This article was updated on February 26, 2026, to reflect the latest information.

TL;DR: Not sure whether to pursue web design or web development? You’re not alone. This guide breaks the process down in 3 steps: busting common myths about each path, understanding what designers and developers actually do day-to-day, and figuring out which role fits your personality and working style. Spoiler: both are great career choices, and the best one is the one that plays to your strengths.

If you’re just getting interested in learning to code, it’s normal to be confused about which career path might be right for you. When new students start our Break Into Tech program, one of the first things we help them do is answer the question: should I be a web designer vs. a web developer?

There are so many ways to gain specialized expertise, and it’s a lot to consider if you’re just dipping your toe into the tech world. So how do you decide between web design or web development, and which is better for you?

This post will help you understand the key differences, so you can make an informed decision.

Table of Contents

• Web Designer or Web developer? An Introduction
• Step 1: Dispel the Myths of Web Design vs. Web Development
• Step 2: Figure Out Exactly What Web Designers and Web Developers Do
• Step 3: Analyze Yourself — How to Figure Out Whether Web Designer or Web Developer is Better for You

Is Tech Right For you? Take Our 3-Minute Quiz!

You Will Learn:

☑️ If a career in tech is right for you

☑️ What tech careers fit your strengths

☑️ What skills you need to reach your goals

Web Designer or Web Developer? An Introduction

A web designer might sound ideal to you: you get to create beautiful things for the Internet, and channel all your creative juices into typography pairings, color schemes, building wireframes, and giving website designs that certain je ne sais quoi using your Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator skills.

However, web development may also sound appealing — we hear students often say that being a developer sounds like the “smarter” choice in tech because of the high salaries that web developers can command. Learning coding skills allows you to build awesome websites and web apps using a ton of programming languages, and there are tons of jobs available for software developers.

Whether you ultimately choose design or development, our career paths include a course in HTML and CSS, which includes HTML projects and CSS for beginners. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet, it can be way easier to decide which direction — web design or web development — is a better choice for you.

In this webinar, Skillcrush CEO Adda Birnir breaks down what developers vs. designers do, and how to know which one is right for you!

Step 1: Dispel the Myths of Web Design vs. Web Development

Before you can make any decisions about what kind of tech career you want, you need to know exactly what web designers and developers actually do.

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably been socialized to define “web designer” and “web developer” in ways that don’t match reality — and you’ve likely never chatted with a real-life web designer or developer.

The biggest misconceptions usually come down to how much money each role makes, how steep the learning curve is, and what kind of work each involves. Here are 3 of the most common myths:

Myth 1: Learning to be a web developer is harder than learning to be a web designer (or the other way around)

Some assume that front end or back end development involves higher-level programming, so it must be harder to learn than design. Others think design is more difficult because it requires innate creativity and learning complex software.

In reality, when you’re starting from scratch, learning any new skill is a challenge. Web development and web design aren’t inherently more or less difficult — your particular strengths and weaknesses will dictate which path is the right fit for you.

Myth 2: Web developers make far more money

How much does a web designer make compared to a web developer?

At first glance, it looks like a big gap: web designers make around $60,650 per year while web developers make around $81,805 per year. But once you dig into specialized design roles, the gap closes fast.

For more on how UX and UI salaries break down, dig into Skillcrush’s full guide to UI/UX designer salaries.

It’s true that, on average, a software developer salary is higher than a web designer’s. But as a beginner, this isn’t something you’ll have to worry about right away. Whether you start learning web development or web design, you probably won’t be a senior full-stack developer making top-tier pay within a few months — that usually takes years of experience.

Web designers make great money. Since both are lucrative options, it’s better to choose what will make you happier rather than what you think will pay more.

Myth 3: Web designers don’t need to know how to code at all

While web designers don’t need to be pros at coding, per Cristy Koebler, Operations Manager at Hireguide: “It’s helpful for designers to understand how to code, but I wouldn’t say they have to. If they can understand basic HTML and CSS, they know how to deliver a design that a developer can code up. So they know what works/looks best, they organize design files so developers can easily get the info they need, and they’re aware of best practices.”

Cristy also points out that “nowadays, some designers might do both design and coding and lots of freelancers do both. It’s definitely a plus to have coding skills.” If you’d like to be a web designer who can also code, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are good bets, as well as learning a CSS preprocessor like Sass or LESS and knowing how to use jQuery, a JavaScript library. You can start by doing HTML beginner projects, CSS for beginner lessons, and practice HTML and CSS projects to get your feet wet.

