The interior design guide

Open Rayon

All sections

Knowledge

2Running a project

Survey
Programming
Concept design
Design development
Pricing
Documentation
Supervision

Flooring by room
Colour: undertone, LRV, light
Paint sheen by surface
Stone and tile
Joinery materials
Junctions and transitions

4Space planning

Zoning an open plan
Circulation and clearances
Furniture layouts that work
Doors, swings and openings
Testing a plan at 1:50
Planning a small flat

Sofa scale and depth
Rug sizing
Dining table and pendant
Beds and bedsides
Vintage, new or custom
Reusing what the client owns

The socket plan
Switches, circuits and scenes
Ceiling spots: grid or wall wash
Floor sockets for floating furniture
Kitchen and bathroom circuits
Data, TV and charging points

Where the soil stack sets the plan
Supply, waste and fall
Kitchen sink and appliances
Bathroom layout around the WC
Showers: valves, trays and wet rooms
Heating: radiators or underfloor

8Joinery & millwork

Kitchen carcasses and fronts
Wardrobes and alcove storage
Shelving that doesn’t sag
Skirtings, architraves and panelling
Doors, hinges and handles
Drawing joinery for the maker

Door schedules: sizes, swings and hardware
Window schedules: glazing, sills and heads
Openings without doors
Ironmongery and handles
Thresholds and level access
Fire, acoustic and privacy ratings

Art: size, height, grouping
Curtains: height, width, fullness
Lamps as objects
Shelves and objects
Plants
Knowing when to stop

Materials and finishes for a render
Daylight, evening and artificial light
Ambient occlusion and contact shadows
Camera height and lens
Styling a render
From render to client sign-off

Others

Lexicon FAQ MCP About

Circulation.

What it means in interior design.

Circulation is the set of routes people walk through a room or a home. Good circulation is direct, clear of furniture, and never cuts through a conversation area.

In practice

Draw the routes on the plan before placing furniture: entry to window, door to door, kitchen to table. Main routes want about 90 cm clear; a path through the middle of a seating group makes a living room unusable.

Where the guide uses it

Related terms.

More from Space planning.

Clearance

Clearance is the minimum free space needed to use or pass a piece of furniture or a fixture. It is set by the body: knees, a chair pushed back, a door or drawer swung open.

Sightline

A sightline is the line of view from a key point, such as the front door or the sofa, to what sits at the end of it. Designers use sightlines to frame what should be seen and hide what shouldn’t.

Zoning

Zoning divides an open space into areas by use, such as cooking, eating and sitting, without building walls. Rugs, light, ceiling changes, furniture backs and changes of floor mark the zones.

Adjacency

Adjacency is which spaces need to sit next to each other, and which must be kept apart. Kitchen next to dining, bathroom near bedrooms, front door away from the sofa’s back.

Bubble diagram

A bubble diagram is a quick sketch of a plan’s zones as loose circles, sized roughly by area and linked by how people move between them. It fixes relationships before shapes.

Test fit

A test fit is placing real furniture at real size into a plan to prove the layout works. It catches what a room schedule hides: doors that hit sofas, beds with no way round.

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