Interior Design Constraints Record Checklist

Walk the property and list every element that looks immovable, including walls, chimney breasts, columns, boxed-in corners and any change of level.

Whether any of these plays a structural role is for a qualified professional to establish; record them as unknown until you have been told otherwise.

Trace where the floor level changes, however slightly, and where a threshold, a step or a ramp already exists between rooms.

Level changes affect flooring, door swings and how furniture sits, and they are frequently missing from the plans a designer is given.

Record the position of the main entrance door, which way it swings and anything that limits how far it can open.

The entrance sets the first impression and the delivery route at the same time, so both uses of it belong in the record.

Write down which internal doors you have never been able to open fully, and what physically stops them from doing so.

A door fouling a radiator or a floor edge constrains furniture placement in a way plans rarely show and owners always notice.

Note where the stair sits, which way it turns and what occupies the space directly under it and directly over it.

The stair is usually the least flexible thing in a house after the external walls, and everything around it is planned to suit.

Identify anything heavy, built in or plumbed that would be disruptive to relocate, without deciding for yourself whether it can be moved.

Listing them as questions keeps options open, whereas ruling them out early narrows the design for no confirmed reason.

Mark on a rough plan where you know pipes, waste, meters, tanks, ducts and the consumer unit are, using what you have actually seen rather than what you assume.

Any conclusion about what lies inside a wall, floor or ceiling must come from a qualified professional; your marked plan is a starting point for them, not a finding.

Note where the boiler or heat source sits, where its flue runs and whether anything has been boxed in around it since it was fitted.

Questions about heat sources, flues and ventilation belong with a suitably qualified installer and may be subject to local requirements.

Map where every radiator or heat emitter sits, and mark which stretches of wall are therefore only partly usable for furniture.

Heat emitters quietly remove the most useful walls in a room, and a layout drawn without them will have to be redone.

Write down where the incoming water stop tap, the gas meter and the electricity meter are, and whether each one is genuinely accessible today.

Access to meters and isolation points is often lost during an interior scheme, and it is far easier to protect before joinery is designed.

Note any point in the property where you can hear water running, see an access hatch, or know from experience that previous work was carried out.

These clues are the simplest form of survey information available, and they usually come only from the person who lives there.

Find where the aerial, the broadband entry point and any wired outlets are, and note which of them the household actually relies on day to day.

Connectivity points are treated as an afterthought and then dictate where a desk or a television can go once everything else is fixed.

Note for each window which way it opens, what it opens onto, and whether anything inside the room currently blocks it from being used.

A window blocked by furniture is a constraint on the layout and sometimes on ventilation, and both belong in the record.

Record any window with an obstruction outside it, such as a fence, a wall, a tree or a neighbouring building standing close by.

External obstructions explain why a room feels dark and set realistic expectations before finishes and lighting are discussed.

Write down which openings you would not want to lose and which give you the daylight you most value across the day.

Altering, enlarging or blocking any opening is a matter for qualified professionals and may require consent, so confirm locally before it enters the design.

Describe sill heights in relative terms, such as above worktop level or below seat level, since these decide what furniture can sit beneath a window.

Relative sill heights are enough to plan with and avoid an owner measurement being carried forward as though it were surveyed.

Record any window or door you already know to be draughty, sticking or awkward, describing only the symptom you experience.

Draughts, condensation and sticking frames can have several causes, so ask a qualified professional to investigate rather than treating the symptom.

Identify rooms with no opening window or no external wall at all, and flag them as questions to be answered rather than problems to solve yourself.

Rooms without an opening window raise ventilation questions that only a qualified professional can answer for your particular property.

List the original or period features you want kept, such as cornice, skirtings, a fireplace, floorboards, panelling, shutters or original tiling.

A written list means a trade clearing a room knows what must survive, which is not obvious once dust sheets are down.

Note which of those features are complete and which are already damaged, patched or partly missing, so expectations are set honestly.

Partly missing features often cannot be matched, and knowing that early changes whether keeping them is realistic.

Record whether the property or the area may be subject to any special designation, and treat that as something to confirm rather than to conclude.

Whether a property is listed or sits in a designated area, and what that means for internal work, must be confirmed with the relevant local authority.

Write down which features you would accept losing if keeping them constrained the scheme badly, so the trade-off is made openly rather than on site.

An explicit trade-off protects the features you care most about by identifying which ones you care about less.

Photograph the features you value from the angle you normally see them, so the intent behind keeping them survives into the drawings.

A photograph taken from the doorway you use every day communicates far more than a written note about a moulding profile.

Note where a feature has already been altered by a previous owner, and record whether returning it to its earlier state matters to you at all.

