A great way to work in fashion without designing the clothes is by being a textile designer. You essentially design the prints (artwork) that goes on the fabric. This step-by-step guide will cover everything you need to know to get started. 

While I wasn’t specifically a “textile designer” nor did I market myself as one, I did a lot of textile and repeating pattern work in my career as a freelance fashion designer. I have also worked with a lot of textile designers in my Freelance Accelerator program to help them build their businesses, and interviewed many on my podcast. What you will read in this guide is a combination of all that experience.

First, spoiler alert about being a textile designer!

The best path to success as a textile designer is by freelancing (not by selling your designs on Spoonflower or trying to get work licensed). The truth is there are very few textile design jobs, it’s nearly impossible to sell your own designs, and the print agency model is a bit exploitative. More on that later.

What Does A Textile Designer Do?

If you’re not in the trade, you may be wondering what a textile designer does? Or is it a fabric designer? A print designer? A fashion textile designer? A surface pattern designer? There are a lot of names for this “title.” Here’s what they all mean and how they differ.

A Textile Designer Creates Print / Pattern Designs For Textiles (Aka Fabric)

These are often repeating patterns where the artwork is designed to repeat over and over (also referred to as “all over prints” or AOP). But textile designs can also be larger print designs or artwork that is placed on the fabric. Usually referred to as “placed prints,” these can be designed and printed on the fabric either before or after it is cut and sewn into the final product.

Here are other titles for “textile designer” and what they mean.

What Is A Fabric Designer?

Fabric = textiles, so this is essentially the same as a textile designer. In the industry (fashion or home decor), you hardly ever hear “fabric designer” – most of the time when I hear this, I know it’s someone who doesn’t have as much experience. So pro tip, start calling yourself a textile designer instead!

What Is A Fashion Textile Designer?

When you add the qualifier of the word “fashion,” that means you’re designing textiles specifically for the fashion industry. This is as opposed to designing for all sorts of fabrics which could include home decor, interiors, industrial, automotive, etc.

What Is A Print Designer?

A more vague and generic term, print designer can mean a million different things. “Prints” can be anything from repeating patterns to placed prints to any kind of artwork that is “printed.” Like “fabric designer,” I most often hear this used by people who have less industry experience, or by people who are more of a graphic artist. Instead, most professionals who design prints for a variety of materials (as opposed to textiles only) will call themselves surface pattern designers.

What Is A Surface Pattern Designer? 

A surface pattern designer is like a textile designer, but it’s way more broad and not specific to textiles or fabric. As the name suggests, the artwork goes on “surfaces” – which can be any and everything from notebooks to tissue boxes to carpet (think hotels or casinos!) and of course textiles.

So, What Kind Of “Designer” Should You Be?

It’s up to you to decide what kind of prints / patterns / repeats you want to create and what industries you want to offer them to. The 3 steps to becoming some sort of “designer” are very similar no matter what kind of designer you want to be. If you’re not sure, the different ways to sell your prints and patterns may help you decide what industry you want to focus on.

3 Steps To Become A Textile Designer (And What Skills You Need)

Becoming a textile designer doesn’t take a lot of time, and it’s not super complicated. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn DIY (instead of going to fashion school). The list of skills you need is actually pretty short!

The 3 steps to becoming a textile designer are learning how to create artwork, learning the basics of textiles & print techniques, and creating a portfolio.

Let’s look at each step in detail.

1. Learn How To Create Artwork (Including Prints And Repeats)

There are a variety of different types of artwork you can create. Textile designs can be hand drawn, painted, collages, CAD (vector in Adobe Illustrator / raster in Photoshop), and more.

You don’t need to know how to do them all. Pick the style and aesthetic that matches your creativity and learn that!

No matter what type of textiles you want to create, learning repeats will be essential. You’ll need to know how to get a design into a seamless repeating pattern using relevant software (Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop). 

Beyond this, understanding how to prep repeats for production and create specs for manufacturing will be really valuable.

2. Learn The Basics Of Textiles & Print Techniques

As a textile designer, you’ll want to have a conceptual understanding of different types of fabrics. You don’t need to know every kind of fabric that exists, but understanding how artwork will print differently on a tightly woven fabric (think a button down shirt) vs jute or burlap (think a coffee bean bag) will be important.

A quick read on different fabric types and their qualities will help. Better yet, take a trip to your local fabric store and notice the qualities of different textiles and what they are called. You can literally do this in an afternoon.

But beyond fabric types, you want to also understand different print types. Two of the big ones are screen printing and sublimation printing. Screen printing is where each color is printed directly through a screen that the artwork has been burned into. This works great for minimal color vector artwork. This is compared to sublimation printing where colors don’t matter – you can print unlimited colors, like photorealistic florals. 

