Abstract The influence of culture on design is reflected in many aspects, such as design creativity, communication within design groups, and individuals‘ creative performance. Culture has a profound impact on design. For example, studies have identified the positive effect of a higher individualism-collectivism value on design team performance. To examine the influence of individual cultural values on the experience of creativity in ideation, we experimented by recruiting participants from different counties to complete two ideation tasks. Moreover, we collected their cultural values and experiences of creativity through two questionnaires. We also examined the connections between individuals‘ cultural values and their experiences of creativity in ideation. The results show five correlations between individuals‘ cultural values and their experiences of creativity when the country setting was a control variable. Recommendations based on the findings include that explorations of cultural influence and the relationship between culture and design or other fields irrelated to the country or society level have to measure individual cultural values (with the country setting as a control variable) instead of adopting country cultural scores.