Sample and Approval Record Checklist

Write down which choices you would not be willing to make from an image alone, such as anything where colour, sheen, texture or grain matters to you.

Printed and on-screen representations of a finish are only ever indicative, and the difference becomes obvious once the real piece is in front of you.

Ask the contractor and appointed professionals which samples they intend to provide as a matter of course, and which you would have to request specially.

Some samples appear automatically and others never will, and the ones nobody planned for are the ones that arrive too late to matter.

Where a formal sample procedure exists in your arrangement, ask your appointed professionals how your own record sits alongside it rather than replacing it.

Ask by which point in the work each choice has to be settled, and record the answer against every item on your list rather than assuming there is room to think.

Choices are almost always needed earlier than owners expect, because ordering and preparation happen well before a surface is visible.

Note which choices constrain later ones, such as a floor finish that governs what a threshold or a skirting can do, and record the connection while it is still visible.

Chains of dependent choices are easy to see at the start and painful to discover once the first item has been ordered.

Write down who decides each item on the list, including where a choice is really an appointed professional decision that you are only being shown.

Being shown something is not the same as being asked to choose it, and confusing the two leads to decisions nobody thinks they made.

Mark any item where you would find a substitution genuinely unacceptable, and raise that clearly at the outset rather than when something else turns up.

Substitution is far easier to discuss before ordering than after delivery, and an item flagged early tends to be handled differently.

Copy the reference printed on the sample or its label exactly as written, character for character, rather than recording your own description of the colour or finish.

Colour names are shared between very different items, and your description of a shade cannot be used to order anything.

Keep the label attached to the piece, and where it is loose, write the reference on the back of the sample itself before it is separated from the label.

Labels come off in a bag of samples very quickly, and an unlabelled piece is impossible to match to a record afterwards.

Note who provided each sample, on what date and in response to what request, so the origin of the piece is recorded rather than remembered.

Where a sample came from determines who you go back to when a question arises about it.

Note any batch or production marking on the sample, and ask whether what is supplied later will come from the same run or a different one.

Natural and fired materials vary between production runs, and a sample from one run is only ever an indication of another.

Ask the supplier and the installer how variation between production runs is handled on this item rather than assuming the delivered goods will match.

Record whether you were given a loose piece, a printed card, a small chip or a made-up panel, since each shows a very different amount about the finished result.

A chip cannot show pattern repeat, jointing or how a surface reads across a whole wall, and owners routinely decide as if it could.

Photograph each sample together with its label in daylight, and keep the image with your record so the piece can still be identified if it is lost.

A picture of a piece beside its reference is the simplest protection against an unlabelled sample turning up later.

Take the sample into the room it is destined for and look at it there, rather than deciding at a table, in a showroom or under a temporary work light.

Wall colour, floor reflection and window position change how a finish reads far more than most owners expect.

Look at the sample under daylight and again under the lighting you will actually use in the evening, and note where the two readings differ.

A finish chosen in daylight and lived with under artificial light is one of the most common sources of quiet disappointment.

Hold the piece in the orientation it will be used in, flat for a floor and upright for a wall, since sheen and texture read differently from each angle.

A sample examined flat on a table is being viewed in a way nobody will ever see the finished surface.

Put the sample beside the other materials it will meet, including anything you are keeping, and look at the group rather than each piece on its own.

Materials that each look right alone can sit badly together, and junctions between them are what you see every day.

Ask the supplier how the finish looks once sealed, wetted or worn, and record their answer rather than assuming the sample shows the finished appearance.

Many materials darken or change sheen once treated, and the sample handed to you is often untreated.

How a material behaves in wear, damp or exposure is a question for the supplier and installer, not something a sample piece can demonstrate.

Where a small piece cannot answer the question, ask whether a larger area or a made-up panel can be provided, and record what you were told about that.

Pattern, jointing and variation only become visible across an area, and asking is far easier than discovering it once laid.

Whether a trial area can be prepared and what happens to it afterwards is for the contractor and appointed professionals to decide, not the owner.

Record your decision using the printed reference of the item rather than a description such as the paler one, so only one product could possibly be meant.

Descriptions feel unambiguous at the time and become genuinely unclear once several similar samples are in circulation.

State exactly where the accepted item is to be used, and note whether the same choice applies elsewhere or only in the room you were discussing.

A choice made for one room is frequently applied across a whole project by assumption, which nobody intended.

Note the date of the decision, who was present and who it was communicated to, so the acceptance can be placed in the sequence of everything else.

