Do architects get paid well and earn good money?

When asked if an architect gets paid well (a very common question), we believe that collectively the answer is yes. But could we get more? …of course! But who wouldn’t say that?

After all, we spend a huge amount (if not all) of our younger years in education, are required to know everything about anything, and juggle all manners of projects, clients, and responsibilities …we will always require more money.

The highest earners in the architectural profession tend to be the directors, partners and principles. The level of income at this level is predominately factored by the size of practice and type of work they take on. For example a principle of a small practice that specializes in one-off houses will often be on a lower income than a larger more commercially led practice. Simply because the projects at a commercial level are considerably larger and more expensive, and require a higher architectural fees, but generally speaking, are much more efficient to procure, resulting in a higher profit to the design team.

For this reason large commercial firms in average tend to offer the most competitive salaries, as they are able to take on many of these larger and higher fee earning projects.

…and with these projects comes a hierarchy of managerial positions, providing a clear career path for development with obvious pay increases.

The payoff however is that for most, commercial projects are (architectural speaking) far less interesting and stimulating, as there are very few high profile and iconic concert halls and museums, but many supermarkets and shopping malls.

Furthermore and as mentioned above, there are also many further ways an architect and/or student can boost their income outside of their day to day responsibilities, many are listed further on in this article …commercial work is not the only answer.

So how do we earn a higher salary??

Well aside from developing a “side hustle”, many architects choose to specialize in a particular part of a practices services and outputs. This could be architectural visualization, BIM, project management, construction detailing, hand drawing etc.

Homing in on your particular skills and setting yourself apart from the rest of your colleagues (in a professional sense), should strengthen your position within your practice and ultimately see a pay increase for the additional service you bring.

You are essentially trading your time and level of output for money, and therefore the more skilled you are, the more (in theory) you should be paid, and if you are not, then move to somewhere where you will be!

If this isn’t enough, then keep scrolling for a list of ideas on how to increase your salary further.