Interior Pet and Household Use Questions Checklist

List every animal in the household and write down where each one spends most of its time, rather than where you would prefer it to be.

Schemes get planned around a bed nobody uses while the actual favourite spot is never mentioned.

Keep two lists, one of the rooms an animal is allowed into and one of the rooms it enters anyway, because the second is what decides finishes.

Rules that are enforced most of the time still leave a room needing to survive the rest of the time.

Record where an animal watches from — a windowsill, the arm of a sofa, the top of a cupboard — since those places take concentrated wear.

A single favoured perch will wear out a fabric or finish long before the rest of the room shows anything.

Be honest about whether any animal is left alone in a room, and about what it does while nobody is there.

What happens unobserved is usually the harshest test any finish in the home will face.

Trace the routes an animal uses to get around, including any that involve jumping onto or off furniture.

Landing points take repeated impact, and they are rarely the places anybody expects wear to appear.

Write down whether the household expects to have more animals or different ones, and say so before anything is designed.

A scheme built for one settled animal is a poor fit for a household that is about to change.

Record where an animal comes in from outside and note exactly what the first surface it walks on is made of.

That first stretch of floor takes almost all the water and grit, and it is often the same finish as the rest of the room.

Note where wet fur gets shaken off and roughly how far the spray reaches up the walls and across the floor.

Wall finishes near an entrance fail for this reason far more often than owners anticipate.

Check whether there is anywhere to dry or wipe an animal before it reaches a floor you care about, and whether it is actually used.

An arrangement that requires catching a wet animal first tends not to survive contact with daily life.

Find where muddy prints currently show worst, and on which finish, since that is direct evidence rather than prediction.

The finish that already fails tells a supplier more than any general description of how the room gets used.

Ask the supplier or maker what a floor finish tolerates in terms of standing water, grit and repeated wiping, rather than assuming from how it looks.

Appearance says almost nothing about how a surface behaves under repeated wetting and cleaning.

Only the supplier or manufacturer can say what a particular finish will tolerate, and their answer should be kept in writing.

Record whether an animal door or a gate exists anywhere in the home, what it opens onto, and whether it is still in use.

These fittings constrain door and joinery decisions and are regularly forgotten until a door is being replaced.

Note where an animal scratches, chews or rubs, and record what material is in that place at the moment.

These spots are specific and repeatable, and they will be the first places a new finish is tested.

Read how existing surfaces have responded, including where a finish has scuffed, where a fabric has pulled and where a corner has worn away.

Wear patterns in your own home are better evidence than any general statement about durability.

Ask a supplier what a fabric or finish is likely to do under claws and repeated contact, rather than treating a showroom sample as evidence.

Samples are handled gently in showrooms and tell you nothing about how a weave behaves when it is caught.

How a material performs with animals is a question for the supplier or maker, and no sample in a showroom can settle it.

Note which pieces of furniture an animal climbs on, and whether that is accepted in the household or fought over daily.

A scheme that assumes an animal stays off the seating will be judged against a household where it does not.

Point out where an animal has damaged something that was then repaired, since that tells you what fails first in your home.

Repairs mark the weak points more precisely than any current damage does.

Watch for any surface sitting at an animal's head or shoulder height along a route it walks every day.

Rubbing at a constant height marks walls and joinery in a line that is very hard to disguise later.

Record where each animal eats and drinks, and note what is on the floor and walls around that spot.

The area around a bowl gets wet and marked constantly, and it is rarely given a different finish.

Look at how far water gets flicked or splashed from a bowl and what it lands on.

Owners consistently underestimate this, and the consequence appears at the base of the nearest joinery.

Write down where animal food is stored and how it is carried from the store to the bowl.

Bulky food containers need a real place, and they end up in a corridor when nobody plans for them.

Note where a litter tray sits, what surrounds it, and what happens to whatever gets tracked out of it.

The tracked area extends much further than the tray, and the finish there has to cope with it.

