Web Designer Salary: How Much Do Web Designers Make?

Since web design is such a varied profession, salaries are likely to vary rather significantly across specializations, and they will be contingent on things like education, experience and location. It is important to consider the potential for long-term salaries when looking for a web design job, particularly if you are interested in deciding whether or not to specialize in a given field of the industry. Learning more about the factors that go into your salary can help you make a more informed decision about your potential career path.

What is a Web Designer?

Web Designers are creative professionals who are tasked with designing the layout and assets for webpages and mobile applications. They are creative professionals who are responsible for designing evocative and visually appealing web designs for their clients, and they will work on a diverse range of different projects. They tend to be well-rounded creatives who use both creative software applications and programming knowledge to design and build web applications. Using software applications such as Figma or Adobe XD, web designers will construct the appearance and feel of both the visual and functional elements of a webpage before handing that design off to web developers who will make the design a reality. At smaller firms, a Web Designer may also be expected to work on the programming side of a web design project, so most Web Designers learn the basics of HTML/CSS and JavaScript.

Web designers are most commonly employed by design firms that contract their service to clients, though many work as self-employed freelancers or work in-house for large businesses that are regularly building or updating web applications. They will most frequently work as part of large teams of designers and developers when working on large projects, but they may also find themselves working on individual smaller assignments, particularly if they are working as freelancers. Web Designers may specialize in working on specific elements or aspects of webpages or digital applications, such as building user interfaces or working on the tactile elements of a webpage to build a positive user experience.

What Affects Your Pay as a Web Designer

As with almost every job, market wages will be determined by a number of factors. This will include both things within your control, such as your level of education and your experience, as well as things outside of your control, like the state of the job market. In addition, factors such as location and industry can play a role in average salaries.

Education

While there is no formal education requirement to get a job as a Web Designer, like most jobs, college-educated candidates tend to earn more than their non-college-educated counterparts. Students who only have a high school diploma and professional training are likely to make less than a student with a four-year degree. While students with advanced postgraduate degrees are likely to make more money, few entry-level positions will require them, resulting in those candidates entering into higher-paid positions broadly.

Experience

Designers with on-the-job experience are able to leverage that background into higher-paying jobs by avoiding entry-level positions at firms (since they will have done that elsewhere). This experience can come from on-the-job work, from an internship, or from time spent freelancing or volunteering. You’ll want to avoid doing too much free work to build experience, but getting prior experience in web design is a good way to land a job in the upper percentile of your job title.

Industry

One of the unfortunate realities of working in web design is that massive tech firms and consumer software development companies have deeper pockets than smaller firms and non-profits. This might not be an issue for you, but maximizing your salary probably means working for a large tech company or other massive corporation with its own in-house design studio. Similarly, work in the public sector is likely to pay less than work in the private sector, though a large public sector firm is likely to pay more than a small private sector employer.

Freelancers will be able to set their own rates and work on the projects that most appeal to them within the projects that they have been offered. This means that the salary of a freelancer is going to be more contingent on their ability to find work at their desired price. This can compel freelancers to want to keep their rates low to compete with other firms and freelancers, but this is a delicate line to walk. Freelancers won’t want to undercut themselves too heavily in order to find work.

Location

Like most professions, a Web Designer’s salary will vary depending on where the job is located. Salaries will be higher in major metropolitan areas like the NYC area, the Bay Area, or cities like Seattle and Chicago, but living in or around those cities will come with an associated cost-of-living increase. On the other hand, salaries in cities like Butte or Montgomery will be lower, but the cities won’t cost as much to live in. In addition, many jobs are located in major metropolitan areas, meaning that designers living in major cities will have a slightly wider selection of open positions at any given time.

Specialization

Web design is a career path that offers students the opportunity to specialize in a specific field or element of the design process and this is a great way to improve your overall earning potential. Designers who specialize in things like UX Design or in a specific programming language can see their overall salaries as much as double. This will also help them be more discerning about the jobs they apply for and the projects that they take on.

It shouldn’t be surprising that some web design specialties are in higher demand in some industries than others. Experienced development specialists, particularly the ones who work with advanced programming languages, will find their job opportunities expand significantly over designers who only know rudimentary JavaScript or HTML/CSS. UX Designers provide a necessary set of skills that don’t easily overlap with the training other designers have, making their unique specializations even more sought after.

Pay Range for Web Designers

While salaries for Web Designers vary greatly across specialties and fields, the median Web Designer earns about $65,000 a year. This figure does have a fairly long tail, as Glassdoor lists Web Designer positions as high as 100K a year. Some salaries drop down into the upper $48,000 a year range, though these jobs are rare and tend to be entry-level positions at much smaller firms.

Highest-Earning Job Titles for Web Designers

Since web design careers reward specialists, it can be useful to consider what job titles make the most money in order to inform your long-term decisions. As they become more and more experienced, Web Designers may take on a more integral role in a company’s design decisions as a Senior Graphic Designer or a Senior Manager of Web Design. These positions carry salaries that range between $100,000 and $180,000 dollars a year.

Front End Web Developers and Web Developers/Web Designers, who specialize in the development side of the process, will make slightly more money than entry-level Web Designers. These jobs have a median salary of between $77,000 and $90,000 a year.

User Experience Designers, who have a much more specific career set, dealing with tactile design, earn an average of $115,000 a year.

Learn the Skills to Become a Web Designer at Noble Desktop

Students looking to build the technical skills they need to become Web Designers may want to consider the options available to them for professional training and skills development through Noble Desktop. These classes provide students with live training from expert instructors and include hands-on training and practical experience using real-world design samples. These classes are available at Noble’s Manhattan Campus or through live online instruction. No matter the delivery method, class sizes are kept small so students won’t have to compete with one another for their instructor’s attention. As a bonus, every Noble course comes with a free retake option, meaning you can take the class again within a year. This is ideal for students who want to receive more instruction and for students who want more time to gain hands-on experience that they can parlay into better job opportunities.

Students interested in becoming professional Web Designers will need a lot of skills training. For novices, Noble offers a Web Design Certificate program that will teach students how to use common web design software applications, how to code their designs in basic HTML/CSS and JavaScript, and how to use WordPress for more advanced webpage design. In addition, students enrolled in this class will receive one-on-one career mentoring assistance and professional development seminars, including portfolio-building exercises. This is an ideal course for any student who wants to start a new career in the field of web design. Noble also offers more targeted programs, such as the UX/UI Design Certificate program, which prepares students to design interactive interfaces for digital applications and products. This focused career-program de-emphasizes the importance of learning to code and emphasizes the importance of tactile user experience design.

Students who have a measure of professional training and are seeking to expand their skills may want to instead consider enrolling in one of Noble’s skills bootcamps. For example, in Noble’s Figma Bootcamp, students will learn how to use Adobe’s Figma software application to build interactive prototypes of web designs in order to test their functionality before beginning the coding process. This is an invaluable tool for any Web Designer to know how to use, and in a bootcamp, you can focus on learning individual skills to improve your own career standing.

Key Takeaways

• Since the job titles and responsibilities of Web Designers are so varied, their salaries are also varied.
• Web Design salaries are impacted by the factors that impact most salaries, such as location, industry, education, and experience.
• Web design students in more specialized fields, such as UX design, front end development, or project management, will make significantly more money.
• To learn more about any of these specialized skills, consider enrolling in a career training program through Noble Desktop. These classes are available at Noble’s Manhattan campus or in private, live online classrooms.