Freelance Web Designer: A Career Guide to Better Jobs and Higher Rates

Overview and definitions

Freelance web designer rates have a lot of downward price pressure due to a low barrier to entry, so there are fewer professionals in this area with the 7-9 years of experience that this career guide series looks at. Looking at data for web designers with 10+ and 15+ years of experience barely budges the pay. Half of salaried web designers have four years of experience or less.

Instead, it appears that many veteran web designers move on either to web development or user experience design (UX design), which both pay better than freelance web design and open up more paths to advance your freelance career.

Freelance web designer pay may be significantly influenced by geographical location. Web designers in salaried roles in tech hub cities can earn 25-51 percent or more above the national average. For example, here is a sample of web designer salary data by location from PayScale:

web designer salaries by location

Freelance web designers working outside of these tech hubs have a a strong pricing arbitrage opportunity if they can find clients willing to hire remote freelance professionals.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t even include a profile of web designers in its occupational handbook. To find yourself there, you have to identify either as a graphic designer or a web developer.

What skills do freelance web designers need?

Freelance web designers conceptualize and code web pages and web applications. They make sure sure the design displays across multiple interfaces including mobile. They may also maintain web sites.

Therefore, in addition to creative and artistic skills, a freelance web designer must have some basic coding skills. Skills in CSS, WordPress and Adobe products are table stakes and don’t improve the rates you can charge.

According to PayScale, the skills that do provide the biggest pay premiums are: eCommerce, user interface (UI) design, HTML5 and JavaScript.

Like many “technology” roles, this work is no longer limited to technology companies. Web design is required by organizations of every size in every sector including nonprofits, health care, universities, government, financial services, manufacturing, retail and, of course, media and publishing.

As with every other freelance field, web designers are strongly encouraged to develop a niche so they can position themselves as authoritative in a given domain.

To advance your career in web design, you should consider the details below leading to web dev and UX design roles.

(Nation1099 is an affiliate of some of the companies mentioned below and may receive a commission if you purchase from them.)

Setting minimum freelance web designer rates

Your minimum rate as a freelance web designer should be at least $64 on an hourly basis if you live in the U.S. and have 7-10 years of experience. Your minimum daily rate should be $513.

How we calculated this freelance rate

We took salary data for full-time web designers in the U.S. from several sources such as Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, PayScale, LinkedIn and Indeed and applied our “all-in expense formula.”

freelance web designer rates

This formula shows the complete costs to you of having a freelance web design business rather than a job in this field. The formula ensures that your rates include the costs of retirement benefits, health insurance, marketing expenses and other overhead, along with the value of unpaid work in your business.

This article explains in detail our formula for setting freelance rates.

You can use our freelance rate calculator to adjust the variables if you have more or less experience in web design.

Variables and exceptions

  • We assumed a freelance web design career of at least 7-10 years of experience. Entry-level designers may have lower fees.
  • This formula doesn’t account for travel, meals, conferences, memberships or learning. It also doesn’t account for art materials and design software. These may add up to 25 percent to your expenses and therefore to your rate.

How can I earn more money as a freelance web designer?

The professionals who are a hybrid of web designer and developer appear to earn slightly more. (True web developers earn significantly more.) Graphic designers generally appear to earn significantly less.

Experienced web designers who want to improve their income as freelancers will have a critical decision to make — whether to stick to this crowded domain or to shift into a related field requiring more technical skills and less active design activity.

In the first case, it’s critical to identify a real business strategy. You will have to “think smarter” about your business and the environment that you sell your services in. You will need a niche and to establish yourself as an authority or as uniquely talented. If you become known as a brand name designer or as someone who solves particular business problems, then you may be able to escape the downward price pressures of this field.

As discussed above, a significant percentage of web designers appear to move into either UX design or web development.

UX designer salaries average $96,000. The hourly equivalent for freelancers in our formula would be $100, almost 40 percent more than experienced freelance web designer rates.

