How much should a student charge to do a landscape design?

[Alex K]

I am a 3rd year landscape architecture student and I recently picked up a little design job, just a front yard, ripping out the lawn and replacing with CA natives.  It will take about 10 hrs of my time to draw up a few different conceptual ideas, and then a final plan.

Any ideas what a good rate to charge would be?

[Jonathan Davis]

You need to deicde what your time is worth. It is good to know the length of time it will take to come up with the design. From this you can either arrange a charge per hour with the client or a fixed fee. When I first started I was charging $35/hr but quickly realized (with my client’s input) that the labor was being charged at almost the same rate, so I had to charge more. Today I enjoy the design process far more with a fixed fee and I find the clients are happier with this.

[Theodore Tegen]

As Jonathan said, set a fixed design fee up front.  Outline exactly what you will provide for that fee (e.g. 3 concepts and 1 final plan), that way there are no questions when it comes to pay day.

[Rob Halpern]

And remember that there is more to doing a job then drawing plans.

Time meeting with clients, time spent going back to them for review,time spent emailing or on the phone,  time spent making sure the plants are available, etc.etc all should be figured into your costs and therefore your fee.Your 10 hour job is really 15-20 hours

[mark foster]

Hi Alex,

My advice is to set a reasonable flat fee for the plan based on the size of the project, and then forget the hours.  Seeing your work get built is invaluable experience, and you have the luxury of zero overhead costs. 

You may also want to keep in mind that what takes you 10 hours to accomplish now will probably only take 3 or 4 with a few years of experience.  That’s when your hourly rate will important.

 

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

The biggest factor on what to charge is what is the value of what is being produced. No one here knows either your ability, the speed of your production, the complexity of the job, or how much your prospect values what you produce. It does not matter if you are a student, a recent graduate, a seasoned LA, a self taught design/build, or a neighborhood gardener asked to do a design.

It all starts with making a track record. There is more value in starting that track record than the money you’ll be paid to do it in my opinion. You’ll have a better feel for your value each time you do another and potential clients will also have something to assess your value by as well.

If you don’t know how much you are worth, your prospect does not either.   …. and neither does anyone reading your post. My opinion is that you should put a flat fee on it that is cheap enough to get the work and high enough that you get some compensation out of it.

The smaller the budget, the bigger impact a design fee has on taking away from what the client can have built. Low budget projects are very seldom money makers for designers – most figure out that they are not worth pursuing after a while simply because they won’t pay for enough design. But, you can’t get bigger jobs with no track record. This job may be more value to you than to the client.

[Wes Arola, RLA]

25/HOURS FOR CAD WORK AND 35/HOURS FOR SITE VISIT AND DESIGN WORK.

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