Summer Design Interns: What You Can Expect & What You Owe

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Summer interns are on everyone’s mind right around now because we all need help and most of us want to be able to take a vacation this season! The library has too many old samples. The new samples haven’t been ordered. Presentation prep is taking longer than it should. Dropbox needs a cleanup. Someone needs to return fabrics, print large-format documents, check whether materials arrived, and so much more.

In this episode of the DesignDash Podcast, Laura Umansky and Melissa Grove talk through how Laura U Design Collective approaches summer interns, including where they find candidates, how they onboard them, which tasks are appropriate, how they pay and bill for intern time, and why a short-term internship can sometimes into a longer-term hiring opportunity.

If you’re a solo designer or small firm owner, an intern can sound like the most accessible first hire. His or her role is usually part-time, seasonal, and easier to flesh out than a full-time employee. But a good internship still requires management: feedback, support, direction, etc. You need to know what the intern will do before they start, who they’ll report to, how they’ll receive assignments, which work can be billed, and how you’ll explain the value of tasks that might otherwise look like errands.

Three Takeaways from Our DesignDash Podcast Episode on Summer Interns

#1 A Summer Intern Needs Structure Before Their First Day

Hiring a summer intern can seem like a no-brainer (especially if you’re thinking of him or her as free help, which you shouldn’t be!). You need help in the studio. They need experience. The sample library is overflowing, presentations need prep, project folders need cleanup, and someone has to return fabrics to the showroom before they disappear under three other project piles. It seems like a natural match, especially for a solo designer or small firm owner who needs help but is not ready for a full-time hire.

But the internship will only work for both parties if the firm has a plan before that person enters the studio on their first day. An intern needs to know how assignments are allocated, where tasks are tracked, which systems they should access, who they report to, and what they should do when the designer is in a client meeting, on a site visit, or unavailable for two hours. Without those details, your intern will become yet another person waiting for direction rather than someone actually helping the firm.

All interns are still learning how a design firm operates. A task that seems obvious to you may not be obvious to someone who has never worked inside a studio. Returning samples teaches them how to interact with reps, how showrooms operate, how long sourcing takes, and more.

The same is true for project folders, meeting prep, printing, library organization, and sample ordering. If the assignment is “please organize this,” they may complete the task without learning much from it. If the assignment is “please organize this because we need the design team to find current fabric samples quickly before client presentations,” your intern will actually understand how studio operations connect to client experience.

A full summer task list may be too much to prepare in advance, but the first two weeks shouldn’t be fully improvised. The first day should include onboarding, system access, and communication expectations. If your firm uses Basecamp, Asana, Monday, Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, Studio Designer, DesignFiles, or another project management system, the intern needs to know where assignments are listed out for them and how to mark work complete.

They also need to know who they report to, which might differ depending on the task. In a solopreneur firm, that person is usually the owner. In a larger firm, it may be a project manager, lead designer, office manager, or operations person. What you want to avoid is five people giving an intern five unrelated tasks with five different deadlines. Students and early-career interns may not know how to sort competing priorities yet, and they shouldn’t have to guess.

In the beginning of your relationship with this new person, expectations are on the firm and not the intern. A great intern may eventually be able to identify what must happen next, but that shouldn’t be your starting assumption. The firm owner needs to provide the task, the deadline, the context, and the person to ask when they have a question.

But you don’t always want the buck to stop with you (you’re insanely busy, after all). So give your intern a task list! When nobody is available to give direction, the intern can return to a pre-approved list: organize discontinued samples, scan and name vendor documents, update project folders, prepare binders, return materials, check sample arrivals, assemble marketing gifts, or clean up digital files. Those tasks still require some oversight, but they prevent the intern from hovering outside someone’s office every fifteen minutes asking what to do next.

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#2 Intern Tasks Should Teach the Fundamentals of the Industry

Intern tasks often include sample library cleanup, vendor returns, printing, presentation prep, digital folders, and sample ordering. Those jobs need context. If an intern spends three hours filing fabric memos without understanding why the library needs to be current before a client meeting, the firm has missed an opportunity to train them.

A summer intern can help with work that’s been sitting at the bottom of everyone’s list. The sample library might need editing. Project folders might need a naming convention. Someone might need to assemble builder gifts for a marketing push, order fresh samples, or check whether a vendor dropped off materials while the design team was out of the studio. But the firm should explain what the intern is learning while doing those tasks. Otherwise, the internship is just a series of errands.

Library work introduces interns to vendors, textile categories, performance fabrics, trim, tile, wallcoverings, and the way a design team keeps materials accessible for active projects. Meeting prep includes printing large-format documents, pulling physical samples, organizing selections, checking folders, and making sure the design team has what it needs before a client arrives.

