Architecture firms in Denver: 394 offices, Colorado's open license list and how to shortlist

This report is for developers, school districts, businesses and homeowners hiring an architect around Denver, for architects and designers weighing employers, and for B2B sellers whose customers are design firms. It covers the Census count, where the offices are, how to check a Colorado architect, how to shortlist and how to prospect.

The count for the Denver metro

County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, NAICS 541310 (Architectural Services), Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO Metro Area (CBSA 19740):

CBP counts establishments with paid staff, not firms. A practice with offices in LoDo and Golden counts twice; an architect working alone without employees isn't counted.

Mid-sized at most

The published classes add up to the full 394, so the classes the Census Bureau withholds, 250 employees and up, hold no offices. In bands: 346 offices under 20 employees, 43 with 20 to 99 and five with 100 to 249.

Denver County and the suburbs

Employees per office is our calculation. Denver County has 59% of the offices and 83% of the jobs: the staffed practices are downtown, and the suburbs are mostly one- to four-person studios. Broomfield's employee count was published with the Census Bureau's high-noise flag (its confidentiality noise moved the figure by 5% or more), so we leave it out. Five offices sit in the metro's smaller counties.

Colorado licenses people, and publishes the list

Colorado's Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) licenses architects through the board that also covers engineers and land surveyors. DORA's published list of license types shows architect licenses for individuals only, renewed on a two-year cycle, with no business license for architecture. So the check that matters is the architect who will seal your drawings.

DORA also publishes every professional license as open data on the Colorado Information Marketplace. Our count on 30 October 2026:

More than half of Colorado's active architect licenses belong to people based elsewhere, led by Texas (607) and California (536). NCARB's 2025 figures agree: 54% of Colorado's 8,296 licenses were reciprocal. Expect to compete with, or hire, out-of-state firms on larger projects. Each record links to DORA's verification page, and you can filter the dataset by name, city or ZIP.

Architect or engineer first?

The metro has 1,255 engineering offices (541330) employing 25,949 people, against 394 architecture offices. On a warehouse, a utility building or a tenant improvement that's mostly mechanical, an engineering firm may lead and bring an architect in. On anything people occupy, from a school to a clinic or apartments, start with the architect, who coordinates the engineers. The Census Bureau puts firms that design and build under one contract in construction, with the 374 commercial and institutional builders in the metro.

A shortlist routine

1. Filter AIA Colorado's Find an Architect by city, project type and firm size (1 to 9, 10 to 49, or 50 or more employees). AIA Denver is a section of AIA Colorado.
2. Confirm each architect's license in DORA's data and the verification link on the record.
3. Ask your building department what it needs to issue the permit, so every finalist prices the same scope.
4. Interview three firms on comparable built work and on who will run your project day to day.
5. Agree the scope on a standard form. AIA's B104-2017 is meant for medium projects of limited scope; B101-2017 is the full agreement and allows a percentage-of-construction-cost or stipulated-sum fee.

Architecture jobs in Denver

BLS counted 2,090 architects in the metro in May 2025, at a mean wage of $112,530 and a median of $104,090. Architects make up 1.3 of every 1,000 jobs here, 1.89 times the national concentration, fifth among the 25 metros with at least 1,000 architects. Architectural and civil drafters number 2,120, with a mean of $83,770. AIA Colorado's directory lists the firms that are members.

Selling to Denver architecture firms

With no office above 249 employees, every buyer here is within reach of a principal. The 70 offices with 10 to 49 employees are the sweet spot for most B2B offers: busy enough to outsource, small enough to decide in a meeting.

Illustrative example. The company, prices and results are invented.

Front Range Energy Models (frontrangeenergy.example) produces energy models for code compliance and owner sustainability targets. It starts from the 70 offices with 10 to 49 employees, keeps the 40 with multifamily, school or office work, and writes to each firm's sustainability lead or project architect. Ten conversations lead to five models at $6,500. Finding which 40 firms fit, and who owns energy compliance at each, is the research Bebop does for every account in a list.

Subject: Energy model for [project] before CDs

Hi [first name],

Teams usually find out what the energy code needs from [project]'s envelope and systems too late to change it cheaply. We model in design development and turn results in eight working days.

Would a fixed-price model on [project] be useful? I can send a sample report from a similar [building type].

[Your name]
[Company], [postal address]

Next step: see the builders that work with Denver's architects in construction companies in Denver.