"Best" is a slippery word in interior design. A hotel group, a tech company fitting out twelve floors and a family renovating an apartment all need something different. So instead of opinions, this guide uses two kinds of evidence: how much interior design work a firm actually wins, and how its peers judge the work. Together they give the most honest answer to the question of who the best interior design firms in the world are in 2026.
The biggest interior design firms in the world by fees
Every year the US magazine Interior Design publishes its Top 100 Giants, a ranking of the largest firms by the interior design fees they earned in the previous year. The 2026 edition, researched with ThinkLab, ranks firms by fees for the 12 months to 31 December 2025. Combined, the Top 100 earned US$6.38 billion, 1% more than the year before.
| Rank 2026 | Firm | Headquarters | Interior design fees 2025 (US$ m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gensler | San Francisco | 969.7 |
| 2 | Perkins&Will | Chicago | 365.3 |
| 3 | Jacobs | Dallas | 345.4 |
| 4 | AECOM | Dallas | 264.0 |
| 5 | HDR | Omaha | 256.4 |
| 6 | HKS | Dallas | 226.7 |
| 7 | HOK | St. Louis | 199.8 |
| 8 | Corgan | Dallas | 190.5 |
| 9 | Stantec | Edmonton | 176.7 |
| 10 | CannonDesign | New York | 160.0 |
Just outside the top ten come IA Interior Architects (San Francisco), HBA International (Santa Monica), SmithGroup, Populous, NELSON Worldwide, M Moser Associates (Hong Kong), Perkins Eastman, Arcadis (Amsterdam), DLR Group and JLL.
Gensler is in a league of its own. Its interior design fees are more than 2.6 times those of the number two. The firm was founded in 1965 and says it has about 6,000 people in 58 offices across 16 countries.
Read the ranking for what it is. Fees are reported by the firms themselves. To qualify, a firm needs at least one office in North America and at least a quarter of its fee income from there, which is why the list leans American. Many entries, such as Jacobs, AECOM and Stantec, are large architecture and engineering groups with big interiors departments. The ranking measures scale and trust from large clients, not beauty.
Who leads each sector
The same research breaks the fees down by sector, which is more useful if you have a specific project:
| Sector | Leader in 2026 | Fees in the sector (US$ m) |
|---|---|---|
| Office | Gensler | 335.2 |
| Healthcare | HKS | 133.6 |
| Hospitality | HBA International | 128.5 |
| Retail | Gensler | 68.4 |
| Cultural and sports | Populous | 78.1 |
| Education | CannonDesign | 40.0 |
| Residential | Marc-Michaels Interior Design | 32.0 |
HBA is the name to know for hotels. It was founded in 1965 in Santa Monica by Howard Hirsch and Michael Bedner and has grown into a global hospitality specialist. Residential is the smallest sector in the ranking, because most of the world's best home interiors come from small, design-led studios that a fee ranking never captures.
The studios their peers award
To find the firms admired for the work itself, look at juries and editors rather than revenue.
Dimorestudio (Milan), founded by Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci, was named interior designer of the year at the Dezeen Awards 2025. The emerging interior designer of the year was Mirzoyan from Ukraine, and the interiors project of the year went to the Tokyo office of Symbolplus.
The ***Interior Design* Hall of Fame inducted Héctor Esrawe of Esrawe Studio (Mexico City), Pierre-Yves Rochon of PYR, known for grand hotel interiors, and the architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi** in 2025.
Architectural Digest's AD100 for 2026 includes the London designer Rose Uniacke, and Rockwell Group entered its AD100 Hall of Fame.
These names change every year, which is the point: awards reward recent work. A studio that appears again and again, across different juries, is a safer bet than one that won once.
How to choose among the best interior design firms in the world
Match the firm to the scale. A global firm brings coordination across countries, technical teams and procurement power for a headquarters or a hotel chain. For a home, a restaurant or a boutique hotel, a smaller studio usually gives you more of the senior designers' time.
Match the sector. The sector table above is a better shortlist than the overall ranking. A hospitality leader thinks about guest flow and operator standards; a residential studio thinks about how one family lives.
Ask for the team, not the brand. In a large firm, the people on your project matter more than the logo. Ask who will lead it and see their own past work.
See the design before you commit. Ask how the firm presents its concepts. Photorealistic 3D visualization lets you judge layout, materials and light before anything is ordered; we explain why in 3D visualization in interior design.
Understand the fee. Hourly, fixed, a percentage of the project or a markup on furniture: our guide to how much an interior designer costs explains each model. If structural work is involved, check who is allowed to do it: see architect vs interior designer.
For Europe specifically, read our guide to the best interior design firms in Europe.
Where VARI fits
VARI Studio is not in these rankings, and we have not ranked ourselves. We are an architecture, interior design and 3D visualization studio in Cairo, and our interiors include Elysian Aura, Penthouse in Dark Mood and Hearthstone Haven in Norway. Because we design and visualize in one team, clients see every room in photorealistic detail before they approve it. See our interior visualization services or tell us about your project.
Sources (checked 2026-11-05)
- Interior Design, "A Look at Interior Design's 2026 Top 100 Giants" (16 March 2026): interiordesign.net/research/a-look-at-interior-designs-2026-top-100-giants/
- Interior Design, "Interior Design's 2025 Top 100 Giants" (17 March 2025): interiordesign.net/research/interior-designs-2025-top-100-giants/
- Gensler, About: gensler.com/about
- HBA, history: hba.com
- Dezeen Awards 2025 winners: dezeen.com/awards/2025/winners/symbolplus-office/
- Interior Design, 2025 Hall of Fame inductees: interiordesign.net/designwire/interior-design-2025-hall-of-fame-inductees/
- Rose Uniacke, AD100 2026: roseuniacke.com/article/ad100-2026 · Rockwell Group, AD100 Hall of Fame: rockwellgroup.com/news/2026-ad100-hall-of-fame