There are more print types beyond this, and you don’t have to know them all, but it’s valuable to have a high level understanding. Because print types can affect the type of artwork, the production budget, and what factories you can work with. 

This is a great article to get you started on understanding the 6 different types of fabric printing. Don’t worry about having a thorough understanding of all of them, just know there are different options and you’ll want to consider this for each project.

3. Create A Textile Design Portfolio

The last step to becoming a textile designer is creating a portfolio. Depending on where you want to sell your designs, this is likely not as big of a project as you think. I’ll go through everything you need to know about how to create a textile design portfolio based on how you plan to make money, but know that it’s not an overly complicated project!

How To Become A Textile Designer Without Going To School

The world of learning is changing, and like many career paths, you don’t need to go to school to become a textile designer. There are so many online courses that will teach you the essential skills in a fraction of the time and for a LOT cheaper.

One of our most successful students inside Freelance Accelerator: from Surviving to Thriving (FAST), Katerina Dimovska from Macedonia, is crushing it in her career. Katerina didn’t have any experience in textiles (and didn’t get a textile degree), yet in her first year freelancing as a textile designer, she earned more than she had in her previous year as a full-time employee.

Better yet, Katerina is happier in her career than she’s ever been.

Bottom Line, You Don’t Need A Degree To Be A Textile Designer! 

You just need to learn the 3 essential skills (repeats, speccing for production, and the basics of fabric + print types) and put together a simple portfolio.

If you want to take some specific courses, many of my students have good things to say about Bonnie Christine and Leslie Kenehan.

What Qualifications Do You Need To Be A Textile Designer?

While going to fashion school and learning can look great on your resume, and it can be a way to network your way to a job, it’s really not required. Fashion school will set you back years and tens of thousands of dollars.

So, what qualifications do you actually need to be a textile designer, if it’s not a textile design degree on your resume? 

It depends on what kind of work you want to do and how you want to sell your designs and make money as a textile designer.

What brands care most about, whether it’s a fashion brand or a home decor brand, is that your aesthetic matches theirs. They are going to instantly judge you by your designs – does your portfolio match what they want to create? If you visually connect with a brand, most of them couldn’t care less about fashion school or experience on your resume.

Beyond that, having a base understanding of the different types of printing techniques and how they will translate to different fabrics will be valuable. And last, understanding how to technically prepare the artwork for production and manufacturing is really helpful. This may include prepping one repeat tile at the correct scale and adding color callouts.

What To Put In A Textile Design Portfolio (With Examples)

This is a loaded question, because it depends on how you’re trying to sell your textile designs and who is seeing your portfolio. You’ve got about 8-seconds to grab someone’s attention with your portfolio, so you need to make sure you show them what they want to see, and nothing else.

So, let’s cover a few different portfolio scenarios.

Textile Design Portfolio For Full-Time Jobs

While it’s really hard to get a job and make money as a full-time textile designer, if you want to find employment, the number one focus of your textile design portfolio should be making sure it *visually* matches the brand’s aesthetic. This is first and foremost what they will care about. Unless it’s a huge brand that creates tons of different categories, they won’t want to see a ton of different aesthetics in your portfolio. Even if you’re capable of different types of prints, you should focus your portfolio and only show them the work that is relevant. Look at the type of artwork they’re currently using for their brand and show them stuff that compliments that.

Because of this, your portfolio doesn’t need to be huge. 3-4 print collections with 3-4 prints per is sufficient. If you want bonus points, show mockups of your prints on items relevant to the brand. For example, if it’s a home decor brand, show home decor mockups. If it’s an athleisure brand, show legging mockups. Just make it relevant! You can do mockups in 3D using free tools – just google “3D fabric mockup [leggings / bed spread / etc].” You can also do mockups in flats using Adobe Illustrator.

Textile Design Portfolio For Freelancing 

My favorite path to working as a textile designer is as a freelancer. If you’re pursuing freelancing, your portfolio should be focused and niche based on what kind of brands you’re pitching to. Just like looking for employment as a textile designer, freelancers should only show relevant work. If you reach out to a kidswear brand that does a lot of whimsical prints, that’s what they’ll want to see. They don’t care about your photorealistic florals, so don’t show them!

Now as a freelance textile designer, you may want to do more than one type of print aesthetic. That’s fine, and you can. Just make sure to control what brands see. This may be with different pages on your website (ie one for whimsical and one for photorealistic florals) or it may be with different PDF portfolios. Because yes, you can do your portfolio as a simple PDF (check out my full guide on fashion portfolios for more)!

