The Art of Bespoke Furniture: A Guide for Interior Designers

November 3, 2024

Have you ever thought about the most effective and conducive way to work with bespoke furniture makers?

And why a positive collaboration is crucial for achieving successful commissions.

Turning your vision for your client into a reality is what we do.  But to make that vision one that is achieved without compromise, delay, or cost increases we recommend taking some time to understand some of the fundamentals of the bespoke furniture craftsmanship process.

By investing in your knowledge, you can help to ensure the decisions you make in your design vision work with the manufacturing process and not against it.  So as to achieve the vision you and your client want, without unnecessary extra time, cost or heartache.

Here are the top five things that you can bear in mind to create a seamless flow between your design and the bespoke furniture process:

  1. Materials: An understanding of material selection, and what can be achieved and what cannot from different materials, as not all materials will be right for all design specifications. For instance, some specialist finishes can’t be applied to some material surface types.
  2. Understanding Ironmongery: Understanding this capability, ensures your design drawings are viable for the carcass construction underpinning your vision.
  3. Reduce Changes: Even the smallest changes can dramatically alter drawings and have construction implications and then cost implications. So, we strongly advise you to spend appropriate time fine-tuning your designs and getting full agreement from your client before the project gets underway.
  4. Drawing time: In many instances, design drawings come to us, and we need to adapt the concepts to fit within what is possible for bespoke furniture craftmanship. These adaptations often affect cost and time and may alter the project vision you and your client have settled upon.
  5. Partnership: The most successful commissions are the ones where all the creatives work in partnership. It may not always be a straight road, but if we work together with goodwill and trust (and a little bit of knowledge) we can navigate any bumps with ease.
  6. If all of this seems complicated, please do not worry. We are here and want to help. Our team can advise on all aspects of the above.  We want the journey to be an enjoyable and rewarding one for all, so it will help us, to help you and achieve what we all want.

We also offer Continuous Professional Development (CPD’s) sessions on all the areas highlighted above and all aspects of the bespoke furniture process.

These can be held at our Church Lawford site in Warwickshire or we can come to you. Please reach out to find out more and let’s craft excellence together.