How to brief an interior architect (and what we wish we’d been told).

A studio is only as good as its brief. We tell clients this constantly, and we mean it. A poorly-briefed project sets off into expensive territory before the first wall is moved — usually pleasantly, slowly, and irreversibly.

Here is what fourteen years of accepted and declined briefs have taught us about how to lay one out well.

The seven things that genuinely matter

1. How you actually live. Not how the property listing imagines you live. Where the children eat. Where the laundry truly lands. Whether you cook with the windows open or the aircon on. A studio that does not ask these questions will fill them in with assumptions.
2. The budget envelope, honestly. Not the budget you would like to spend; the budget you can spend. Designers can compose to any envelope — they cannot compose to a moving target.
3. The horizon. Is this a five-year house, or a forever house? A starter family home or the place the grandchildren will visit? The answer shapes everything about specification.
4. The non-negotiables. The three or four things the brief absolutely must contain. Listing these early protects them later, when the project gets crowded.
5. The reservations. What worries you about the process? Most clients have one or two genuine anxieties — budget overruns, hand-off to juniors, neighbours, partner disagreement. Tell us. We will design around them.
6. The references that quietly speak. Not the magazine covers. The corner of the cousin’s house that you keep returning to in your head. Those are the ones that show us what your eye actually wants.
7. How you make decisions. Solo? With your partner? With your mother’s opinion? A studio that knows this can structure the sign-off conversations to fit your real decision-making.

The four things that don’t

1. A Pinterest board of 400 images. Eight curated images are worth more than four hundred uncurated ones. We promise.
2. A finalised floor plan. Briefing a designer with a fixed layout is briefing them with one hand tied. Bring the constraints, not the solution.
3. An exhaustive material list. Materials emerge from the brief. Choosing them before the brief is settled is putting the cart before the joinery.
4. A precise timeline. A general one (“before the baby arrives,” “in time for Hari Raya next year”) is helpful. A precise one is usually counterproductive — it forces decisions that ought to take longer.

One thing we wish clients told us sooner

Their partner’s actual position on the brief. Studios spend a remarkable number of hours designing for one half of a couple, only to discover at concept presentation that the other half disagrees with the entire premise. Bringing both decision-makers to the first meeting saves months. We mean this gently, and we mean it firmly.

The brief as a living document

A good brief is not signed and shelved — it is referred back to. At Reachbay, we keep the brief at the front of the project file and re-read it at every milestone. If the brief and the design have drifted apart, that is a conversation, not a quiet adjustment. The brief, in the end, is what the client paid us to build. Forgetting it is the easiest mistake in our profession.