Space Planning for Apartments & Homes
Scoped to your room, not a fixed package.
A detailed technical floor plan for your space, priced to the room rather than to a tier. Depending on the hours agreed, that can mean one layout worked through properly, or several alternatives to compare before you decide. Everything is drawn in metric, because that is what every trade and supplier you deal with in Europe will use.
What you receive
- A scaled 2D plan with furniture positions and sizes
- One or more layout options, depending on the scope agreed
- Zoning and circulation notes covering doors, windows and radiators
- Up to two rounds of revisions on your preferred option
- A review call to talk through the trade-offs before you choose
What it is not
- A shopping list, which belongs to the design packages
- A colour scheme or a mood board
- Anything structural, which needs an architect or engineer
- A lighting plan, though one can be added
- A 3D render, though one can be added
By the hours the room needs rather than by a fixed fee, because a rectangular bedroom and a fifty square metre open-plan floor are not the same job. Tell us about the space and we will come back with a confirmed quote before any work begins, so you know the cost upfront.
The flat you have moved into was not built for the way you live.
This is the thing that catches people out most when they buy or rent abroad. European apartments carry the habits of the century that built them, and those habits are not the ones you arrived with.
A Berlin Altbau gives you generous ceilings and rooms that open into one another, with no hallway to speak of, which is wonderful until you need a room somebody can shut the door on. A Haussmann apartment in Paris runs its rooms in a line along the facade, so the layout assumes a sequence rather than a hub. Older Spanish flats often have a bedroom that faces a patio de luz and gets almost no daylight at all. None of these are faults. They are answers to questions nobody is asking any more.
Space planning is mostly the work of finding out which of the building's assumptions you can live with and which you need to design around. Sometimes it means putting a wardrobe where a wall used to be, or accepting that a dark room is a study rather than fighting it into being a bedroom. That decision is far cheaper made on paper than after you have bought the furniture.
Seating placed more than about three metres apart stops reading as one conversation and starts reading as two separate groups, however good each piece looks on its own. In a long Altbau room that is the first thing to check, and it is often why a beautifully furnished space still feels oddly unsociable.
What people ask before booking.
Do I need an architect for this?
Usually not. Space planning deals with how a room is used, how you move through it, walkway widths and whether furniture will genuinely fit the way you are picturing it. That sits inside interior design. An architect becomes necessary when walls move or the structure changes, and in Germany a submission of that kind has to be made by a Bauvorlageberechtigter. We will tell you plainly if that is where your project is heading rather than let you find out later.
How long does it take?
A single room usually takes one to two weeks, counting from when we have your brief and your measurements. Whole homes and complicated open-plan floors take longer, and we will say how long when we quote rather than afterwards.
Can you plan small or awkward rooms?
Yes, and those are the ones where it is worth most. We draw to scale and account for doors, windows, radiators, built-in cupboards and the things you cannot move, which is exactly the situation in most older European apartments.
Do you work online or on site?
Most projects run entirely online, with you sending measurements and photographs to a guide we provide. An on-site measured survey can be arranged in some locations if you would rather not measure yourself.
Can I add lighting or a 3D view later?
Yes, and quite a few people do once the layout is settled. Lighting distribution is drawn over the finished furniture plan, which is why it makes sense in that order. A 3D view is worth having if you are struggling to picture the room from a plan.
Is a shopping list included?
No. Space planning settles where things go, not what those things are. If you want products chosen and costed, that is the interior design packages, or an hour of consultancy if you only need a nudge.
Can this help me decide whether to buy a property?
It can, and it is an underused reason to ask. Buyers lean on layout more than they realise: research by Rightmove in the UK found that over a third would be less likely to enquire about a property with no floor plan, and one in ten would not arrange a viewing at all without seeing one first. People already judge properties spatially, usually on very little information. A desktop review of the agent's plan does that properly, testing whether the layout can be made to work while you still have the option of walking away.
Which one you actually need.
Space planning is the right starting point if you want to test what a room could be, and see one or more options, before committing to buying anything. It answers where things go.
If the layout already works and what you want is the room chosen and pulled together, start with interior design instead. That answers what things are. Plenty of projects need both, in that order, and we will say which you need rather than sell you the larger one.
Tell us about your space below, with a plan if you have one, and we will come back within two working days with a confirmed quote. There is no charge for the quote and no obligation to go ahead with it.