UX designers collaborate with engineers, marketers and product managers to achieve product-market fit. They design concepts, prototypes, demos, usability studies and user testing. In addition to all the above coding and creative skills, they must have a command of information architecture. Naturally, UX designers must also be highly effective at collaboration and communication.

Experienced web developers earn $94,000 year. The hourly equivalent for freelance web devs should be at least $98. For a full description of this role, see our Freelance Web Developer Career Guide.

5 strategic questions to help you increase your freelance web designer rates

  1. Trends and climate: What forces are impacting the work available to freelance web designers? How are you being impacted by new entrants into the marketplace and how do you find a defensible position?
  2. Service offering: What are the total group of services you offer to your freelance web design clients? Does it involve web and application development? Is this a way for you to stand out from other designers?
  3. Value proposition: How do you solve problems for and add value to your client’s business?
  4. Capacity: What skills do you need to acquire to grow you freelance web design business? Are you going to have to shift to a related field with more technical skills?
  5. Priorities: What do you want to achieve and what will you need to stop doing in order to make progress toward your goals as a freelance web designer?

Related reading: 4 Steps To a Clearer Freelance Brand

Where can I find freelance web design jobs?

We track job platforms on our list of best freelance websites. However, most — thought not all — of these sites emphasize commodity rate gigs. Some of these sites are developing new business models and may offer terms that you find more attractive. Sites that are more specialized for freelance designers include:

  • 99designs
  • Designs.net

You should also look at some of the job boards that may be better known for developers. In some cases they are also looking for freelance web designers, and if you may find a way to develop your skills beyond CSS and WordPress. Sites that may have these kinds of freelance web design jobs include:

  • Gun.io
  • Toptal
  • Codeable

If you feel you are ready for more planning and management work in UX design, then be sure to browse our list of best consulting websites, which features job boards with high-level consulting roles.

Finally, we recommend two particular job boards because their pricing makes more sense to us. You pay up front in the form of a monthly subscription and then don’t have a walled garden and so many commissions and other fees.

Flexjobs — Freelancers may overlook this one because it looks like a traditional “job” board. (And who wants a job?) But it’s real focus is remote work, and there are promising freelance gigs hidden in there.

Marketing resources for freelance web designers

This is one of those areas where most of the information being published is really obvious. (Have a website. Form a network.) We haven’t spotted a great marketing resource uniquely for advanced or experienced professionals in this field yet.

Your best bet in this area is working with career coaches who specialize in what you do. Fortunately, there is one ideal coach available. Ilise Benun, a.k.a. the Marketing Mentor, specializing in helping freelancers in creative fields grow their businesses.

And, of course, Nation1099 publishes articles on this subject. Here are some of our most in-depth and actionable pieces:

Skills, career and business courses for freelance web designers

You can find many courses online to help you acquire the basic skills required of a freelance web designer. Some of the deepest catalogs are on Skillshare and Udemy.

Pluralsight lets you sort out courses by skill level, so if you are missing skills in HTML5 or another programming language, this is a great place to look.

Udemy has a number of courses on running a freelance web design business, but most of them appear to be for beginners.

One interesting career course to consider at Skillshare helps you build a business in the ecommerce niche.

If you are trying to build up your skills in user testing and other UX design skills, check out:

For the leadership, communication, project management and business fundamentals skills discussed above that will help you sell more consultative services, EdX and Coursera are a great place to start:

Our career guide on freelance web development has all the courses you need to move into that field.

Business advice and resources for freelance web designers

We haven’t found many great business resources uniquely for experienced professionals in this area. Earlier career professionals share a lot of valuable career advice in forums like Stack Overflow and Github.

The best inspiration and advice lately seems to be coming from podcasts. To keep up on the latest skills and trends, check out:

For inspiration from experts in your field, check out:

For business advice, it often helps to eavesdrop on the conversations among agencies:

Are there resources for experienced freelance web designers you think we should include? Contact us.

Other career guides in this series

Freelance Graphic Design

Freelance Copywriter

Freelance Web Developer

Independent Management Consultant