Ninety minutes
on your floor plan.
Send us the plan before we speak. We read it, mark it up, and spend an hour and a half working through the layout with you on video. You leave knowing whether your idea works and why it works, with the reasoning in writing within 48 hours.
Layout decisions get made
long before anyone draws.
By the time a plan reaches a designer, the wall has usually already been priced, the kitchen already quoted, and the sofa already ordered. The expensive mistakes happen in the six weeks before that, when the decision is still a conversation at the kitchen table.
The Layout Clinic is a paid session for that stage. Not a sales call, not a free chat about our packages. Ninety minutes with a designer, on your plan, so you commit to the right layout rather than the first one.
Thinking about a knock-through
You want one open room, but you are not sure what the kitchen loses when the wall goes, or whether the island you have drawn actually leaves room to walk past it.
Buying, or just bought
You need to know whether the property does what you need before you commit, or before the offer goes in. Bring the estate agent plan.
Extending or converting
The footprint is settled but the internal arrangement is not, and you would rather test it now than discover it on site.
Furniture that will not fit
The room is the right size on paper and wrong in practice. Usually a circulation problem, occasionally a door swing, almost never the furniture.
The plan is read before
the call, not during it.
Most consultations spend the first twenty minutes explaining the room. Sending the plan in advance removes that, and it is why ninety minutes is enough to get somewhere. Below is roughly what a plan looks like by the end of a session.
A London semi, ground floor rear. Losing the wall opens the two rooms into one, but it also takes away the run the tall units were going to sit on, so the peninsula has to earn that space back and still leave room to walk past it.
You send what you have
An architect's plan, an estate agent floor plan, or a sketch with measurements on it. If you have neither, we send you a short list of what to measure and how. Photographs of each wall help more than people expect.
We work through the options
Screen shared, plan marked up live. We test at least two layout directions against how you actually use the space, and we say plainly which one we would take and why. You will hear the drawbacks of each, not only the case for one.
You get it in writing
A written summary within 48 hours: the layouts we discussed, the recommended direction, and the dimensions and constraints that decide it. It sets out the reasoning, not just the conclusion, so you can defend the decision to a builder, a kitchen supplier or a partner who was not on the call.
Introductory rate, £95. We are running the first bookings at an introductory price while the service settles. Both decision makers are welcome on the call at no extra cost, and we would rather they were.
Often the answer is
that you were right.
Worth saying plainly, because people expect a consultation to hand them an idea they had not thought of. Sometimes it does. More often you already have the right instinct and what you are missing is the reasoning behind it, and the confidence to spend money on it.
There are three honest ways a session ends.
| Your layout works | We tell you so, and more importantly we tell you why: the clearances it holds, the sightlines it keeps, the mistakes it happens to avoid. You stop second-guessing and start pricing the work. That reasoning goes in the summary, which is what you hand to whoever needs convincing. |
| Your layout works, with two or three changes | The most common outcome. The shape of the idea is right and something specific is off, usually a walkway, a door swing or a run of units that is 300mm short. Small corrections, made before anything is ordered. |
| Your layout does not work | Rare, but it happens, and we would rather say it in week one than have you find out when the units arrive. We then spend the rest of the session on what does work, so you leave with a direction rather than a problem. |
The outcome nobody wants is a fourth one: going ahead without knowing which of the three you were in. That is the thing this session removes, and it is worth the fee even when the answer is that your plan was sound all along.
This is a conversation,
not a set of drawings.
Worth being straight about the boundary, because the wrong service is a waste of your money and our time.
| You want to test whether a layout works before committing to it | The Layout Clinic. Ninety minutes and a written summary is usually all it takes to settle the question. |
| You need drawn plans your builder or kitchen supplier can work from | Our space planning service, which produces annotated technical plans and CAD, quoted by the hour against your room. |
| You need help with colour, window treatments or finishing a room | Book hourly consultancy instead, which is sold in one-hour blocks you can split across rooms. |
| You want the room designed and specified end to end | Start with a room design package. The layout work is built into it, so you would not need this session first. |
| You need to know whether a wall can safely come down | That is a structural engineer's answer, not ours. We work out what the layout gains or loses either way, and we can introduce an engineer we trust if you do not have one. |
What people ask
before booking.
I do not have a proper floor plan. Can I still book?
Yes. A hand sketch with real measurements on it works perfectly well, and an estate agent plan is fine as a starting point although the dimensions on those are often approximate. When you book we send a short guide to what to measure, which takes most people about half an hour with a tape.
Will you tell me if the wall is load bearing?
No, and you should be wary of anyone who does from a plan. Studio Akiva is an interior design studio, not a structural practice. What we can do is show you what the room gains and loses in each scenario, so you know whether the question is even worth paying an engineer to answer. If it is, we can introduce one.
Do I get drawings afterwards?
You get a written summary with the recommended layout described in detail, including the dimensions that drive it, plus any plan we marked up on screen during the call. You do not get scaled technical drawings. Those are the space planning service, and if you want them afterwards we already know the room.
What if you just agree with the layout I already had?
Then you have paid ninety minutes to stop wondering, which is usually the cheapest part of the whole project. You will not simply be told yes. You will be told which parts of your thinking hold up and why, where the plan is close to a limit it should not cross, and what would break it if you changed your mind later. Most people arrive with a decent instinct and no way of testing it. Confirming it, with the reasoning written down, is a real outcome and we would rather you expected it than felt short-changed by it.
Ninety minutes does not sound like long enough.
For one room, or one open-plan space, it is. For a whole house it is not, and we would tell you that rather than take the booking. If the scope is larger, hourly consultancy or a design package is the honest answer.
Can we do this at the property instead?
The clinic is remote by video. Site visits are available but they are charged separately as their own fee, and they are subject to location and availability.
Can my partner or my builder join the call?
Please bring them. Layout decisions stall when one person hears the reasoning and has to relay it, and a builder on the call will often tell us in ten seconds what is and is not practical.
Send the plan. We will have
read it before we speak.
Book your session below, then send us the plan. We come back within one working day with times that suit you, including evenings. Studio Akiva is an award-winning London interior design studio and a twelve-time Houzz award winner.
Book a session See the full space planning servicePayment is handled securely by Stripe. Straight after paying you will be asked to send your floor plan, which is what lets us schedule the call and read the space before we speak.