Seven questions to answer before you brief a designer

Almost every difficult project we have worked on was difficult for the same reason: the brief was thin, and the gaps got filled in late, expensively, by whoever was standing closest.

A brief is not a wish list. It is the set of constraints everyone agrees to design inside. You do not need to know what your kitchen should look like — that is our job — but you do need to have answered the questions below, because nobody else can answer them for you.

1. Who lives here, and for how long?

A flat you will sell in four years is a different project from the house you intend to grow old in. The first justifies restraint and resale-friendly choices; the second justifies spending on the things that are painful to change later — layout, glazing, plumbing routes, storage. Tell us which one this is. It changes where the money goes.

2. What is the number, really?

The single most useful thing a client can say in a first meeting is a budget they actually intend to spend, including the fee, the contractor, the furniture and a contingency. We can design to almost any number. We cannot design to a number that is revealed in instalments.

If you genuinely do not know, say so, and ask for a cost study at concept stage. That is a normal request and it is far cheaper than discovering the problem during procurement.

3. When do you need to be in?

Dates drive specification more than people expect. A sixteen-week lead time on a stone worktop is not negotiable, and a move-in date fixed by a tenancy ending will quietly eliminate half of what we might otherwise have proposed. Give us the hard date early and we will design around it rather than against it.

4. What are you keeping?

Every household has objects that are not up for discussion: a piano, a grandmother’s table, a collection that needs wall. Tell us at the start. Designing around a fixed object is easy. Being handed one at the furnishing stage is not.

5. How do you actually use a kitchen?

Not how you would like to. How you do. Do you cook most evenings or twice a week? Do two people cook together? Does the family eat at the island or at a table? Is the kitchen where homework happens? The honest answers produce a better plan than any aspirational one.

6. What do you not want?

Negative briefs are underrated. "No open shelving", "nothing that needs sealing", "I hate downlights" — each one removes a whole branch of possibilities and saves a round of revisions. We ask for three of these in every first meeting.

7. Who decides?

Projects stall when approvals have to pass through someone who was not in the room. Agree early who signs off, and make sure that person sees the concept presentation rather than a forwarded PDF of it.

What you can leave open

Colours. Specific products. Whether the dining table is round or rectangular. Style labels of any kind. These are outcomes of the brief, not inputs to it, and arriving with them already fixed usually costs you the better answer.

Bring the seven answers above, a floor plan, and a handful of images of rooms you like without knowing why. That is a complete brief, and it is enough to start.