Your Next Client Is Already Saving Houses on Pinterest
Homeowners and developers plan builds and renovations on Pinterest 6 to 12 months before they hire anyone. Here is how architecture firms get discovered during that window, and how 84Pins handles the entire process for you.
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Quick Answer
Pinterest works for architecture firms because clients plan builds and renovations there 6 to 12 months before hiring. With 631 million monthly users, a strong skew toward $100K+ households, and 96% of searches unbranded, a firm's existing project photography, turned into keyword-targeted pins, gets discovered by people actively planning the exact projects the firm wants to win.
Why Pinterest Fits Architecture Better Than Any Other Platform
Architecture has a marketing problem most industries do not: the buying cycle is enormous. Nobody impulse-buys a custom home. By the time a prospective client contacts a firm, they have spent months collecting ideas, forming a style vocabulary, and deciding what they want their project to feel like.
The place they do that collecting is Pinterest. People build boards titled "Dream Home," "Kitchen Reno," and "Lake House Ideas" long before they talk to a professional. They search phrases like modern farmhouse exterior, hillside house design, and courtyard home plans, and they save the images that match their vision. Pinterest's own annual trend forecasting is built on this behavior, and the company reports that trends on the platform now move 4.4x faster than they did seven years ago, with home design among its largest categories.
Why I Started Paying Attention to This
Before 84Pins, I was doing an on-site visit at a multimillion-dollar home. The owner walked me through the property, and when we got to the pool, he mentioned, almost in passing, that the custom pool cover design came from an idea he had found on Pinterest. A seven-figure property, and a detail of it was specified because of a pin somebody had posted.
That stuck with me. The businesses behind those pins had no idea their work was influencing high-end projects, and most were not even trying. It is a big part of why 84Pins exists: the buyers are already searching, and most firms simply are not in the results.
Logan McFarland, Founder, 84Pins
Every one of those saves is a vote. The firms whose work fills a homeowner's planning board have the inside track when that homeowner finally picks up the phone, because the client has already been living with their work for months. Instagram shows your projects to people scrolling past. Pinterest puts them in front of people actively planning, which is a different audience entirely.
And unlike a feed post that dies in 48 hours, a pin of your work keeps appearing in those searches for months or years. Your 2024 portfolio can still be winning 2027 clients.
How Homeowners Actually Find Architects on Pinterest
The Planning Window: Where Clients Spend Their Time Before Hiring
A typical custom home or major renovation timeline, from first idea to signed agreement.
Most firms compete only in the final stretch, where everyone is fighting over the same referrals and Google searches. Pinterest is how you enter the conversation months earlier, while preferences are still forming.
"Coastal contemporary exterior." "Open concept kitchen extension." "Black metal window frames." 96% of top searches are unbranded, which means a 6-person firm's project photo competes head to head with anything a national publication posts.
A save is not a like. It is a homeowner filing your project into the plan for their own build, where they will see it again every time they open that board.
Once someone saves one of your pins, Pinterest's recommendation engine starts surfacing your related work in their feed. One good save turns into familiarity with your whole body of work.
Every pin links to your website: the project page, your portfolio, or your inquiry form. The traffic arrives pre-sold on your aesthetic because they chose it, repeatedly, on their own.
The math working in your favor: an architecture firm needs a handful of signed projects a year, not thousands of customers. If Pinterest sends you a steady stream of visitors who already love your style, it only has to convert a few of them to pay for itself many times over.
What an Architecture Firm Should Pin
The good news: you already have the content. Professional project photography is the highest-value raw material on Pinterest, and most firms are sitting on years of it. One photographed project can become 20 to 40 distinct pins:
| Pin Type | What It Looks Like | What It Targets |
|---|---|---|
| Exterior angles | Front elevation, rear, dusk shots | Style searches: "modern farmhouse exterior" |
| Room by room | Kitchen, primary bath, stair detail | Room searches: "double island kitchen" |
| Material details | Cladding, stonework, window framing | Detail searches: "vertical wood siding" |
| Before and after | Side-by-side renovation transformations | Renovation searches: "ranch home remodel" |
| Concept and process | Sketches, renderings, site progress | Planning searches: "house design process" |
| Local landing pins | Project + location text overlay | Hiring searches: "architect in Miami" |
One Photographed Project, Broken Down
How a single completed home becomes a month of search-ready content.
