Should pool builders charge a design fee?

Pool builders who sign fewer than about 30% of their designs should charge a design fee, credited to the contract if the client builds. At 12 design hours and an assumed $75 an hour, free design costs $4,500 of design time per signed pool at a 20% design-to-contract rate. Published US builder fees run from $300 to $5,000.

Rules of thumb (each is arithmetic from the break-even table below or sourced inline):

• Free design cost per signed pool = design hours x hourly cost / design-to-contract rate. Twelve hours at $75 is $900 a design: $6,000 per signed pool at 15%, $4,500 at 20%, $3,000 at 30%, $2,000 at 45%.
• Break-even credited fee = cost per design / (1 – design-to-contract rate). At $900 a design it is $1,059 at 15%, $1,125 at 20%, $1,286 at 30% and $1,636 at 45%: the first three sit inside the $750-$1,500 range one Houston builder charged in 2013 (Pool & Spa News) and the last sits just above it.
• A $1,000 credited fee beats free design as long as it costs you fewer than 27% of your signed pools at a 20% rate, but fewer than 8% at a 45% rate, on an assumed $15,000 gross profit per pool.
• Free designs leak to competitors: in one designer’s representative year of 80 presented pools, 16 signed (20%), 40 built nothing (50%) and 24 took the design to other contractors (30%) (Structure Studios).

What does a free pool design cost a builder per signed pool?

A free pool design costs a builder its design hours times hourly cost, divided by the design-to-contract rate: $4,500 per signed pool at 12 hours, $75 an hour and 20%. The cost is invisible because no invoice is raised for it, but the designer’s or salesperson’s time is paid either way.

Pool design takes longer than most quotes: one designer quoted by Pool Magazine says each version of a design “takes me a few hours to complete” and that customers “sometimes want to see 2 or 3 different concepts before they come to a decision.”

We could not find a credible public benchmark for pool design hours or for design-to-contract rates, so the model on this page uses labelled assumption bands: 6, 12 and 20 design hours per pool, a $75 loaded hourly cost and design-to-contract rates of 15%, 20%, 30% and 45%. Replace every one of them with the numbers from your last 20 designs. The dollar figures are in your own currency; the published fees quoted later are US builders’ fees in US dollars.

On those bands, the free design cost per signed pool ranges from $1,000 (6 hours, 45% signing) to $10,000 (20 hours, 15% signing). The signing rate moves the number more than the hours do.

FAQ: should pool builders charge for design?

How much should a pool design fee be?

A pool design fee should at least cover the design hours of the buyers who never sign: break-even credited fee = cost per design / (1 – design-to-contract rate), which is $1,125 at $900 a design and a 20% rate. Published US builder fees range from $300 at the start (Pool & Spa News, 2013) to $1,500-$5,000 for a full design (Structure Studios, 2017).

Should a pool design fee be credited toward the build?

A pool design fee should be credited toward the build when your goal is to filter out shoppers rather than to profit from design. A credited fee costs a buyer who signs nothing, so it rarely loses serious buyers, and it still recovers most of the design hours from the people who walk away.

Is a pool design agreement a building contract?

A pool design agreement can be a building contract in some places. In Victoria, Australia, Consumer Affairs Victoria says a document used to develop design, plans and specifications before construction is a contract, and if it is to carry out domestic building work and the price is more than $10,000 it must comply with the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995. Check your own state or national regulator before you write yours; this is general information, not legal advice.

Will charging for pool design lower my close rate?

Charging for pool design often lowers the number of designs you do, not the number of pools you sign. A former employee of one Texas builder that began charging $75 for site visits recalled that its close rate “immediately jumped 15%” while calls fell 25% (WaterShapes, 2020). That is one builder’s account, not a study, so track your own design-to-contract rate for a season.

Who owns a pool design if the client does not build?

Ownership of a pool design is whatever your written design agreement says, so state it before any drawing starts. Christopher Anderson of Custom Design Pools hands clients who pay the full fee perspective drawings, construction plans and itemised equipment specifications so they can put the job out to bid (Pool & Spa News, 2013).

What do pool builders actually charge for design?

Pool builders who publish their design fees in trade press report amounts from $300 to $5,000, with the larger fees tied to full 3D designs for bigger projects and some credited against construction.

