Architect Salary in Washington 2026,
$100,190 Median | BLS Data by City

Washington architects earn a median $100,190 a year, $48.17 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $80,960 and $114,430 and a full range of $70,020 to $130,380. That is 0.9% above the $99,280 national median, and because Washington has no state income tax, the take-home comparison against other West Coast states is considerably more favourable than the wage alone suggests.

Kennewick-Richland at $102,890, narrowly ahead of Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue at $100,610, then Spokane-Spokane Valley at $95,910, Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard at $95,350 and Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater at $93,720. The Tri-Cities leading is a federal and institutional effect — that work pays on schedules rather than through competitive design fees.

Through the Board for Architects at the Washington State Department of Licensing. The standard route is a NAAB-accredited degree, completion of the NCARB Architectural Experience Program hours under a licensed architect, and passing all divisions of the Architect Registration Examination. Washington also recognises alternative pathways based on documented experience for candidates without an accredited degree, which is not available in every state. Washington protects the title, so you cannot call yourself an architect before registration.

It is a deep one rather than a lucrative one. At $100,610 the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue median sits barely above the state figure, because Washington's architect concentration of 1.52 times the national average is overwhelmingly located there. What Seattle offers is variety and mobility — multifamily, institutional, technology campus and mass timber work — plus the state's zero income tax, which quietly improves every offer in it.

It is the tax that shapes firm economics here. Washington's business and occupation tax applies to gross receipts rather than to profit, so a practice pays it on fee revenue regardless of whether the year was profitable. For architects considering ownership, that changes the arithmetic of a buy-in significantly and is worth modelling alongside the absence of personal income tax, which works strongly in the owner's favour on the other side.

Because the buyer is different. Kennewick-Richland architecture work is substantially federal, institutional and infrastructure-adjacent, procured on schedules and contract vehicles that are insulated from design-fee competition, and there are few architects in the market to bid it down. Seattle has the opposite condition: a very large concentration of architects competing for private development and institutional work, with fee pressure that a $100,610 metro median reflects accurately.

It blends pre-licensure designers with registered architects. SOC 17-1011 covers both, and in a market as architect-dense as Washington the pre-licensure population is substantial — the $80,960 twenty-fifth percentile is realistically a designer figure rather than a licensed one. Reading the state median as what a licensed Washington architect earns understates the licensed tier.

It makes Washington architecture a cyclical trade with a non-cyclical hedge. Seattle multifamily and commercial work swings hard with the development cycle, and firm hiring and bonuses swing with it; federal, military and institutional work around Bremerton, Olympia and the Tri-Cities does not. Architects who can move between those markets, or firms that hold both, ride the cycle far better — and that stability, more than any single credential, is what carries people to the Washington 75th percentile of $114,430.