---
title: "Set and Exhibit Designer"
description: "Design special exhibits and sets for film, video, television, and theater productions. May study scripts, confer with directors, and conduct research to…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/set-and-exhibit-designer"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Set and Exhibit Designer

**Category:** Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media · **SOC code:** 27-1027 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 27-1027.00

Design special exhibits and sets for film, video, television, and theater productions. May study scripts, confer with directors, and conduct research to determine appropriate architectural styles.

Also advertised as: Designer; Display Coordinator; Exhibit Coordinator; Exhibit Designer; Exhibit Preparator; Historical Society Window Dresser; Installations Designer; Projection Designer.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $75,240 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $36.17/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $41,750 to $135,410, with the middle half between $52,830 and $104,030
- **Total US employment:** 10,630
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +1.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 2,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 38/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 10,630 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $41,750 |
| 25th | $52,830 |
| 50th (median) | $75,240 |
| 75th | $104,030 |
| 90th | $135,410 |
| Mean (average) | $83,160 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $105,030 | $94,861 | 2,690 |
| MD | $80,540 | $76,735 | 420 |
| WA | $77,230 | $72,169 | 170 |
| DC | $76,900 | $69,972 | 190 |
| NJ | $76,380 | $70,199 | 220 |
| MA | $74,540 | $70,482 | 230 |
| NE | $73,980 | $82,106 | 50 |
| IN | $72,200 | $77,361 | 110 |
| GA | $67,210 | $69,797 | 310 |
| MN | $66,090 | $67,014 | 150 |
| OR | $62,770 | $60,729 | 280 |
| FL | $60,750 | $58,744 | 740 |
| CT | $60,680 | $58,566 | 70 |
| PA | $59,670 | $61,155 | 120 |
| VA | $58,650 | $58,010 | 120 |

12 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 27 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/set-and-exhibit-designer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/set-and-exhibit-designer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 31,600 in the 2025–2035 base year to 32,000 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 500 jobs, or +1.4%. Slower than average: 1.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 2,200 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 33.3% |
| Master's Degree | 33.3% |
| Some College Courses | 9.5% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 9.5% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 4.8% |
| First Professional Degree | 4.8% |

## What the work involves

- Develop set designs, based on evaluation of scripts, budgets, research information, and available locations.
- Prepare rough drafts and scale working drawings of sets, including floor plans, scenery, and properties to be constructed.
- Prepare preliminary renderings of proposed exhibits, including detailed construction, layout, and material specifications, and diagrams relating to aspects such as special effects or lighting.
- Read scripts to determine location, set, and design requirements.
- Submit plans for approval, and adapt plans to serve intended purposes, or to conform to budget or fabrication restrictions.
- Attend rehearsals and production meetings to obtain and share information related to sets.
- Confer with clients and staff to gather information about exhibit space, proposed themes and content, timelines, budgets, materials, or promotion requirements.
- Research architectural and stylistic elements appropriate to the time period to be depicted, consulting experts for information, as necessary.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Operations Analysis — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Fine Arts — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Design — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Building and Construction — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- History and Archeology — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Fluency of Ideas — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Visualization — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Originality — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Artistic (A), Enterprising (E), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| A — Artistic | 6.69 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.93 |
| R — Realistic | 3.70 |
| C — Conventional | 3.27 |
| S — Social | 3.04 |
| I — Investigative | 2.75 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| INFP | 75.7 |
| ENFP | 72.3 |
| ENTP | 68.1 |
| INTP | 66.2 |
| INFJ | 63.5 |

Best-fitting types: INFP, ENFP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Graphic Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/graphic-designer) — median $62,960
- [Fine Artist, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fine-artist) — median $55,490
- [Art Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/art-director) — median $114,850
- [Craft Artist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/craft-artist) — median $46,080
- [Commercial and Industrial Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-and-industrial-designer) — median $83,910
- [Museum Technician and Conservator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/museum-technician-and-conservator) — median $51,440
- [Interior Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/interior-designer) — median $67,190
- [Merchandise Displayer and Window Trimmer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/merchandise-displayer-and-window-trimmer) — median $39,390
- [Fashion Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fashion-designer) — median $80,960
- [Architect](https://nuecareer.com/careers/architect) — median $99,280

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/set-and-exhibit-designer