Curious what a textile design portfolio looks like? Here are two examples from successful students inside our Freelance Accelerator: from Surviving to Thriving (FAST) program.

Lucia Sanguinetti-Jonescheit is a textile designer from Argentina who lives in Germany. Lucia began freelancing because she had 2 young boys at home and she didn’t want to do the 9-5 grind anymore. She has plenty of work and is earning $60/hour as a freelance textile designer.

Lucia’s niche is baby and kids textiles. While her website portfolio is impressive, you only need a couple projects like this (not a whole website!). Here are a couple example projects:

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Katerina Dimovska is a textile designer from Macedonia. She didn’t go to school for textiles and didn’t have any industry experience doing repeats. Yet after losing her tech pack job during the pandemic, she decided she wanted to pursue her passion of painting and designing. She launched her freelance textile design career and in her first year of freelancing, outearned her in-house income when she was doing tech packs.

Katerina focuses on working with brands that match her aesthetic, regardless of the category. Her LinkedIn portfolio is super simple and visually speaks to a very specific look.

Textile Design Portfolio For Licensing Your Work

Licensing your designs is a complicated and difficult way to make money in textiles. That said, if you want to do it, your textile design portfolio for licensing your work will vary depending on who is seeing it. Are you going directly to brands to get licensed? If so, you’ll want to include work that matches their brand aesthetic. Your portfolio will look a lot like the full-time job and freelancing portfolios described above. 

If you’re working with an agent or a print studio, you’re going to want to show a variety of work. Agents and print studios work with a variety of brands who have a wide range of looks. They’ll be more interested in textile designers who have a broader range of work in their portfolio.

Textile Design Portfolio For Working With Print Studios / Houses / Agencies

While working with print studios isn’t my favorite way to make money as a textile designer, if you want to go this route, you’ll want to have a more diverse textile design portfolio. Print studios love diverse textile designers who can offer a range of aesthetics since they sell to a range of brands with different looks.

The print studio business model is pretty exploitative. Most of them require designers to create a bunch of prints, and only when one sells does the designer get paid. I chatted with one of my students who told me her studio required 4 print designs a week! She told me that even if all of them sold (which would be near impossible), she would still be making a really low wage. She “quit” that studio and now works with brands directly as a freelancer, only designing what they pay her for.

To create an effective portfolio for working with print studios, you’ll want to put together 3-5 different print collections (with 3-5 prints each) to show. You don’t have to worry about covering every aesthetic, and it’s ok if all your work is hand painted or all vector. Just include prints that show you can do different types of Artwork.

Want More Help With Your Textile Design Portfolio?

Check out my free book on portfolios. It will walk you through the step-by-step process of creating yours, including what to include, how many projects you need, and what formats are best. (Hint: a few projects is enough, and a PDF works great!)

Selling Your Textile Designs (Aka How To Make Money As A Textile Designer)

You can sell your textile designs and make money by working full-time, licensing your artwork, collaborating with print studios, selling independently online, or freelancing. Some really experienced textile designers do a little bit of everything, like Michelle Fifis, founder of Pattern Observer who I interviewed on my podcast.

But don’t get overwhelmed about doing it all. Instead, we’ll talk about the pros and cons so you can pick one that feels right for you.

Selling Your Textile Designs Online (Spoonflower, Patternbank, Zazzle Etc)

Selling your textile designs on online platforms like Spoonflower, Patternbank, Zazzle (and a million others) is super easy to do. Which feels really attractive at first! You’re not creatively limited and can design anything you want. Then just put your designs up and BOOM – you’ll be raking in the moolah!

Not. So. Fast.

Since pretty much anyone can sell on these platforms, they are over saturated with designs. You will be one in a million (literally, Spoonflower has a million designs and counting!). The chances of getting discovered are super slim…almost like winning the lottery.

Now, if you do get discovered, the bonus is that you’re earning passive income. Once you put your designs up, every time someone buys one, you get paid. You can literally make money while you sleep! Sounds super cool, I know.

But the catch is that you don’t make a ton. Spoonflower pays out 10% of the final sale price. So if someone orders $10 of your fabric, you make $1. Pair that with the slim chances of getting discovered, and it’s hard AF to make a real living this way.

Now of course, every platform is different. For example, Patternbank gives a 50% commission. That’s way more money – awesome! But it’s not as easy to sell there – you have to apply. Beyond that, there is still a ton of competition with 75,000 designs available on the website.

If you want to make any amount of money selling textile designs online, it is far from easy. The only way it will scale is if you put out massive quantities of artwork that are also quality. It’s going to require a lot of time and continued persistence to build up to anything worthwhile. I know from many people in the fashion and textile industry that if you calculate the amount of hours you put in based on the income you make, you’ll be earning pennies an hour. It’s not a sustainable or profitable option.