If your intern is organizing fabrics, ask them to notice vendor names, durability ratings, fiber content, and which samples have been pulled too many times to stay in the library. If they’re ordering materials, have them track what was requested, what arrived, what’s backordered, and what still needs follow-up. Those details are basic to studio life, and plenty of students haven’t seen them inside a working firm yet.

Send interns to showrooms for real project needs: returning samples, picking up fabrics, pulling tile options, or checking whether a material looks the same in person as it did online. Give them the showroom name, rep contact, project name, sample list, and any instructions they need before they go.

They should learn how to ask for a memo, return materials on time, check availability, and talk to a rep without feeling completely lost. Online sourcing is part of the job now, but it can’t replace handling materials, comparing finishes, and learning how showrooms operate.

Interns should see tile thickness, fabric weight, wallcovering texture, stone variation, and hardware finish in person whenever possible. Those details affect real project decisions. A shower floor tile and bathroom floor tile might look compatible online, but the thickness, finish, and transition between the two materials have to work in the actual space.

That judgment develops through handling materials and listening to designers talk through what will work for a project. Let interns open sample boxes, compare finishes, pull options, and ask questions when something doesn’t make sense.

Interns can also help with drawings, space planning, digital organization, and marketing prep, but those tasks need limits. They can assist with preliminary space plans if someone reviews the work. They can clean up folders if they’re told where things belong and what should never be deleted. They can assemble a mailer or gift drop for builders and architects if someone explains why those relationships matter to the firm.

Anything client-facing, construction-related, or financially sensitive still needs review from the firm. The intern can participate in that work, but the firm is responsible for ensuring it all meets their high standards.

#3 Interns Should Be Paid, Billed Correctly, and Considered Long Term

Internships should be paid. If your firm is a for-profit business and the intern is contributing to the work of the studio, incorporate compensation before you post the role. The exact hourly rate will depend on your region, the intern’s experience, and whether they’re still in school, recently graduated, or already have another internship behind them. But “exposure” does not pay for gas, lunches, parking, supplies, or the time they’re giving your firm.

The intern is there to learn, but they’re also entering a professional environment with expectations around time, communication, accountability, and documentation. If you pay them hourly, they should log their hours. That habit helps the firm track costs, and it helps the intern understand how this all works in a service-based business.

Not every intern hour should be billed to a client just like not all tasks should be. Some tasks are localized to one project, while others are more general. Organizing the sample library, cleaning up general studio files, or helping with non-project admin shouldn’t be billed to a client. But if the intern is picking up fabrics for a specific project, helping prep a client presentation, organizing project materials, or supporting a task tied directly to one client’s work, that time can often be billed at an appropriate intern rate.

The distinction should be obvious to everyone before your intern starts logging time. Give them examples. Library organization is non-billable. Returning tile for a specific project may be billable to that project. Printing internal marketing materials is non-billable. Printing presentation boards for Thursday’s client meeting may be billable. The more specific you are upfront, the less cleaning up you’ll do later.

Time tracking is part of their education too. If an intern later joins a firm that bills hourly, or if they eventually open their own studio, they’ll need to understand how quickly time disappears into emails, sourcing, presentation prep, showroom visits, and project follow-up. Learning to track time during an internship can make that part of the profession less confusing later.

Final Thoughts on Hiring a Summer Intern

Many of us want an intern today who can help with bottom-of-the-barrel tasks right now. But we caution against that mindset. Try to see their potential as you work with your intern; after all, you’ve already trained them in part. An eight-week intern might simply be an eight-week intern, and that’s fine. But sometimes the person who helps with samples in June becomes the part-time assistant who stays through the fall, then returns after graduation, then grows into a junior or associate designer role. If you treat the internship as a real professional relationship, you’ll have a better sense of whether that person could eventually join your team.

That long-term possibility should impact how you interview potential interns. Ask where they are in school, what their program requires, how many hours they need, whether they need supervision from a registered interior designer, and whether their schedule could continue beyond the summer. A great internship will improve everyone’s working life. The firm receives help with tasks that genuinely need attention. The intern learns the systems, materials, vendors, showrooms, communication habits, and time-tracking discipline that make a design business function. And if the fit is right, the relationship doesn’t have to end when they head back to school in September.

Written by the DesignDash Editorial Team
Our contributors include experienced designers, firm owners, design writers, and other industry professionals. If you’re interested in submitting your work or collaborating, please reach out to our Editor-in-Chief at editor@designdash.com.