Top Design Influencers on Instagram

As time-pressed consumers turn to quick sources of design inspiration online, stars have emerged among the designers who populate social media. Brands can find creative influencers who represent an exciting range of design styles, from over-the-top to under-stated and appeal to a large cross-section of markets.

There’s no reason for brands and marketers to be intimidated by design influencer discovery. High-quality design has become more available and understandable to consumers and businesses over the last few decades. Today’s design influencers appeal both to consumers with small budgets, as well as those with deep pockets.

With Instagram’s focus on visuals and appeal to both broad and niche markets, it’s an ideal showcase for design influencers and campaigns. They include micro, macro and mega influencers, reaching a wide range of audience sizes and style preferences. Here are some of the top design influencers on Instagram:

Marie Kondo

The queen of decluttering, Marie Kondo is a top design influencer who advocates a less is more philosophy. With her next-level organization skills, Kondo shows her followers how to simplify their storage and make their homes more livable.

Labels, storage baskets, plastic containers, glass jars and crisply folded and organized clothing and linens are the tools of Kondo’s trade. They’re tools she uses to demonstrate how to achieve maximum efficiency and minimum stress in day-to-day living.

Kondo has 3.3 million followers on Instagram and is also the star of the show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo and the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Kondo embraces a tough-love approach to de-cluttering, urging followers to get rid of items that don’t bring them joy.

Sasha Bikoff

Interior designer Sasha Bikoff’s 54,000 followers on Instagram are fans of her color-happy Modernist approach. Bikoff blends eclectic vintage and antique finds with bold mod patterns and hues and aesthetic influences ranging from French Rococo to Italian Memphis Milano. Fearless in her use of design materials and elements, Bikoff has great appeal among members of the millennial design market.

Hilton Carter

Design influencer Hilton Carter is a plant and interior stylist who has close to a quarter of a million followers on Instagram. A philosophy of visual storytelling and green interiors drives his design genius. The Baltimore-based Carter is also the author of the book Wild at Home: How to Style and Care for Beautiful Plants. His interiors come to life with gorgeous greenery that fills rooms, from ferns and palm trees to cacti and fiddle-leaf fig trees.

Karim Rashid

Karim Rashid designs everything from interiors, furniture, carpets, fashion, products and wallpaper to hotel lobbies, restaurants, buildings, lighting and glassware. The multi-talented design influencer, known for his use of futuristic forms and vivid colors in inventive designs, has 129,000 followers on Instagram. The award-winning Rashid has more than 4000 designs in production and is in demand to work on projects in countries around the globe.

Anisha Clarke and Niya Bascom/Ishka Designs

The Brooklyn-based design influencer duo of Anishka Clarke and Niya Bascom, partners in Ishka Designs, create interiors, furniture and outdoor spaces. Named to the Elle Décor A-List 2019, Clarke and Bascom are known for their clean, streamlined designs complemented by warm, muted colors.

With nearly 10,000 followers on Instagram, Clarke and Bascom’s projects have included an apartment in Paris, both a restaurant and a daycare center in Brooklyn and a residence in the East Hamptons. House Beautiful recognized Ishka Designs in its 29 Black Interior Designers Making History feature, and they’ve also been spotlighted in Domino and Dwell magazines.

Syd and Shea McGee/Studio McGee

The popular design-influencer-couple Syd and Shea McGree have both an interior design studio and an online store. With 987,000 followers on Instagram, the McGees create interiors that skillfully blend traditional and modern design for understated effect.

They also sell home décor items including pillows, lighting, wall décor and rugs in their Costa Mesa, California store and online. They’ve been featured in publications including House Beautiful, Apartment Therapy and My Domaine.

Philippe Starck

French designer Phillippe Starck has been designing since the 1980s and still attracts new fans, boasting 188,000 followers on Instagram. He’s designed everything from lamps and interiors to electric cars, pre-fab houses and headphones.

Starck’s designs are known for their sense of whimsy and their affordability. His plastic furniture line includes the Kartell Louis Ghost chair, a transparent polycarbonate chair in the style of Louis XV. More than a million of the sleek playful chairs have been sold worldwide.

Starck is highly regarded in art and design circles too. Examples of his designs are included in the collections of museums including New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and the Design Museum in London.

Finding Top Design Influencers

Design has become more accessible and demystified to consumers and companies, with thousands of design influencers promoting products, brands and services across social media. Design influencer discovery, whether for consumer or B2B campaigns doesn’t have to be difficult.

There are design influencers on Instagram for practically every industry, image, campaign and style. Their designs range from subtle and traditional to eye-catching and boundary pushing. Brands and marketers can find more influencers like this at https://izea.com/izeax-discovery-overview/.