions carry one of these exposures; interior design carries all three at once.
Professional Saver arranges business insurance for interior designers and small studios from £55* a year, combining public liability, products liability and professional indemnity in one policy. Get a quote online in five minutes; documents arrive the same day.
Professional indemnity insurance covers the design itself. If a client alleges your professional work caused them financial loss, a layout that failed its purpose, a specification that had to be ripped out, a project managed into an expensive delay, professional indemnity insurance pays the compensation and the legal costs of defending the claim. Professional bodies such as the British Institute of Interior Design expect members to carry PI, and commercial clients usually name a required level of cover in the appointment. PI runs on a claims made basis, answering with the policy in force when the claim arrives, so keep it continuous while past projects can still generate one.
Public liability insurance covers your physical presence in other people’s properties: surveys, site visits, installation supervision. A member of the public or client injured around your work, or property damage you cause on site, drilling into hidden pipework is the classic, lands on public liability insurance, which comes as standard at £1 million with options up to £10 million.
Products liability, included as standard, earns its keep in this profession more than most: interior designers supply and fit furniture, lighting and finishes, and when a supplied item causes injury or illness or damages property after installation, the claim sits here rather than on PI. Business equipment cover protects samples, drawings and kit (£100 excess), and employers’ liability insurance is usually a legal requirement once the studio employs anyone. Tell us how you use subcontractors on fit-outs, because who counts as an employee is a working-arrangements question, not a job-title one.
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Trusted for over 40 years We’ve been providing insurance to businesses since 1984
Financial Strength Insurance provided by a Standard & Poor’s ‘AA- Stable’ rated insurer
Our Professional Saver Insurance (Covea) has been independently rated 5 Stars by Defaqto – the highest possible rating, awarded to excellent products with a comprehensive range of features and benefits.
Complete our simple quote form with basic details about your business.
Get an instant quote & choose any optional covers you may need.
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No licence is legally required to practise interior design in the UK, which makes insurance the profession’s real credential. Clients, landlords and main contractors ask for proof of cover because it’s the one piece of paper that says a designer takes their liability seriously, and commercial projects rarely proceed without it. The legal minimum is small (employers’ liability once you hire); the commercial minimum, PI and public liability at levels your contracts name, is what actually gates the work.
Because your decisions get built. A design error isn’t corrected with an apology; it’s corrected with trades, materials and programme time, all billed to someone. When the client bills it to you, PI cover is the difference between a professional dispute and a personal debt.
Because homes and premises are emotional purchases. Clients spend heavily and personally on interiors, and disappointment escalates faster than in most B2B work. Insurance keeps a souring project from becoming a court date you fund yourself.
Because you’re liable for what you specify, not just what you do. Choosing materials, appointing subcontractors and signing off installations all attach responsibility. The three covers in this policy exist because interior design’s liability follows the whole chain from drawing to fitted room.
Every policy includes public liability, products liability, legal expenses and £10,000 of financial loss cover as standard, from £55* a year. You then shape the insurance policies to your interior design business:
Worldwide liability cover for temporary work abroad is included for up to 14 days, excluding the USA and Canada.
From £55* a year for the base policy. The insurance cost follows the projects: the value of schemes you design, the level of professional indemnity your clients require, whether you supply and fit as well as design, and your claims history. A freelance designer doing residential schemes sits at the affordable end; a studio specifying commercial fit-outs needs limits to match the budgets. Get a quote online, itemised in about five minutes, with monthly instalments available.
An interior designer’s work is judged in the room, long after the drawings are approved. Get an interior designer insurance quote online from £55* a year, backed by an insurer rated AA- (Stable) by Standard & Poor’s, and protect your business through every stage the design passes through.
* Total number of live policies as of 31/10/2025
From only£55per year 
From only£55per year From only£55per year From only£55per year From only£55per year From only£55per year Yes, and arguably more than studios: there’s no company structure between a claim and your personal finances. The £55* starting point assumes exactly this shape of business, and client contracts ask freelancers for the same certificates they ask of firms.
Professional indemnity answers for decisions: designs, specifications and advice that allegedly caused financial loss. Public liability answers for presence: injury and property damage around your site visits and installations. A designer who never visits site still needs PI; a designer supervising fit-outs needs both, and nearly all working designers are the second kind.
That’s products liability, included as standard: if a supplied item fails and causes injury or damage, the cover answers. What it doesn’t replace is specification care, so keep records of what was sourced, from whom, and to what standard, because the paper trail decides how arguments end.
Start with what your appointments name; £1 million is the common floor and commercial work often specifies £2 million or more. Then sense-check against the project, not your fee: the exposure on a failed scheme is the cost of putting it right, which always dwarfs the design invoice. Our design insurance page covers the wider design professions if your work spans several, and system designers insurance is the right page for technical and systems design work.
