Short answer: what the brief should contain
A layout brief describes how you live: who gets up when, where you eat, who works from home, how you have guests over and what you need to store. Add a list of rooms with priorities, the dimensions of furniture you are keeping and anything you do not want changed. You do not need to bring a finished layout.
I want it bright and spacious gives the designer nothing to solve. Two of us work from home, one is on calls all day, the children are in bed by nine and guests stay over once a month does. Layouts are built from sentences like that.
Describe an ordinary day and what bothers you
Walk through the day from morning to night. Who uses the bathroom first and whether they wake everyone else. Where breakfast happens. Where laundry dries. Where bags and shoes land when you come in. Where you watch a film in the evening, and where someone wants to read in peace.
Separately, note what annoys you in your current home. The table blocks the way through. You can hear the TV from the bedroom. Guests have to go through a bedroom to reach the toilet. Details like these tell the designer what to fix more precisely than any picture.
Room list and priorities
List the rooms you need and rank them. How many bedrooms now, and in five years. Whether you need a second bathroom, a dressing room, a study or a utility room. Open or closed kitchen is a decision in its own right, with its own article.
In a limited floor area, not everything fits. Pick three priorities and mark what you are prepared to give up. The Urgel flat in the Eixample fits four bedrooms, two bathrooms and an open kitchen into 109.80 m². A programme like that only works when it is clear from the start what matters more: the number of bedrooms, the size of the living room or a separate kitchen.
Storage and the furniture you are keeping
Work out what needs storing: seasonal clothes, shoes, suitcases, sports kit, the vacuum cleaner, pantry stock, paperwork. Storage that is thought of after the layout usually ends up as a wardrobe where it gets in the way.
If you are keeping furniture, such as a piano, a large dining table, a favourite sofa or bookcases, measure it and put it in the brief. An empty plan looks roomy, but once the bed, pulled-out chairs and open doors are drawn in, the impression changes.
The flat’s constraints: what defines the possible
The flat sets the frame. In Eixample buildings that often means a long plan running from street to inner courtyard, light from two sides and a dark middle, light wells, load-bearing walls and soil stacks that cannot go just anywhere. High ceilings open up options for mezzanines and storage up high.
Do not decide to remove a wall from a photo or sketch. Structure and services are assessed by the right specialists, and some changes need a permit from the ajuntament. Until then, treat decisions as provisional and do not buy furniture for a layout that has not been confirmed.
How to compare options
A designer usually offers two or three options. Judge each one on the same criteria: circulation and crossing points, daylight in the rooms where you spend the day, storage, separation of quiet and active zones, and how sound travels between bedrooms and living room.
The most useful trick is to live a day on the plan. Take each option and walk through the morning, the evening and a dinner with guests. Wherever routes cross or someone has to wait, it will be awkward in real life too.
What to hand over to the studio
Prepare any plans you have, photos of every room, dimensions of the furniture you are keeping, your three priorities in order and a list of what you do not want to touch. If there are no plans, the missing measurements are taken on site.
For projects in Barcelona and its province, BCN YARD links that brief to the design and the scope of the renovation: the layout is checked from the start against what it costs to build and what paperwork it needs. We reply within an hour and work in Spanish and Russian.