Short answer: what the studio needs
To commission interior design remotely, the studio needs five things: a description of how you live; a plan and photos of the flat, flagging which dimensions are unverified; the budget level; a list of what is being kept; and approval rules — who signs off, in what format, and where decisions are recorded.
Videos and the plan from the sales listing are fine to start with, but an on-site survey is still needed. Distance changes how you communicate, not the amount of work: the design has to be as precise as if you lived round the corner.
Describe how you live, not just what you like
Who will live in the flat and for how many months a year. Who cooks and how: daily, or at weekends for guests. Whether you need a workspace with decent light for video calls. How much clothing, sports kit and luggage. Any pets. What annoys you about where you live now.
References help when each comes with a comment: “I like the light from the window”, “I like the wood texture, not the wall colour”. A folder of a hundred images with no notes usually mixes incompatible ideas and leaves the designer guessing, and guessing at a distance costs extra rounds of revisions.
Separate facts from assumptions
Send everything you have: the plan from the deeds or the listing, photos of every room from all four corners, a video walk-through with a tape measure in shot. Flag from the start which dimensions are checked and which come from the sales plan. Listing plans are often out by tens of centimetres, and in old Eixample buildings the walls are rarely square.
A video call helps to understand the brief but does not replace a survey. We arrange the site visit and measurements: ceiling heights, positions of soil stacks, windows and radiators, the consumer unit. From then on the design shows what is confirmed and what is still an assumption.
State the budget level up front
A design with no budget looks great in a render and is useless on site. We work with three indicative renovation levels, excluding VAT: Basic from €1,000/m², Standard from €2,000/m², Luxury from €3,000/m². For a 100 m² flat the gap between levels runs to hundreds of thousands of euros, and a Luxury design on a Basic budget will have to be redone.
We set exact scope and price in the quote after a site visit and measurements. But naming a level at the start lets the designer choose materials that fit it from day one.
How approvals work at a distance
One contact person on your side and one on ours. A versioned decision log: what is approved, when and by whom, what is still open. Regular calls at a time that works for both time zones.
Do not approve colour or texture on a screen: monitors and lighting distort shades. For important finishes, physical samples: we can post them to you or show them to someone you trust here. The approved sample is labelled and kept until the end. Anything undecided is written down before purchasing, not discovered on delivery day.
Also agree who decides when you cannot be reached, say during two weeks of holiday off-grid. A trusted person authorised to approve minor substitutions, or the rule “we wait for your answer and the schedule moves”: both work if chosen in advance, not when the crew is already standing idle.
The build while you are away
If the design moves into a build, the distance remains. Weekly photo reports and a video call from site at the key moments: before walls are closed, when all services are visible; before tiling, when the setting-out is approved; and at handover. Those three visits, in person or by video, give more control than daily messages.
One person runs the project in Spanish and Russian, so you do not have to act as interpreter between designer, site manager and suppliers.
Next step
Send us the plan, photos and a couple of paragraphs on how you want to live in the flat. We reply within an hour, arrange a measuring visit and propose an approval routine that suits your time zone.