Plan Your Project
Three services that come before the design.
The thinking that comes
before the shopping
Most people arrive at interior design at the wrong end of it, looking at sofas. Planning is the other end: working out what the room should be before deciding what goes in it. Get it right and everything afterwards is easier and cheaper. Get it wrong and no amount of well-chosen furniture rescues a layout that does not work.
Three services sit here, and none of them commits you to a full room design. Each one solves a specific problem on its own, and each can be taken before, alongside or entirely instead of a design package.
| You have questions rather than a project | An hour of design consultancy, for the decisions you are stuck on. No scheme, no commitment, just answers. |
| The room does not work and you cannot say why | Space planning. The problem is usually the layout rather than the contents, and it is worth diagnosing before you buy anything. |
| You are rewiring, extending or at first fix | A lighting distribution plan, prepared so an electrician can work directly from it. This one is time-critical. |
What each one
actually gives you
Interior design consultancy
A video call with a designer, sold by the hour, with no retainer and no minimum. You bring the questions and they get answered. Colour that will not settle, a layout you have redrawn six times, whether the tile you like will work with the floor you already have.
- Useful when a full package is more than the problem deserves
- Nothing is produced afterwards, so it is advice rather than deliverables
- Often the fastest way to find out whether you need more help or none
Space planning
Layout on its own: where the walls, the circulation and the furniture should go, tested properly rather than guessed at. It is the service for rooms that are frustrating rather than ugly, and for spaces where the shape is the problem: awkward Altbau proportions, an open-plan floor that has no zones, a loft conversion with a sloping ceiling.
- Worth doing before an extension or a knock-through is committed to
- Answers whether the room can do what you want, before you spend on making it look good
- Can be taken alone, or as the foundation for a full design later
Lighting distribution
A technical plan an electrician can install from: fixture positions, circuits, switching and load calculations, drawn over the furniture layout so the light lands where people actually sit rather than in the geometric centre of the ceiling.
- The one service on this page with a deadline attached
- Needed before first fix, because after plastering it becomes a chasing job
- Considerably more than the fixture positions marked on a Deluxe room design
Nobody photographs
a layout
Planning is the least glamorous money in a renovation and the most consequential. A layout has no colour, no material and no image worth putting on Instagram, so it is the first thing people skip and the last thing they can change.
The order in which a room becomes expensive to alter runs roughly like this: cushions, then paint, then furniture, then lighting positions, then plumbing, then walls. Planning deals with the bottom of that list while it is still cheap. Once the chases are cut and the sockets are in, a decision that would have taken ten minutes on a drawing costs a week and a plasterer.
Which is why these three services sit before the design packages rather than after them, and why a consultancy hour spent early is often the highest-value money on the whole project.
Take one, or none
These are not a sequence and there is no expectation you take all three. Plenty of clients use a single consultancy hour and never come back, which is a perfectly good outcome. Others start with space planning, decide the layout works, and go straight to a room design package. Renovators tend to need lighting distribution regardless of what else they take, because of the timing.
If you are not sure which applies to you, the free discovery call will settle it in a few minutes, and we will tell you if the honest answer is none of them. Our process page sets out how a full project runs if you want to see where these sit in it.
What people ask first
Do I have to take a design package afterwards?
No. All three work as stand-alone services and a good number of clients take one and stop there. Nothing here is a funnel into something larger.
Which should I do first?
If building work is involved, lighting distribution has the tightest deadline, so it is the one most likely to be missed. If the room simply is not working, space planning first, because deciding finishes for a layout you are about to change wastes both. If you just have questions, an hour of consultancy is the cheapest way to find out which of the above you actually need.
Is lighting distribution not included in a design package?
Only in part. Deluxe marks where the fittings go on your drawing, which is enough for most room projects. The separate service adds circuits, switching and load calculations, prepared so an electrician can install directly from it. If you are rewiring, you want the separate service.
Do you visit the property for these?
Not as standard. All three are delivered remotely, which is what makes them workable across Europe. Site visits are arranged case by case depending on where the property is, and confirmed before anything is agreed.
Can these be done in English?
Yes, all of them, and the documents are produced in English as standard.
What do you need from me?
For consultancy, your questions and whatever photographs or plans you have. For space planning and lighting distribution, accurate measurements or an existing drawing, since both produce technical output that has to be dimensionally correct.