To summarize, here are the pros and cons of selling textile designs online on sites like Spoonflower, Patternbank, Zazzle, etc.

Pros:

• Low barrier to entry and easy to get started
• No creative limitations – design whatever you want
• Passive income, a way to diversify your income

Cons:

• Platforms are saturated, so it’s very hard to get discovered
• Must create large quantities of work
• Depending on the platform, payouts can be pretty small

Textile Designer Jobs & Employment

If you want to work full-time as a textile designer, you can look for jobs and find employment. At a glance, this can sound like a great opportunity, and for some, it is. But let’s talk about what this really looks like…

As with all employment, in a textile design job you do get some sense of “stability.” A regular paycheck, paid vacation and insurance are nice perks. But employment isn’t the most stable thing ever. Because when you lose your job, *poof* you’ve lost everything.

And let’s not forget that a full-time job is…well, a full-time job. You don’t have any freedom or flexibility that other textile design opportunities offer.

Obviously this is the case with any job, so that aside, one of the great perks of working full-time as a textile designer is you’ll have the opportunity to learn about other parts of the process and the industry. You’ll get exposed to so much more than you would selling your designs online or working with print studios. And that’s awesome!

But being a textile design employee also means you’ll be creatively limited. You won’t get to design any and everything you want, but instead are confined to only creating that one brand’s aesthetic. It can feel a little restrictive!

There also aren’t a ton of job opportunities for textile designers. Unless a brand is really print heavy, most don’t have the need or the budget to employ a textile designer full-time. Most brands are more likely to buy prints from top industry sites like Patternbank, from print studios, or hire freelancers. 

At the time of writing, Indeed only has 419 jobs in the entire US and just 39 in the state of Colorado. That is VERY few jobs.

Compare that to 2787 fashion design jobs in the US, and 23 in Denver alone (not the entire state).

There is just very, very, VERY limited opportunity to work full-time as a textile designer!

To summarize, here are the pros and cons of working full-time as a textile designer for one brand

Pros:

• “Stability” with a regular paycheck and benefits
• Learn about other parts of the process & industry

Cons:

• Creative limitations
• No freedom / flexibility in life
• No diversification – if you lose your job, you lose everything
• Very limited opportunity

Licensing Your Textile Designs

There’s a mysterious word out there in the textile and surface pattern design world. Licensing. What does licensing your textile designs mean and how do you do it?

It’s a bit of a complex topic for this guide, and something I’m not personally familiar with. You have to consider things like exclusive vs non-exclusive, copyrights, royalties, time + quantity + product limitations, and more.

You can make a good bit of money this way. But it’s not easy to find brands who are willing to license, and a lot of designers have agents that rep them.

If you want to learn more about licensing your textile designs, here are some resources.

• Elizabeth Silver, surface pattern designer with tons of licensing advice
• Art Licensing, hasn’t been updated in quite some time but still valuable info
• Everything You Need to Know, a brief yet good overview of some details
• How to License Your Art, a paid guide that seems legit

To summarize, here are the pros and cons of licensing your textile designs

Pros:

• You can make a good bit of cash upon initial license
• There is opportunity for subsequent payouts based on use

Cons:

• It’s complicated
• It’s hard to find brands (you’ll likely need an agent)

Making Money From Your Textile Designs With Print Studios & Agencies 

It’s very common for textile designers to make money by working with print studios and agencies. In fact, this is probably the most common route.

So, what is a print studio (sometimes called a print house or agency)? It’s a business that reps many different textile or surface pattern designers and works as the middleman between the artists and the companies buying the prints.

Every print studio works a little differently, but it essentially goes something like this:

1. Textile designers create a ton of artwork. Some studios require a certain amount of output, like X designs every week.
2. Print studios work with brands. This is a two way street – sometimes the studio will “pitch” artwork either online, at trade shows, or via traveling sales reps. Alternatively, brands may approach studios and ask for specific kinds of art.
3. When the brand purchases the art, the designer gets paid.

So while this arrangement can sound pretty good – someone else is selling your artwork for you – it’s kind a shit deal in my opinion.

Re-read step 3 of the process above: “When the brand purchases the art, the designer gets paid.” Meaning you are often required to submit design after design after design, and you only get paid once someone buys it.

Some print studios do employ full-time designers in-house, but it’s pretty rare. Most of the time they represent a large pool of independent designers who are required to produce on a regular basis yet only get paid once someone buys.

Pretty abusive if you ask me, and I’ve talked to many textile designers who’ve “worked” for print studios that agree. You just cannot make a fair wage this way.

