The interior design guide
Open Rayon

The interior design guide. A definitive knowledge base for interior designers.

From first principles to the finishing touches: shell, surfaces, space planning, furniture, electrics, plumbing and joinery, in the order a project runs.

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The Lexicon.

Every term, in plain words.

From hue and light reflectance to bonding and kick space, every term the guide uses has a short definition, what to know in practice and the pages that use it.

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The guide has an MCP server, so your assistant can search it, read its pages and cite them while it answers you. It is free, read-only, and needs no account or key.

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The interior design guide.

A definitive knowledge base for interior designers.

Eleven chapters take a home from first principles to the moment you show it to the client. Start with Foundations and read in order, or search for a topic, a term or a rule of thumb.

Chapters.

Eleven steps, from principles to presentation.

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Where to go next.

Running a project.

How does a project move from brief to handover?

Every project passes through the same stages, whatever its size: taking the brief and surveying the space, defining the need, proposing an idea, resolving it, pricing it, documenting it and seeing it built. This chapter covers what each stage produces, what the client signs off, and how to keep scope, cost and time under control from brief to handover.

Sections.

Everything about running a project.

14 min

Survey

Measuring the existing space by hand, by phone LiDAR or by laser scanner, and redrawing it as a clean CAD plan in Rayon.

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Planned

Programming

Turning the brief into a program: who uses the space, what they do, the areas each activity needs, and the budget and timescale that frame them.

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Planned

Concept design

Proposing the central idea: a layout strategy, a mood and a material direction, presented with its reasoning for the client to approve.

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Planned

Design development

Resolving the approved concept: fixed layouts, chosen finishes, sized joinery and coordinated electrics and plumbing.

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Planned

Pricing

Estimating cost early, testing the design against the budget, and getting comparable prices from contractors and suppliers.

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Planned

Documentation

The drawings, schedules and specification a contractor builds from, complete enough to price and to build without guessing.

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Planned

Supervision

Visiting site during the works: answering questions, checking work against the drawings, handling changes and snagging before handover.

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Where to go next.

Units