Co-Working Isn’t a Perk. It’s a Practice Firm Owners Need.

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Running a design firm is equal parts creative breakthrough and relentless decision-making. Too often, those decisions (from pricing structures to hiring calls) are made in isolation. And in isolation, doubt can undermine confidence at every turn. Co-working completely changes the equation. By putting firm owners in a room together, we banish uncertainty with open dialogue and transform solitary guesswork into shared clarity. Co-working is an important practice; here, we have structured space to think in public, borrow meaningful language, and pressure-test new strategies. When treated as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-off experiment, co-working with other interior design firm owners accelerates decision-making, strengthens communication, and reinforces the resilience firms need to flourish in an unpredictable industry.

The Psychological Weight of Solitary Work

Every business owner carries the weight of decision-making, but interior designers often face it with fewer resources and more variability than most. Fees, scope, procurement, staffing… none of these choices are straightforward, and no two projects ever unfold in the same way. 

Alone, those questions tend to multiply. What starts as a straightforward proposal draft quickly turns into hours of second-guessing: Should fees be raised on this project? Is this delay billable? Will hiring now stabilize the firm or create new strain six months down the line?

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Decision Fatigue and Its Consequences

Psychologists have long documented the toll this takes. The concept of decision fatigue, first articulated by Roy Baumeister and colleagues, describes the depletion of mental energy after repeated choices. Once cognitive resources are worn down, people tend to avoid decisions altogether, lean on defaults, or settle for the path of least resistance, even when better options are available.

A review of decision fatigue research published in The Journal of Health Psychology found that fatigued individuals show “a reduced ability to make trade-offs,” preferring passive or easier options over the more deliberate, effortful ones (Pignatiello et al., 2018). For firm owners, that can mean underpricing a scope, deferring a hiring decision, or letting a red flag slide with a client.

Real-World Evidence: The Parole Study

The consequences of this depletion are not theoretical. One of the most cited studies on decision fatigue comes from the legal system: parole judges in Israel were found to grant favorable rulings about 70% of the time in the morning, but by late afternoon, that rate fell to less than 10% for similar cases. The difference was not in the cases themselves but in the judges’ diminishing mental resources.

Though not nearly as dire in consequence, the same principle could be applied to firm owners. As the day wears on, confidence erodes and the quality of decisions suffers, not because the issues change, but because the brain does.

How It Presents in Design Firms

For interior designers, the pattern is familiar. A contract clause that seemed simple at 9 a.m. feels unresolvable by 4 p.m. A pricing adjustment that could be handled in minutes stretches into hours of hesitation. Emails sit unsent, proposals remain in draft, budgets get pushed one more week.

The accumulation of these small stalls quietly erodes margins and morale. Projects slow, opportunities fade, and the business absorbs costs not because the work is flawed but because the owner is depleted.

How Co-Working Breaks the Cycle

Co-working interrupts that cycle. In the presence of peers, a dilemma that might have lingered for days can be spoken aloud, reframed, and resolved within minutes.

Research on group decision-making supports this. Recent cognitive research has found that, under the right conditions, group decision-making can lead to “supercapacity” processing — faster and more accurate outcomes than individuals achieve alone. For example, Hsieh, Fifić & Yang (2020) demonstrated that pairs collaborating on perceptual tasks performed better than even the strongest individual, but only when their abilities were reasonably well-matched.

Similarly, a large-scale Cornell experiment with more than 5,000 participants showed that small-group deliberation produced consensus answers that were not only more accurate than individual guesses but outperformed even the averaged responses of many individuals (Navajas et al., 2017).

The psychological mechanism at work here is actually quite simple: distributed thinking. When a problem is externalized (spoken aloud, tested in conversation, reflected back), the solution becomes clearer. What feels ambiguous in isolation sharpens in dialogue between multiple parties. And when that dialogue is with peers who share the same terrain (other firm owners navigating scope creep, procurement delays, or client demands, for example), the advice is not theoretical. It is practical, tested, and ready to apply.

The Difference for Design Firm Owners

For firm owners, the difference truly is night and day. Where isolation breeds hesitation, co-working creates velocity. Where solitary work depletes, shared work restores. And the business outcomes (clearer contracts, faster proposals, more confident pricing) are not just psychological wins but tangible ones.

What Actually Happens in a Co-Working Session

The word “co-working” often conjures images of open office spaces filled with laptops and coffee cups. But when interior designers gather in this format, the work is far more deliberate. Owners bring active business challenges: a procurement bottleneck, a staffing plan, a draft client agreement. They lay these open to the table, not for judgment but for refinement.

The exchange is immediate and practical. Proposals are redlined, email language is sharpened, budgets are recalibrated. Peers offer not only advice but tangible tools: templates, scripts, and processes that have already been tested. Psychologists describe this as scaffolding: each participant adds a rung until everyone climbs higher than they could alone. The effect is cumulative. What starts as a single stuck point evolves into an entire portfolio of effective adjustments, small and large, that can be implemented as soon as the session ends.

Why This Differs from Networking or Panels

Interior designers are accustomed to industry events filled with panels, keynotes, and networking mixers. Those formats have their value, but they rarely provide the specificity owners crave. A panel offers concepts but not contracts. A mixer provides contacts but not templates.

Co-working, by contrast, goes deeper. It is built on reciprocity: you arrive ready to share what you know and receive what you need. The tone is candid, not performative. Owners discuss not only what is working but what is failing, and in that honesty, the group finds traction. The focus is not visibility but velocity; you’re getting from problem to solution within the time frame of the session itself.

An Invitation to Experience Co-Working in Chicago

This fall, DesignDash is offering design firm owners a chance to experience this format firsthand. During Design Chicago, we’re opening our member-only co-working model to the broader community.

Event Details

• Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2025
• Time: 1:00 – 4:30 PM CDT
• Location: WorkLife Meetings at THE MART, 222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza, #250, Chicago, IL 60654
• Cost: FREE
• In partnership with: Monogram Appliances, who will also host a cooking demonstration and lunch

The session will not be a lecture or panel. It will be a working room: laptops open, problems voiced, and solutions shaped in real time. Space is limited to ensure the exchange remains focused and personal, but the event is FREE.

Final Thoughts

Interior design firms thrive on creativity, but their survival depends on business decisions made with clarity and confidence. Those decisions become sharper, faster, and more sustainable when owners refuse to work in isolation. Co-working provides the setting for that refusal: a room where the weight of leadership is shared, where problems become solvable, and where resilience is built one conversation at a time.

The truth is simple. Strong firms are not built in solitude. They are strengthened in community.

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.