Sample decisions often change more than once, and only the dated record shows which one was current when something was ordered.

Write down what your acceptance is not about, such as accepting an appearance while leaving suitability, fixing and performance to the professionals.

An owner acceptance of how something looks is not acceptance that it is suitable; that remains with the qualified professionals and installer.

Follow any choice made in conversation with a short written note repeating what you decided, and ask the other party to correct it if you have it wrong.

Choices made while standing in a room are the ones most often remembered differently by the two people who were there.

Record any condition you attached to a decision, such as accepting subject to seeing a larger piece, and check later whether that condition was ever met.

Conditional acceptances quietly become unconditional in other people notes unless the condition is written down and revisited.

Keep a piece of each accepted sample rather than sending the only one back, and ask for a second piece where only one was provided.

Once the sample has gone back there is nothing to compare a delivery against except memory.

Store retained samples away from direct sunlight, heat and damp, since the piece you are comparing against can itself change colour where it is left on a windowsill.

A faded reference piece leads to arguments in which everybody is looking at the wrong thing.

Keep accepted pieces clearly apart from ones you looked at and did not choose, and mark them so nobody has to work out which is which.

Mixed sample bags are how the wrong reference gets quoted, and the mistake usually surfaces after ordering.

Note where each retained sample is being kept, particularly where pieces are heavy or bulky and end up stored away from the rest of the record.

Large samples migrate to garages and sheds, and nobody can find them at the moment a comparison is needed.

Ask whether an offcut of the material actually used can be kept once work is done, and store it with the accepted sample rather than instead of it.

An offcut of what was installed is what any future repair or matching attempt will start from.

Ask the contractor what can be retained and how it should be stored; do not take offcuts from working areas yourself.

Note which samples were returned, to whom and when, so a piece that has to be produced later is not searched for at length in your own house.

Returned samples are the ones everybody assumes are still somewhere, and hours get lost looking for them.

Ask who is proposing a change of item and on what grounds, and record the reason given in their own words rather than your summary of it.

The reason for a substitution determines who should be looking at it, and it is the first thing forgotten once the swap is agreed.

Ask for a physical sample of anything offered as an alternative, and view it beside your retained piece rather than deciding from a description or an image.

Items described as similar can differ noticeably in colour, texture and sheen once the two pieces are side by side.

Ask what else changes as a result of a substitution, including anything already ordered or built that was based on the original choice, and record the answer.

Whether an alternative performs the same role belongs with the qualified professionals who specified the original, not with an owner comparison of appearance.

Log a substitution as a new dated entry rather than editing the original, so the record still shows what was first chosen and when it changed.

Overwriting an earlier choice hides the change, which is the very thing you may need to explain later.

Compare what arrives against your record of what was accepted, and raise anything different as a question about what happened rather than as a complaint.

Changes sometimes travel through several hands before delivery, and the person on site may not know a swap ever occurred.

Ask what happens if more of an item is needed later, and record what you are told about matching to the material already supplied.

Topping up from a later batch is where visible mismatches appear, particularly in natural and fired materials.

How closely later supply will match is a question for the supplier and installer; no owner record can settle it in advance.

Keep the accepted references, their sources and the retained pieces together after completion, since matching a repair later starts from exactly this information.

Finishes get damaged and need patching, and the reference is far harder to recover once everybody involved has moved on.

Record what you were told about looking after each finish, in the words the supplier or installer used, and keep it with the reference for that item.

Care information given verbally at handover disappears almost immediately unless it is written next to the item it belongs to.

Follow the care instructions given by the supplier and installer for each finish rather than treating different materials as if they behave alike.

List any item on your sample list that was never actually decided, and ask what was used instead and on whose authority it was chosen.

Undecided items get resolved by somebody on site, and the owner usually finds out once the surface is finished.

Keep a short note of options you considered and set aside, along with why, so the same suggestion does not come round again with everybody having forgotten.

Discarded options resurface repeatedly on longer projects, and the reasons for rejecting them are rarely recorded anywhere.

Decide who else should hold a copy of the accepted references, such as anybody maintaining the property afterwards, and note who has been given one.

A record that lives only with you is not much use when somebody else is trying to match a finish.

Keep a plain note in the record stating that your acceptances concerned appearance only, so nobody later reads them as agreement about anything else.

Questions about durability, safety, fixing or suitability of any accepted finish stay with the qualified professionals and the supplier.