Your call is booked.
The invitation is
already in your inbox.
It carries the video link and the time in your own timezone. Nothing is booked, charged or committed on a discovery call, and there is nothing you have to prepare. What follows is simply what makes the conversation more useful.
Send whatever you have.
None of it is required.
We will email you before the call asking for a few images of furniture and rooms you are drawn to. Send them if you have them and do not worry if you do not. A one-line description is a perfectly good starting point, and some of the best first calls begin with nothing at all.
| Images you like | Screenshots, saved posts, a Pinterest board, photographs of a hotel you stayed in. What you dislike is more useful still, because most people can name three things they would never live with instantly and struggle for twenty minutes to describe their taste. |
| Photographs of the space | One shot per wall, taken from the corners, including doors, windows, radiators and anything you want to keep. Ten seconds of photographs tells us more than a paragraph of description. |
| A plan, if one exists | An architect's drawing, the estate agent's plan, the one from your Kaufvertrag or Mietvertrag, or a photograph of a sketch. German documents are fine, we read them every week. |
| What you are trying to decide | One or two lines. A specific question is worth more than a general one, and it lets us bring the right person to the call. |
| Whether you own or rent | It changes the advice completely. If you rent, tell us what your landlord has already agreed to, if anything. |
Nothing to send yet? Then send nothing. The call works perfectly well as a conversation, and we would rather speak to you early than have you wait until everything is assembled.
A conversation, in English,
with nothing attached to it.
| On the call | A video call in English, with no cost and no obligation. We will ask what you are working on, what you want to change and roughly what you want to spend, and we will tell you honestly if a smaller service would serve you better than a full package, or if the honest answer is that you do not need a designer at all. |
| If a package fits | We will say which one and why, and send it in writing afterwards so you can read it without anyone on the phone. Nothing is agreed on the call itself. |
| If you go ahead | The next conversation is the kick-off call, where your designer works through how you actually use the space. From there each room runs to a three-week design window, opening once your brief, measurements and photographs are complete. |
| If you need to move it | Reschedule or cancel yourself from the calendar invitation, without emailing anyone. No explanation needed. |
| While you wait | If you would rather arrive with the vocabulary already in hand, The Interior Design Handbook is the sequence a designer works through, in eleven chapters: what to settle before anything else, a budget that survives contact with reality at ten per cent contingency and fifteen for an older property, then layout, then colour, light and furniture. Ninety centimetres for a main walkway, two thirds of the sofa's length for a coffee table, 2700K in living spaces. Some clients read it and book anyway. Some read it and decide they can do the room themselves, which is a perfectly good outcome and we would rather you reached it before paying us than after. |
Anything you need
before we speak?
hello@studioakiva.com, or +49 30 921038060 if you would rather talk it through now. Studio Akiva is an interior design studio working with clients across Europe and a twelve-time Houzz award winner.
Email us How the process runs