How to Register an Interior Design Business (2026)
Quick answer: Registering the business is a sequence, not a form: choose a structure (LLC or sole proprietorship), get an EIN, secure whatever local business license your city or state requires, then — the step that actually gates trade purchasing — register for sales tax so you can hold a resale certificate. Plan on real filing fees, some waiting, and recurring obligations once you exist. Orientation only; a small-business accountant or attorney in your state is the real authority.
Step 1 — Choose the structure (the LLC question)
The honest version of "do I need an LLC": no law requires one to practice design. A sole proprietorship is the default — you simply do business, perhaps under a registered DBA name, with your city's business license. It's nearly free and instant. The catch is in the word sole: every client order, damaged delivery, and dispute rides on your personal liability — your assets, not a company's. An LLC costs a state filing fee, annual reports, and a little ongoing hygiene, and in exchange the business's problems belong to the business. Most designers who source furniture for clients — five-figure orders moving through freight — conclude the LLC is cheap insurance. But it's a choice about risk, not a legal gate.
Step 2 — EIN
Free, from the IRS, online, in minutes. Sole proprietors can get one too, and should: trade applications, resale certificates, and business bank accounts all go smoother with an EIN than a Social Security number. This is the one genuinely easy step — enjoy it.
Step 3 — The business license
Requirements are local: some cities and states want a general business license, some want nothing for a home-based design practice. Check your city and county. Note what a license is not: it isn't an LLC (structure), an EIN (tax ID), or a resale certificate (sales-tax status). Trade programs asking for a "business license" are usually asking for any credible evidence of a real business — which is also why a professional company website matters more than most checklists admit.
Step 4 — Sales-tax registration (the step that matters most)
Register with your state's department of revenue as a seller. This is the prerequisite for a resale certificate — the document that lets you buy furniture tax-exempt for resale, which is the entire economic point of trade purchasing. And it's where the obligations begin rather than end: you'll collect tax on client invoices and file returns on the state's calendar. If you deliver projects into other states, many require their own registration — roughly a quarter of states don't accept out-of-state certificates at all. The full picture, including the multi-state trap, is in sales tax for interior designers; read it before your first out-of-state project, not after.
Step 5 — What comes next
With the stack in place, the applications start: trade programs one at a time (CB2, RH, DWR — each with its own documents and rules), exemption certificates filed per brand per state, a business bank account, basic bookkeeping, and insurance worth pricing once client goods are moving. Registration is a weekend; the maintenance is a permanent line item on your calendar.
The alternative worth knowing about
If reading this sequence twice makes the whole plan feel heavier, the platform path exists precisely because of pages like this one. On Suede, procurement runs through us: we purchase from trade programs under our own access and tax registrations, place and track the orders, invoice your client, collect and remit the sales tax, and pay out your earnings. You pick the products and find clients, Suede manages the rest. Many designers still form an LLC for their service fees — a far simpler business — but the retail machinery above stops being your problem.
Registering the business is a weekend; running the retail machinery is forever. On Suede, that machinery — procurement, invoicing, sales tax, payments — runs through us, on your behalf. Join the waitlist here.
Orientation only, not legal or tax advice; requirements vary by state and city. As of July 2026.