Say whether animals are fed where people also prepare or eat food, and note how the household feels about that arrangement.

This is a genuine planning question that owners often leave unstated until a layout has already been drawn.

Questions about hygiene where food is prepared or stored should be put to a suitably qualified professional rather than settled by preference.

Note whether any animal is fed on a route people walk, and how often that causes somebody to step over or around a bowl.

Feeding positions chosen for convenience often sit in the busiest stretch of floor in the home.

Note where each animal sleeps by choice, which is frequently not where its bed was put.

The chosen spot tells you something about warmth, draughts and sightlines that no plan will show.

Work out whether an animal seeks warmth, moving air or dark, since that explains the spots it keeps returning to.

Understanding the reason means a replacement place can be offered rather than simply removed.

Note where an animal hides when the household is busy or when there are visitors, and whether that place would survive the work.

Losing a retreat is one of the changes most likely to be noticed after a room is reworked.

Record whether an animal needs to be shut somewhere at times, and whether such a place currently exists in the home.

This requirement usually emerges late and then has nowhere to go in an otherwise settled layout.

Identify any place an animal gets stuck, or squeezes behind or underneath, since new fitted joinery can create fresh ones.

Voids behind and beneath fitted work are a frequent and entirely unintended result of a new scheme.

Ask the maker how any fitted work would be closed off at the base and at the back, rather than assuming there will be no gap.

Ask a veterinary professional about anything concerning an animal's health, comfort or behaviour, rather than treating it as an interior question.

Interior decisions can accommodate an animal but cannot answer anything about its wellbeing.

Anything relating to an animal's health, welfare or behaviour is a matter for a veterinary professional and is outside what any interior planning can address.

Record how much hair the household deals with and where it collects, such as along skirtings, in corners or beneath furniture.

Where it gathers is determined by shapes and airflow, and a new scheme can easily make it worse.

Name who cleans, how often, and with what, because a finish needing particular care will fall to that person and nobody else.

Finishes are chosen by one person and maintained by another more often than anybody admits.

Ask the supplier what cleaning a finish tolerates and keep the answer in writing with the rest of your notes.

Cleaning guidance is given verbally in showrooms and forgotten long before it is needed.

What may be used to clean a finish is set by the manufacturer, so ask them directly before anything else is used on it.

Record where hair or dust is currently hardest to remove, and note what shape, texture or material makes it so.

The difficulty is usually caused by a detail rather than a material, and details are easy to change at this stage.

Note whether anybody in the household reacts to dust or animal hair, and treat that as a matter for a suitable professional rather than a design assumption.

It belongs in the brief as a stated consideration, not as something an interior decision claims to resolve.

Anybody's reaction to dust, hair or materials is a matter for a suitably qualified professional and must not be treated as something a finish can address.

Compare which fabrics already in the home show hair badly and which do not, and take those observations with you when looking at samples.

Your own household provides better evidence about this than anything you will be told in a showroom.

Write down what else each room has to absorb, such as drying laundry, a hobby that makes mess, work equipment, instruments or sports kit.

These occupy real space and real surfaces, and they are almost never mentioned in an initial brief.

Note where laundry is dried indoors, what it stands on, and what the room is like while it is drying.

Indoor drying affects both the use of the room and the way it feels, and it is rarely designed for.

Record whether anybody works from home, in which room, and what has to be put away afterwards or is simply left out.

Equipment that is never put away needs a permanent place, and pretending otherwise fails immediately.

Set down how often people stay the night and which room changes its use when they do.

A room with two uses needs storage for both, which is a different requirement from either use alone.

Record what children do in each room and what regularly gets moved out of the way for them.

Furniture that has to be shifted constantly is a sign the room is being used differently from how it was arranged.

Separate the routines the household would happily change from the ones that are genuinely fixed, and say which is which.

A designer can work around a fixed routine but will waste effort accommodating one everybody was willing to move.