To summarize, here are the pros and cons of working with a print studio

Pros:

• They do the selling for you

Cons:

• You may be required to pump out a ton of artwork
• You only get paid when something sells

Selling Artwork as A Freelance Textile Designer

Taking control of your own career and selling your textile designs as a freelancer is, in my opinion, the best way to do it. You get to work with brands you love, set your own schedule, and get paid for all the work you do. 

Let’s compare freelancing as a textile designer to the other options we’ve explored for selling your work and making money.

Freelancing vs selling online (Spoonflower etc) or through a print studio.

As a freelance textile designer, you don’t have to create a bunch of work in advance and *hope* it sells (like you do on Spoonflower or if you work for a print studio). Instead, you create a portfolio that speaks to a specific aesthetic and find brands that match that aesthetic. 

Those brands hire you as a freelancer, and you create custom artwork specifically for their project. Then they pay you for that artwork. Think about that compared to pumping out 10 prints a week and crossing your fingers that one of them sells!!! 

Really think about it.

Would you rather create a TON of designs and hopefully sell some?

Or…

Would you rather get paid for EVERY design you create?

The answer is obvious. 

Freelancing vs licensing your work.

It’s much easier (and much less complicated) to get started as a freelance textile designer than to get your artwork licensed. You don’t have to worry about any of the complicated stuff like royalties or exclusivity or copyright. As a freelancer, the brand hires you, you create custom artwork for them, they pay you. Done and done.

There’s no middleman taking a commission, and you’re in control of who you work with.

Freelancing vs working in-house as an employee.

As a freelancer, you have the opportunity to work with multiple brands. So your creative opportunities are unlimited. And while you don’t have the “security” of a full-time job, your income is diversified. If you lose one client, you still have others to support you while you find more work.

Plus, it’s much easier to find a new client for a textile design project than it is to find a new full-time job. Because as I mentioned earlier, there just aren’t that many employment opportunities!

To summarize, here are the pros and cons of being a freelance textile designer

Pros:

• Work on a variety of projects you love
• You get all the $ (no middleman)
• Get paid for all the work you create
• Freedom and flexibility in life / schedule / location

Cons:

• You have to find the clients (there are easy strategies)
• Manage the selling / biz stuff (much simpler than you think)

Freelancing Is Your Best Opportunity To Make Money As A Textile Designer

As a freelance textile designer, you can make the most money the fastest. Ok…let me be clear about that. Nothing in fashion – or life! – about making money is fast (or easy). You will still have to put in the work, and it can still take time. But, it’s going to be much faster than making money all the other ways.

That’s because you don’t have to sit around and wait for brands to find your artwork amongst the millions of other designers on Spoonflower or Patternbank. And you don’t have to pump out a bunch of work hoping it sells through a print studio.

If You Want To Sell Textile Designs To Companies For Manufacturing, Freelancing Is Your Best Option

Cut out the middleman and take control of your textile design career. Go directly to the brands so you can create custom artwork for them. They’ll put your designs into production and handle all the manufacturing. It’s a pretty awesome win-win relationship.

So, Where do you Find Freelance Textile Clients & Job Opportunities? 

There are a ton of textile design opportunities out there. You can find them on UpWork, like some of our Freelance Accelerator: from Surviving to Thriving (FAST) grads Katerina and Lucia have done. You can also find brands and pitch directly.

How Much Money Can You Make As A Freelance Textile Designer?

You can make a lot of money as a textile designer. Depending on what route you take, your income potential (and how fast you get there) will vary. It will also depend on where you live.

Lucia, from Germany, charges $60/hour and is fully booked. That means she gets to choose projects she loves! Katerina lives in Macedonia, where the wages are much different. She is charging $20/hour, but at that rate, she outearned her previous industry salary. $20/hour in Macedonia is a lot! Another textile design student of mine, who prefers to remain anonymous, charges $850+ for one print, and $99/hour for additional work like specs, mockups and colorways. She lives in the US.

Your rate will vary based on a lot of factors. But the bottom line is that the fastest way to make the most money is as a freelance textile designer, as opposed to working in-house, selling online (Spoonflower, Patternbank, etc), licensing, or collaborating with a print studio.

Learn Step-By-Step How To Become A Freelance Textile Designer

If you’re serious about building your career as a freelance textile designer, you probably want a little more than this guide.

You can check out my free Ultimate Guide to Being a Freelance Fashion Designer (which you can apply to textile design as well).

You can also learn more about Freelance Accelerator: from Surviving to Thriving (FAST). It’s the only step-by-step freelance program for the fashion + textile industry.

YOU GOT THIS!!!