While web design falls under visual design — which also includes UX design, UI design, graphic design, digital design, and product design — web designers who can code, especially those with skills like Sass, Bootstrap, and JavaScript, are in huge demand.

If you’re transitioning or breaking into tech, you can increase your chances of being hired as a full-time or freelance web designer by knowing how to code and being able to turn your designs into working prototypes and user interfaces. The best way to make good money and deliver what clients and employers want most is to be the whole package of designer and programmer.

Is Tech Right For you? Take Our 3-Minute Quiz!

You Will Learn:

☑️ If a career in tech is right for you

☑️ What tech careers fit your strengths

☑️ What skills you need to reach your goals

Step 2: Figure Out Exactly What Web Designers and Web Developers Do

Now that we’ve cleared up a few of the career myths, let’s look at how web designers and web developers actually spend their time.

Web design is a niche within the broader field of design, which includes graphic designers, UI designers, visual designers, UX designers, and more. Web designers specifically work on design elements and components that end up on the web. They might create user-friendly website designs from scratch, or they might work for a brand and contribute user-facing assets and graphics that appear across a site or app — things like graphics, icons, images, and logos.

Developers (particularly front end web developers) implement those designs in the products they build.

On a team, designers and developers work together: designers focus on user experience design, wireframing, and planning, while front end developers focus on writing the code.

A web designer’s job is less about using code to bring a website to life and more about determining a site’s layout, color palette, font set, and visual themes. They use tools like Figma and InVision to create mockups, prototypes, and templates — then hand off their plans and layouts for a web developer to build.

A front end developer takes those plans and uses coding languages (like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) to turn them into live, functioning websites. A back end developer works more with programming languages like PHP, Java, Python, and Ruby to build databases that allow for dynamic content updates and user interactions. A full stack developer can do both front end and back end work.

A web developer’s job may also include coding server-side interactions, like calling APIs or using SQL to query a database, so that users can share content across platforms and access videos and images from servers. Web developers also work with Git and GitHub to save and push code live to a webpage or web app.

Step 3: Analyze Yourself — How to Figure Out Whether Web Designer or Web Developer is Better for You

Once you understand the real differences between web design and web development, it’s time to figure out which one fits you. If you’ve reviewed the role descriptions and thought, “I can do any of these!” — that’s totally okay. The additional context below should help you narrow it down.

Web Designers

Web designers tend to experience the world in a visual way. For example, when giving you directions, they might tell you to turn right when you see the big tree.

Web designers also tend to rely on intuition and feeling, since they spend a lot of time developing the look and feel of websites and user interfaces. If you asked them to write a word in the center of a page, they would probably eyeball it.

Web designers love to come up with big ideas and imagine the whole picture. If a web designer were building a theme park, they would focus first on the overall “vibe,” the layout, and the way a visitor would experience it — before getting into details like the colors, shapes, and names of the rides.

Web Developers

Web developers tend to approach the world from a logical, scientific standpoint. If they were lost, rather than looking for a familiar landmark, they might look up at the stars or drop a GPS pin.

Web developers tend to see the world as a vast collection of data that can be used for different purposes. If you asked a web developer to write a word in the center of a page, they would look for a tool to measure it in the quickest, most efficient way — maybe by folding the paper into four squares or grabbing a ruler.

Web developers like to handle big projects by taking them one step at a time and paying close attention to detail. If a web developer were building a theme park, they would love working on the physics of the rides and the number of visitors the park could accommodate, tackling each detail one small step at a time.

If you need more guidance when it comes to choosing which way to start your tech career, try these resources:

• Should I learn to code? How to decide if it’s right for you
• How to find the perfect job for you

Remember, it really doesn’t matter how you start learning tech skills — whether you do a bootcamp, are self-taught with tutorials, or something else entirely. It only matters that you actually start. Once you begin building real experience with design and code, it’s much easier to figure out what career works for you.

With Skillcrush’s Break Into Tech course, whether you focus on front end development or web design, you’ll learn HTML and CSS, work on HTML and CSS projects for your portfolio, and get access to more than a dozen coding and design courses.

As soon as you learn those basic skills that both web designers and developers need, like HTML and CSS, you’ll be that much closer to uncovering the tech career that will be perfect for you.

Is Tech Right For you? Take Our 3-Minute Quiz!

You Will Learn:

☑️ If a career in tech is right for you

☑️ What tech careers fit your strengths

☑️ What skills you need to reach your goals