The Interior Design Process, Step by Step

Most people hire an interior designer once or twice in their life. So the first question is rarely about style — it is about sequence. What happens first, what do you have to decide, when does money change hands, and what do you actually hold in your hands at the end.

This is how the process works at our studio. We have run it 1,172 times across 48 countries since 2018, entirely remotely, so the description below is not a diagram — it is the order things happen in.

Before anything starts: the call and the contract

The first conversation is a video call about the property. We look at what you have — a floor plan from the developer, photos, a video walk-through shot on your phone — and talk about how you live: who sleeps where, how you cook, whether anyone works from home, what irritates you about your current place.

Two things get fixed before any work begins: the price and the deadline, both written into the contract. Not "around" and not "depending on scope". If the scope changes later, the contract changes with it — in writing, with your signature.

This matters more than it sounds. The most common complaint about design projects is that the budget drifts. A fixed estimate removes that argument entirely.

Step 1. Measurements

Nothing can be drawn accurately without exact dimensions. There are three ways this happens, and you choose the one that fits:

• Developer's drawings. If the building is new and you have the as-built dimensions, we work from those. Nothing else is needed.
• We measure. In most countries we do it ourselves.
• A local surveyor. Where we cannot get there, we point you to a checked surveyor near the property.

All we need from you is access to the space. You do not have to be in the country, and you do not have to meet anyone.

Timeline: this runs in parallel with the brief and does not add to the project duration.

Step 2. Layouts — 1 to 2 weeks

You get two or three layout options, not one. Each is a plan of how the space is divided: where walls go, where the kitchen sits, which wall the bed faces, where storage hides.

This is the stage to change your mind, and we build three rounds of revisions into it. Moving a wall here costs a line on a screen. Moving it after the drawings are done costs a redraw. Moving it on site costs money and weeks.

If you are not ready to commit to a full project, you can stop here: the layout alone is about 10% of the project cost — from €250 for a 50 m² apartment. Continue later and that sum counts toward the project. Do not continue, and the layouts are still yours.

Step 3. Visualizations — 3 to 5 weeks

Every room is rendered. Not a mood board, not a reference from Pinterest — your room, with your dimensions, your light, your furniture.

The rule we work by is simple: every decision is made on a picture, never in words. "A warm oak, something like this" means nothing — two people will imagine two different rooms. A render means one thing, and you approve it or you do not.

This is also the honest answer to the question people ask about working remotely: how do you approve something you have not seen? You see it. On screen, from every angle, before anything is bought or built.

Step 4. Drawings and specification — 2 to 3 weeks

The visualization shows what it will look like. The drawings tell builders how to make it happen.

What you receive is a PDF album containing:

• construction drawings — walls, floors, ceilings, electrics, plumbing, lighting layouts, elevations for every wall with tiling or joinery
• a specification with part numbers — every item listed with its manufacturer, article number and quantity, so nothing is chosen by guess on site
• the approved visualizations, so the crew can see the intended result.

Print it, hand it to any construction crew, and they can build from it. That is the point of the document: it does not require us to be standing next to them.

Optional: supervision during construction

If you want the studio to stay involved through the build, that is a separate level of service. What it means in practice:

• every stage on site is checked against the approved project
• the crew asks us directly instead of asking you
• a work plan every Monday, a photo and video report every Friday
• purchases and deliveries are tracked, materials approved before they are installed.

You still do not need to be there. Neither do we — the checking happens through documented photo and video evidence against the drawings.

How long the whole thing takes

Architecture runs differently: a concept takes one to two months and is priced per project rather than per square metre.

How payment is staged

Payment follows the work, not the calendar:

• 30% at the start
• 50% after the layout is approved
• 20% after the visualizations are approved.

For architectural concept design it is two equal halves. For visualizations alone, one payment before work begins. For supervision, monthly.

You are never paying for something you have not seen and approved.

What usually goes wrong, and where

Three failure points account for most unhappy renovations, and all three sit inside the process above:

1. Decisions made in words. If nobody drew it, two people approved two different things. Fixed by rendering every room.
2. A layout changed after the drawings were done. Fixed by spending real time at step 2, while changes are free.
3. A crew improvising. Fixed by a specification with part numbers: there is nothing left to improvise about.

Frequently asked

Do we ever meet in person? No, and that is the normal mode of work for us — 1,172 projects were made this way. Presence on site changes nothing that a measured drawing and a render do not already cover.

Can I give the project to my own builders? Yes. That is what the album is for. It is a document, not a service dependency.

What if there is a mistake in the drawings? If the error is ours, we redo the drawing and align it with the crew, at no extra charge. If the crew deviated and you are on the supervision plan, we catch it in the weekly photo review before it becomes expensive.

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