11 Airbnb Interior Design Tips All Hosts Need To Know

Are you totally overwhelmed by Airbnb interior design and need some help? Or researching ideas on how to do this right? Don’t worry, I have so many great tips to share about how you need to incorporate excellent interior design into every listing. 

I’ll go into some details about industry tips and tricks to pull off an excellent Airbnb interior design. I think you’ll be surprised by some of my tips as well.

Personally, I love a good design job but have definitely hired out some projects to interior designers that understood my mission and could help me reach my goals.

Best Airbnb Interior Design Tips

1. Decide how the property will be used

There are many different types of Airbnb investors. Some want to use the property as a second residence and rent out on Airbnb only to fill in the gaps of when they won’t be using the property. Others buy properties purely for investment purposes.

How you are going to use the property will largely inform how you set it up. If there’s going to be some personal use, making sure it’s set up how it will best serve your family is just as important as setting up for guests to use.

2. Lean into the location of the property

The best vacation rentals are in destination locations. Allow this to inform the design approach for the property! If you’re coastal, stick with a classic beach theme. If you’re by a national park, lean into the history of the area to develop a great design around enhancing the guests experience of that area.

3. Keep it simple

Do not over complicate or over decorate – keeping it simple is crucial for both your budget and your guests overall experience. If you will be using this as a vacation home for your family but also renting out to guests, ensure nothing too personal is used in the decor. Typically guests will gravitate towards a curated space over one that feels like someone else’s home.

You want your guests to feel comfortable during their stay and sometimes seeing another family’s photo hanging on the wall isn’t the best way to put guests as ease.

4. Consider hiring an interior designer

Now if you’re totally intimidated or don’t have the time to dedicate toward a project of this size, consider hiring an Airbnb interior designer. Especially if they’re use to working on Airbnb properties, they will pay for themselves in a higher daily rate and more bookings for a well curated space.

5. Plan on spending $10-$15/sq ft

Now this is an industry trick you must remember. You will and should spend in this dollar range per square foot of space to put together a decent space. Guests will have an overall better experience in a well curated environment that feels well done than one that looks cheap.

Also, gone are the days of being able to post a listing with Facebook Marketplace furniture and iPhone photos. You need to buy quality pieces and guests will pay in the end.

6. Pick a theme

Picking an Airbnb theme will help you come up with a plan SO much faster than any other method. It’s easy to design around and be inspired to curate fun experiences for your guests.

For an in-depth look at Airbnb theme ideas, check out this article!

7. Plan each room

Go room by room and plan what will be needed and why. Use a template or spreadsheet to detail out all this information. Trust me, you will thank yourself later for building this out now versus winging it as you go.

8. Utilize the Airbnb Budget template

I have a great free tool for you below! If you input your name and email, I’ll send it directly to your inbox. This is the exact budget template I use to plan my properties before taking them live. It’s organized room by room with a space for links so you can save some of the basic items for the next listing you take live.

Once you download it, I would love to know what you think. Send me a note!

9. Use a visualization tool like Canva or PowerPoint

Once you have a plan for each room, getting the visual on a single page is going to really help you see the vision come to life before purchasing. Using a free tool like Canva or even just PowerPoint can help you pull together a great plan for your listing.

This is an example of a living room I mocked up for our cabin that is going to be coming Fall 2024! Check it out here.

10. Use data from other properties

This is to largely inform the kinds of amenities you will have in your property but data is huge! Using the enemy method or other tools like Airdna are going to be so crucial in coming up with a great plan for amenities.

You want to make sure to do all this research before you finalize the design plan because picking the right amenities will really affect your success. If you are missing amenities that hosts in that area are expecting, that could be detrimental to your occupancy rate and you could lose a lot of business.

11. Stick to the basics

Airbnb essentials like white bedding and towels, fully stocked kitchen, coffee in the morning and providing shampoo and conditioner are all vital to an experience. Curating these big little things is really going to touch the guests in a small but impactful way.

Providing a curtain experience through the items you choose with these essentials is going to give guests the unique experience they were looking for when booking an Airbnb.

Check out my article about Airbnb essentials here! It’s packed with great tips.

This post was all about Airbnb interior design.