What an apartment design project includes and why each drawing matters
People often picture a design project as a set of pretty images. The images are part of it, but they are not what gets used on site. Builders work from drawings. Without them, the fitter decides where the socket goes, how high to hang a light and how the tiles meet the door frame. Sometimes the guess is right. Here is what a project is made of and why each part is there.
Measured survey
Everything starts with measurements. The designer measures the space and marks windows, doors, risers, ventilation, radiators and changes in floor level. A mistake here carries into every sheet that follows, so this is not something to eyeball.
Layout
This is the core document of the project. It shows where the furniture stands, how you move around the apartment and where things are stored. A good layout comes from questions about your life: how many people live there, who works from home, whether you need a separate dressing room, where the washing will dry.
If the layout means removing or moving walls, that is a change to the building plan. It has to be approved, and load-bearing walls and monolithic structures must not be touched. In earthquake-prone Almaty this is taken especially seriously.
Drawings for the builders
- Demolition and partition plan. What comes down, what goes up and what it is made of.
- Electrical plan. Sockets, switches and appliance outlets, with heights and distances from walls.
- Lighting plan. Which lights go where and which switch controls what.
- Ceiling plan. Levels, recesses for curtain tracks, positions of recessed lights.
- Floor plan. Which flooring goes where, laying direction, thresholds.
- Wall elevations. A straight-on view of every wall with tiles, panels, doors and furniture.
- Details. Large-scale drawings of tricky spots, such as where tiles meet another floor finish.
These are the sheets that answer the builder's questions on site. When everything is drawn, the estimate is more accurate and there is little room for arguments about "what we agreed".
Visualisations
3D images show how a room will look with the chosen materials, lighting and furniture. Their job is to let you decide before the renovation, not after it. Repainting a wall in a picture costs nothing. Repainting it in real life costs money and time.
Materials schedule
This is a list of everything to buy: tiles, panels, flooring, plumbing fixtures, lights. With product codes, quantities and links. A schedule makes it easy to put an order together and compare suppliers' offers.
How to tell a project is good
- You can work from it without calling the designer about every small thing.
- The sheets agree with each other: a socket on the electrical plan does not end up behind a wardrobe on the furniture plan.
- The schedule lists real products you can buy, not "grey tile, 60 by 60".
How long it takes
It depends on the floor area and the number of rooms, and also on how quickly you approve decisions. An apartment and a large house involve different amounts of work. We give a timeframe after the first meeting, once the scope of the project is clear.
Read more about how we work on the interior design page. If you already have a project and need someone to keep an eye on site, design supervision will help.