On a typical residential project we spend around forty per cent of the design programme on the plan and the rest on everything else combined. Clients occasionally find this alarming. It is the single most defensible allocation in the whole process.
What a plan actually fixes
Where light enters. Where you stand when you cook. Whether you can see the front door from the sofa. How far it is from the bed to the bathroom at three in the morning. Whether two people can pass in the corridor while one is carrying something.
None of these can be improved later by a better material. All of them are decided in the first three weeks.
Test the plan against a day
Our method is unglamorous: we walk a written day through the drawing. Six-thirty, someone gets up and makes coffee — trace the route. Eight, two people leave at once — where do the bags and shoes go. Seven in the evening, four people are in the kitchen and one is on a call — does that work.
A plan that survives a written Tuesday will survive most of the years that follow.
The three measurements we argue about most
- Corridor width. 900 mm is a legal minimum and an unpleasant experience. 1,050 mm changes a house.
- Door swing. Which side it is hinged on decides whether the room behind it is usable.
- Circulation around a table. 900 mm to a wall, 1,100 mm where a chair must pass behind a seated person.
Why we resist starting the finishes early
Because a beautiful finish board makes an unresolved plan feel finished, and once a client has fallen in love with a palette, the plan stops being negotiable. We hold the material conversation until the layout is signed. It is not precious; it is protective.
