What an Interior Designer Supplies for a Rendering

This is the list we ask for at the start of an interior rendering engagement. It is short deliberately: the goal is to start with what is settled rather than to wait for a complete package that may never arrive intact.

Blocking

Dimensioned plans. With ceiling heights, which are omitted more often than anything else on the list and are not inferable. Where ceilings vary, drop, coffer or vault, that geometry has to come from a reflected ceiling plan or a section.

Finish direction. Enough to establish flooring, walls, ceiling and any millwork. Detail is covered in specifying FFE and materials, but something has to be decided before production starts or the first pass is a proposal rather than a depiction.

Needed, not blocking

• Interior elevations. Required for kitchens, baths, built ins, feature walls and anything with millwork. Without them the vertical design is our interpretation of a plan.
• Reflected ceiling plan. Fixture positions, ceiling changes, and any architectural lighting.
• FFE list. Hero pieces with references, supporting pieces by style and size.
• Window and glazing information. Position, size, mullion pattern and what is outside. The outlook is part of the room and it is frequently unspecified.
• Lighting intent. Day or evening, warm or neutral, and which fixtures should read as on.
• View direction. Which rooms, and from where. If it is not given, we will propose views from the plan, but the designer usually has an intent.
• Output requirements. Covered in resolution and print specs.

Useful extras

Reference images of the mood you are after, which communicate faster than descriptions. Any existing model, even a rough SketchUp massing, since it carries your spatial intent directly. Site photographs where the project is a renovation, because the existing condition constrains what is possible. And a named approver, so review comments arrive as one voice.

What slows an interior package down

Missing ceiling heights, which stop modeling outright. Elevations that contradict the plan. FFE described but not referenced, so each item becomes a question. Views added after production begins, which is a scope change rather than a revision. And selections still under discussion, which in our experience is the single biggest reason interior images get produced twice.

If the space is already built and finished, the alternative is covered in interior renderings versus interior photography. Plan level deliverables are on 3D floor plans.