Exterior anglesRoom by roomMaterial detailsBefore and afterConcept and process
40 pins, each targeting a different search phrase, from photography the firm already owns.
Each pin gets its own keyword-targeted title and description, because Pinterest is a search engine and ranks pins the way Google ranks pages. That keyword work is the difference between a portfolio that gets found and one that sits invisible, and it is the core of what we do all day. If you want to see how the ranking system decides what surfaces, we broke down how the Pinterest algorithm works, and Pinterest Trends lets you see search volume on home and design terms for yourself.
From Project Photo to Pinterest Post: Three Examples
Here is what the transformation actually looks like. Take one completed project, say a hillside residence you photographed last year, and three of its photos become three search-targeted pins. Your real photography fills the image; the strategy lives in the title, description, and keywords:
Sample pinModern Hillside Home With Floor-to-Ceiling Windows
This custom hillside residence uses a full-height glass wall to frame canyon views from the main living space. See the complete project, including floor plans and material palette.
🔗 Links to: yourfirm.com/projects/hillside-residence
Was: DSC_4502.jpg posted as "The Henderson Residence"
Sample pinDouble Island Kitchen With Waterfall Quartzite Counters
Two islands split prep and seating in this open-concept kitchen, with book-matched quartzite and white oak cabinetry. Tap for the full kitchen design breakdown.
🔗 Links to: yourfirm.com/projects/hillside-residence#kitchen
Was: kitchen_final_v2.jpg never posted anywhere
Sample pinVertical Cedar Siding With Black Steel Window Frames
Warm vertical cedar against blackened steel framing gives this elevation its contrast. A detail homeowners save when planning modern exteriors. Full exterior specs on the project page.
🔗 Links to: yourfirm.com/projects/hillside-residence#exterior
Was: IMG_0117.jpg sitting in a Dropbox folder
Sample pins for illustration. On a live account, every pin is built from your actual project photography, links to your website, and targets keywords pulled from real Pinterest search data for your market.
Notice what each pin does: the title is a search phrase, not a project name. The description reads naturally while carrying secondary keywords. And every pin links to a page on your site, so a save today is a website visit whenever that homeowner returns to their planning board. Multiply this by every photo of every project you have ever had shot, and that is the asset we build.
The Searches Your Future Clients Are Typing
A sample of the search territory available to a residential firm, from broad style terms to hire-ready local phrases:
| Intent Stage | Example Searches |
|---|---|
| Dreaming | modern lake house, courtyard home, scandinavian house design |
| Planning | open concept floor plan ideas, home addition before and after, ADU design |
| Specifying | floor to ceiling windows living room, board and batten exterior, breezeway design |
| Hiring | residential architect portfolio, custom home architect [city], architect vs design build |
Most firms that try Pinterest pin a few project photos with the project name as the title and stop there. "The Hendersons' Residence" matches zero searches. "Modern Hillside Home With Floor to Ceiling Windows" matches thousands per month. The photos were never the problem.
Pinterest vs Instagram vs Houzz for Architects
Most firms already post to Instagram and maintain a Houzz profile, so the fair question is what Pinterest adds. The three platforms do genuinely different jobs:
| Houzz | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| How clients find you | Keyword search while planning a project | Following you, or the algorithm surfacing you | Browsing a directory of pros |
| Who you compete with | Whichever pin best matches the search | Everything else in the feed | Every competitor listed beside you |
| Content lifespan | Months to years per pin | 24 to 48 hours per post | Static profile |
| Reaches people before they shortlist | Yes, 6 to 12 months out | Rarely, mostly existing audience | No, they arrive already shortlisting |
| Cost to stay visible | Consistent organic pinning | Constant new content, often ads | Pro subscription and promoted placement |
None of these replaces the others. Houzz catches people who already decided to hire; Instagram nurtures people who already found you. Pinterest is the only one of the three that puts your work in front of strangers at the moment their preferences are forming, which is why it complements the other two instead of competing with them.
