Black and white, and what that actually means.
One thing separates Basic from the other two packages: the floor plan is drawn in black and white. It is still to scale, still shows every piece of furniture in position, and is still worked out before anything is chosen. What it does not do is show you finishes. That is the whole distinction, and it decides whether Basic is enough for your room.
What it lets you do
- Order furniture knowing it fits, in the room and through the door
- See how the room is walked through before you commit to a layout
- Check a sofa or a wardrobe against the actual wall length
- Work out honestly what to keep and what to replace
- Hand something to a decorator who is painting and nothing more
What it will not do
- Show what a wall will look like, which is what elevations are for
- Set out tile or finish layouts
- Give an electrician or a builder anything they can price from
- Mark light fittings, sockets or switches
- Design cabinetry, though the space for it is allocated
If a trade is coming into the room, you want Premium or Deluxe. Both cover walls moving. Deluxe is the one to take if the lighting is being rewired, since it is the only package that marks fixture positions on the plan. If nobody is coming and you are furnishing and decorating, Basic is the right package and the other two are drawings you will not use.
A furniture plan is really a plan of the gaps.
It is easy to look at a black and white plan and see a set of rectangles. What your designer is actually resolving is the space between them, because that is the part you live in. A sofa fifteen centimetres too deep does not read as fifteen centimetres too deep. It reads as a room you edge around.
The figures worth holding on to are these. Nine hundred millimetres for a main route through a room, seven hundred and fifty where people pass only occasionally. Four hundred and fifty between the front of a sofa and a coffee table, close enough to reach a cup and far enough to get your legs past. Seven hundred and fifty behind a dining chair to pull it out and sit down, a full metre if someone needs to walk behind you while you are seated.
The second thing is that rooms are rarely the rectangles they appear to be. Measure a wall in a period property at skirting level and again higher up and you will often find twenty or thirty millimetres between the two, with diagonals that do not match. It matters most for anything sold in a fixed width, so a wall measuring 3,020mm at one end and 2,985mm at the other will take a 2,900mm sofa comfortably and reject a 3,000mm one. It is why we ask for measurements at more than one height and photographs from opposite corners rather than from the doorway.
Basic is delivered remotely, which is what keeps the fee where it is, and it means the measurements you send are the ones the design is built on. We will tell you what to measure and query anything that looks inconsistent, but we cannot check a dimension we have not taken. A site visit can be booked alongside the package if you would rather we did it, quoted separately depending on where you are.
What Basic will take on.
Room type is selected above and the price moves with it. Bedrooms, guest bedrooms, nurseries, kids' rooms, living rooms, offices, games rooms, bathrooms, shower rooms and en-suites are all covered, as are small and large terraces, which people are often surprised to find on the list.
Open-plan spaces are capped at fifty square metres on Basic. Above that the room stops being one space and starts being three that happen to share walls, and the layout takes materially longer to resolve. Premium carries a larger open-plan option and is the better starting point. If your room is not on the list at all, get in touch and we will price it directly rather than pushing you into the nearest match.
Asked about Basic specifically.
Can my builder work from the black and white plan?
Up to a point. The plan itself only shows position, but the shopping list carries the product, the finish, the size, a photograph and the available variants, so a builder can get a fair way with it. What they will not have is the visual information, no elevations and nothing in colour, which makes it hard work and leaves more open to interpretation than anyone wants on site. If there is construction work in the room, or the room is being completely redone, Premium or Deluxe is the right starting point.
Does Basic include the bonus styling hours?
No. Those sit on Premium, which carries three, and Deluxe, which carries four. If you want extra design time on a Basic room, it can be bought by the hour as consultancy.
Can I have the plan in colour without moving up to Premium?
Not as a variation on Basic. The colour plan and the elevations are what Premium is, so adding them is buying Premium. Say so before your kick-off call and we will sort the difference out rather than have you pay twice.
Is the mood board the same as in the other packages?
Yes. The mood board, the interactive shopping list and the two designer calls are identical across all three. The plan is what changes.
Do I get the same designer throughout?
Yes. One designer takes the brief, does the work and presents it back to you, on every package.
Not sure whether black and white is enough for your room? Book a free discovery call and we will tell you honestly, including when the answer is a smaller service than this one.