Restoration ambitions absorb a great deal of effort and are easily assumed, so it helps to state plainly that you do not have them.

Record the tenure of the property and gather the documents that come with it, without attempting to interpret what they permit.

Lease terms, covenants and title restrictions should be read by a suitably qualified adviser, who can say what they mean for your plans.

Note whether the property shares a wall, a floor or a ceiling with another household, and which of their rooms sit on the other side.

Work affecting a shared wall or floor may involve obligations towards neighbours, so ask a suitably qualified adviser what applies in your situation.

Write down any rules you already know about deliveries, access, common parts or when work may take place, and note where each rule came from.

Rules learned informally are often nearly right and occasionally wrong, so recording the source is as useful as recording the rule.

Record who manages the building, and ask them directly what they expect to be told before internal work of any kind takes place.

Managers usually have a straightforward answer, and asking early avoids a stoppage caused by a notification nobody sent.

Decide how you intend to keep neighbours informed, starting with whoever would be most directly affected by noise, dust or use of a shared access.

Neighbour goodwill is a practical asset during interior work, and it is far easier to keep than to recover.

Identify anything you were told informally by a neighbour, an agent or a previous owner, and mark it clearly as unconfirmed in the record.

Property folklore is repeated confidently and travels well, which is exactly why it needs labelling before it shapes a design.

Write down the daily pattern the interior has to survive: who is at home, when rooms need to be quiet, and where the pressure points fall.

A pattern description gives a designer the reasoning behind your requirements, which is what lets them propose alternatives you had not considered.

Note the pets, their routes through the house, where they sleep and which surfaces they use, since these constrain finishes more than most owners admit.

Finishes chosen without the household animals in mind are often the first to be replaced, and the constraint is easy to state and just as easy to forget.

Record any allergy, sensitivity or health consideration in the household, and mark it as something to raise with a suitably qualified adviser.

Health, allergy and air-quality questions belong with a suitably qualified professional and must not be settled from a materials preference.

Note anyone in the household whose mobility, sight or hearing shapes how a room has to work, and describe what they find difficult now.

Accessibility requirements vary by person and by location, so ask a suitably qualified professional rather than relying on general design assumptions.

Record whether anyone works from home, which room they use, and what would make that room unusable during the works.

A working room is often the one constraint that dictates the order of the whole project, and it is easily overlooked in a design meeting.

Write down what the household would find genuinely intolerable during the work, such as losing the kitchen or the only bathroom at once.

Stating the limits of tolerance early lets the sequence be planned around them instead of around an assumption of endless patience.

List anything already ordered or committed to, and note whether each item can still be changed or is now fixed.

An item nobody knows about will not be planned around, and the discovery usually happens after a drawing has been issued.

Note the trades or professionals already engaged and exactly what each has been asked to do, in the words used at the time.

Overlapping or conflicting instructions given at different moments are a frequent source of duplicated and abandoned work.

Record any drawing, survey or report that already exists for the property, however old it is and however unreliable it may look.

Old documents are useful even when out of date, because they show what was there before and what has been altered since.

Write down the decisions the household considers already settled, so they are not reopened by default in the first design conversation.

Reopening a settled decision drains goodwill inside the household, which is a resource the project will need later.

Note anything left over from previous work, such as spare tiles, flooring, timber or paint, and record where in the property it is stored.

Leftover materials often decide whether a repair can be matched at all, and they are usually forgotten until the moment they are needed.

Identify any warranty attached to previous work, and ask what would affect it before anything nearby is altered.

Ask the original supplier or installer what would affect an existing warranty, rather than assuming that alterations are permitted under it.

Go through the whole record and mark each entry as confirmed by a professional, told to you informally, or your own assumption.

Most late surprises in interior projects come from assumptions nobody labelled as assumptions, and this single step removes many of them.

For each assumption, write down who could confirm it and what exactly you would ask them, in one sentence you could send today.

Turning an assumption into a drafted question is what makes it likely to be asked rather than carried quietly into the design.

Note which unknowns actually block a design decision and which can safely remain unknown for the time being.

Not every uncertainty needs resolving, and separating them stops effort being spent on questions that change nothing.

Record who gave you each answer and in what form, so the record stays traceable when somebody later asks where a statement came from.

Traceability is what allows a constraint to be relied upon by a person who joins the project after the conversation happened.

Keep the constraints record as a single document and bring it to every meeting, rather than repeating the same points from memory.

Repeating constraints verbally means that a different subset is remembered by each person present.

Review and update the record after any opening-up work, since what is found frequently changes what everybody thought was fixed.

Opening up walls, floors or ceilings must be arranged through a qualified professional and never carried out simply to satisfy a checklist.