Your portfolio, working around the clock
84Pins turns your existing project photography into 84 to 672 keyword-optimized pins per month, designed, written, and posted daily. You approve the direction once; we handle everything after that. No ads, no meetings, no contracts.
See Plans and Pricing →Cinema Makeup School: 30K to 1.17M impressions in 90 days · MMG Tile + Stone: $56K tracked revenue · See real client results
What to Expect, Honestly
Pinterest is not a lead faucet you switch on. It is compounding visibility, and the timeline looks like this for most firms:
Typical trajectory with daily, keyword-targeted pinning
Because architecture clients plan so far ahead, the pins earning saves in month two are often the source of inquiry calls in month eight. That lag is real, and it is also the moat: once your portfolio is circulating in thousands of planning boards, a competitor starting from zero cannot shortcut their way to the same position. More on the timeline in how long Pinterest marketing takes to work.
Why Firms Hand It to 84Pins
Principals at small and mid-size firms do not have 10 to 15 hours a week for pin design, keyword research, and daily posting, and assigning it to a junior designer pulls billable hours into marketing guesswork. We built 84Pins to remove the workload entirely:
Everything is done for you. We design the pins from your photography, write keyword-targeted titles and descriptions, organize boards, and post daily. You get a simple monthly report, not another meeting on the calendar.
It is 100% organic. No ad budget, ever. The traffic you build is an asset that keeps working, not a rental that stops when spend stops. That philosophy is the whole company; you can read how organic growth on Pinterest works.
Pricing is flat and public. Plans start at $749/mo intro pricing, every plan has a 30-day money-back guarantee, and our Scale plan carries a 100K impressions in 90 days performance guarantee. We work with home and design businesses every day, from interior designers to building product brands, and architecture sits squarely in that wheelhouse.
The Math on One Signed Project
Residential design fees commonly run 8 to 15% of construction cost, so even one modest commission dwarfs the cost of being visible. Illustrative figures.
If a year of compounding Pinterest visibility contributes to even one signed project, it has paid for itself several times over. Full breakdown in what Pinterest marketing costs.
Is Your Firm a Fit?
Pinterest is not right for every practice, and we would rather tell you that up front:
Honest fit beats a signed contract. If Pinterest is wrong for your firm, we will tell you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Pinterest worth it for architecture firms?
Yes, particularly for residential and design-focused firms. Pinterest has 631 million monthly users who plan home projects months ahead, one in three US users has a household income over $100K, and 96% of top searches are unbranded, so a small firm's work gets discovered on merit rather than name recognition.
What should an architecture firm post on Pinterest?
Your existing project photography, broken into many targeted pins: exterior angles, individual rooms, material details, before and after comparisons, renderings, and location-tagged pins. Each pin targets a specific search phrase, which is what makes the portfolio findable.
Does Pinterest work for commercial architecture?
It is strongest for residential, hospitality, restaurant, retail, and interior work, the categories people actively search for inspiration. Heavy commercial and institutional work has a smaller search audience on Pinterest, though portfolio visibility still supports overall brand authority.
How long until a firm sees inquiries from Pinterest?
Impressions typically grow within 30 to 60 days and site traffic builds from months 3 to 4. Because clients plan builds 6 to 12 months out, pins saved early often become inquiry calls two or more quarters later, and those pins keep circulating long after, unlike ads.
We only have photos of a few projects. Is that enough?
Usually yes. A single well-photographed project can become 20 to 40 distinct pins across rooms, details, and angles, and we can supplement with renderings, sketches, and process content. Three to five photographed projects is plenty of raw material to start.
Is Pinterest better than Houzz or Instagram for architects?
They do different jobs. Houzz reaches people already shortlisting pros, in a directory next to your competitors. Instagram mostly reaches people who already follow you. Pinterest is the only one that puts your work in front of strangers 6 to 12 months before they hire, while their preferences are still forming, so it complements the other two rather than replacing them.
What does 84Pins actually do each month?
We design 84 to 672 pins per month from your photography depending on plan, write keyword-targeted titles and descriptions for each, organize your boards, post daily, and send a monthly performance report. No meetings, no contracts, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.