• $300, then $500, then $750: Christopher Anderson of Custom Design Pools in Houston describes starting at $300, moving to $500 and then asking $750 up front for extra design work. In 2013 he “typically charges from $750 to $1500 for a design”, half up front and half applied to the cost of construction (Pool & Spa News, 2013).
• $1,500 to $5,000: by 2017 the same builder charged “from $1500 to $5000 for a pool design” (Structure Studios, 2017).
• $600 to $1,000 for 3D, sketches free: Chris Adamczyk offers quick 2D sketches free and charges on average $600 to $1,000 for detailed 3D renderings (Structure Studios, 2017).
• $2,500 flat, credited: Jeromey Naugle charges a flat $2,500 for designs on projects over $100,000 and takes it off the project price if the client builds (Structure Studios, 2017).
• $75 site visit: Claffey Pools in Southlake, Texas, charged $75 for initial site visits ahead of design fees, according to a former employee interviewed by WaterShapes in 2020.

Structure Studios sells the Pool Studio design software these builders use, so treat its article as a vendor’s case collection rather than a survey. We found no industry-wide fee survey: these are individual builders’ practices, not a market average.

Free, credited or kept: the pool design-fee break-even table

The pool design-fee break-even table compares free design, a $1,000 credited fee and a $1,000 kept fee at four design-to-contract rates, per 10 designs at $900 a design.

How the columns work, so you can rebuild them with your own numbers:

1. Cost per design: 12 hours x $75 = $900 (assumption). Ten designs cost $9,000 of design time whatever you charge.
2. Credited fee: clients who sign get the $1,000 back against the build, so only non-signers pay. At 20%, eight non-signers pay $8,000, leaving $1,000 of unrecovered design time.
3. Kept fee: all ten pay $1,000 and nobody gets it back, so design turns a $1,000 surplus (shown as -$1,000).
4. Lost-pool allowance: the design cost the fee saves, divided by an assumed $15,000 gross profit per pool. At 20%, the credited fee saves $8,000, which equals 0.53 pools: 27% of the 2 pools you sign per 10 designs.

The model holds design volume fixed; a fee also cuts design requests, which saves more hours, so the table leans in favour of free design. The lower your design-to-contract rate, the more signed pools a fee may cost before it stops paying.

Why free pool designs end up building other builders’ pools

Free pool designs often become the brief a homeowner takes to a cheaper builder: in one designer’s representative year, 30% of 80 presented designs went to other contractors.

Chris Adamczyk’s year, as reported by Structure Studios, breaks down as 16 signed contracts (20%), 40 clients who built no pool at all (50%) and 24 who took his designs to other contractors (30%). Run the page’s assumptions over it and the 64 designs that never signed absorbed 768 design hours, or $57,600 at $75 an hour, of which 288 hours went straight into competitors’ quotes. His response was not an all-or-nothing fee: free 2D sketches to win attention, paid 3D renderings for the buyers ready to commit.

A credited fee handles the shopper well: the genuine buyer pays nothing net on signing, while the homeowner collecting designs to bid out pays for the work they take away.

How to introduce a pool design fee without losing serious buyers

A pool design fee lands best when the buyer has already seen your thinking for free, so charge at the step where the design starts costing you hours.

1. Keep the first conversation and a rough sketch free. Adamczyk’s free 2D sketch gives the buyer proof of your design ability before any money is asked for.
2. Name the fee before the site visit. Say the amount, what it buys (3D concept, revisions, plans, costing) and that it is credited to the contract, in writing.
3. Split the fee if resistance is high. Anderson took half up front and applied the second half to construction (Pool & Spa News).
4. Decide who owns the plans. State whether an unsigned client gets the drawings and specifications, and on what payment.
5. Measure for one season. Track designs, signings and design hours per signed pool against the break-even table.

If signed pools fall by more than the lost-pool allowance in your row of the table, drop the fee to the break-even credited amount or charge it only above a project size, as Naugle does above $100,000.

When a design fee will not fix a low design-to-contract rate

A pool design fee fixes wasted design hours, but it does not fix slow follow-up, unqualified enquiries or the months a pool buyer takes to decide.

A low design-to-contract rate often comes from what happens after the design is presented. The quote-to-decision stage is where pool sales go quiet, which is covered stage by stage in how long it takes to sell a pool. Designs that were presented and never signed are a list of qualified buyers who already know your work; working that list is the subject of database reactivation. Check what each enquiry costs to win too, using how much a pool lead costs in Australia.

The same free, credited or kept question in a different trade, with its own Australian legal detail, is worked through in should kitchen renovators charge a design fee. If the real gap is too few design-ready enquiries rather than too many wasted designs, start with how to get more pool builder leads.

Sources

1. Structure Studios: How to Charge for Swimming Pool Designs: 3 Top Strategies (2017)
2. Pool & Spa News: Getting Paid for Design (2013)
3. WaterShapes: Imagination in Demand (2020)
4. Pool Magazine: Say No To Doing Free Pool Designs
5. Consumer Affairs Victoria: Preliminary agreements for home building projects