Who takes the measurements for hotel furniture

In a hotel supply, a bespoke piece is born twice: once on the design drawing, once on the site survey. Whoever performs the second one owns the dimensions. This is who surveys, when the survey should happen, what tolerances are reasonable to ask for, and what has to be left in writing afterwards.

Who is answerable for the dimensions, the designer or the maker?

An interior designer’s drawing describes an intention: proportions, materials, alignments, the relationship between the bed and the headboard, between the worktop and the window. It does not describe the wall as it was actually built. Only the person who measures it, after it has been plastered, knows that wall.

In contractual practice, liability follows the hand that measures. If the supplier goes on site, takes the dimensions and signs them off, the supplier answers for a piece that does not fit. If instead the supplier receives dimensions from someone else — the project manager, the main contractor, the design studio — and produces to them, the supplier answers for having produced in conformity, not for having measured correctly. That distinction matters a great deal on the day a wardrobe sits five millimetres out of square, and it is worth writing into the order before that day arrives rather than after.

The arrangement that holds up best is the simplest one: whoever makes it, measures it. Not because they are better with a tape, but because they are the only ones who know which dimensions they actually need. A joiner knows that a recess requires three widths and two depths, not one, and that the floor is not level.

What is the difference between a design drawing and a shop drawing?

The design drawing says what is wanted. The shop drawing says how it is made: real thicknesses, grain direction, joints, hardware, assembly sequence, dimensions taken on site. It is the document the supplier produces after the survey and submits for approval to the project manager or the design studio.

Approving a shop drawing does not transfer responsibility for the dimensions to the approver. The approver confirms that the piece matches the design; the dimensions remain with whoever took them. It is worth saying so explicitly in the email that accompanies the submission, because this is a frequent and expensive misunderstanding.

When is the right moment to survey?

There is only one useful survey: the one carried out when the surfaces the furniture touches are finished. Finished means plaster floated, floor laid, bathroom claddings in place, ceilings closed, service boxes flush. Before that moment, what is being measured is a site that will still change.

This creates the classic knot of hotel projects: furniture should be ordered early, because production lead times are long, and measured late, because the dimensions are not reliable before then. It is resolved in two steps rather than one. An indicative survey as soon as the walls are up, which is enough to release material purchases and all the work that does not depend on dimensions; and a final survey once the finishes are in, which freezes the dimensions and starts the cutting. In between, everything that does not hinge on a millimetre gets done.

Anyone planning a hotel room knows this sequence has to be agreed in advance, not negotiated on the run. The same logic governs the overall supply programme, which is best counted backwards from the opening date.

What happens if the site moves after the survey?

It nearly always does, and it is not an accident: a service is relocated, a cladding changes thickness, a door is moved. The point is not to prevent it but to know who tells whom. The final survey should close with a line saying that, from that moment, any change to the surveyed surfaces must be notified in writing within a stated period, and that beyond it the change is new work.

Without that line, every shift becomes an argument about common sense; with it, it becomes a variation, with its own cost and its own time, which is exactly what keeps an opening date standing.

What tolerances are reasonable to ask for?

Bespoke furniture is not a piece of precision engineering, and a building site is not a workbench. Asking for the millimetre along a nine-metre wall is not rigour; it is a requirement nobody can hold to, and in practice it simply moves the problem to the installation.

The sensible approach is to state two distinct things in the order: the manufacturing tolerance of the piece, which concerns the maker, and the fitting tolerance on site, which concerns the meeting between the piece and the wall. The second is handled by design, not by precision: scribe fillets, cover strips, recessed plinths, sacrificial side panels to be trimmed on site. A wardrobe designed with a scribe fillet fits a recess nobody built perfectly. A wardrobe designed flush fits only if the wall is perfect.

What has to be left in writing after the survey?

A survey that leaves no trace does not exist. What is needed, at the end of a day on site, is a document anyone can re-read six months later: a dimensioned plan of the room, numbered photographs of the critical points, a list of the conditions found — out of square, out of plumb, floor level differences, the real position of the electrical boxes — and the date. Signed by whoever surveyed, and sent to whoever has standing to dispute it.

It is the same principle that governs the document pack handed over with the furniture: in a long project, what is not written down simply never happened. The same goes for the documents attesting the fire performance of upholstered pieces, which we have covered in the guide to Class 1 IM.

Who pays if a piece does not fit?

It depends where the chain broke, and the chain has only three links. If the dimension is wrong against the reality of the site, whoever surveyed pays. If the dimension was right and the piece was made off-size, whoever made it pays. If the dimension was right at the time of the survey and the site changed afterwards, it is a client variation.

Almost every dispute in this field comes from the fact that none of the three links had been named in advance. Naming them costs one sentence in the order.

Why this is mainly a question of time

On a hotel project, the damage done by a wrong dimension is not the cost of remaking the piece. It is that the remade piece arrives six weeks later, and for those six weeks the room cannot be sold. What a well-run, documented, properly scheduled survey protects is the opening date: that is when the client starts invoicing.

How we work

Wood, marble, metal and upholstery worked in-house, in the same plant, means the survey goes back to the people who cut, with no intermediate step in which a dimension gets lost. Between the design and the bedroom there is our own manufacturing, with no intermediaries: when a detail has to change mid-course — it always does — it changes where the piece is being built.

An overview of how we work in the factory and on site is on the Contract page; pieces come either from our collections or from the designer’s drawing, and when a project calls for particular leathers and finishes it is worth reading the guide on which leather to choose. For a project under way, write to us.

Frequently asked questions

Is the survey charged separately?

It depends how the quotation is built. It should be clarified in advance, together with the number of site visits included: a second or third visit that was never priced becomes an argument at the worst possible moment.

Can everything be made from design dimensions, with no survey?

It can, for free-standing pieces — beds, armchairs, tables, seating. Not for pieces that touch the wall: fitted wardrobes, full-width headboards, panelling, counters, made-to-measure tops. For those, the design drawing is an indication, not a dimension.

Who should attend the final survey?

Someone with standing to confirm that the finishes are the final ones. Usually the project manager or the main contractor: what is needed is someone who can state in writing that this floor and this cladding are not changing again.

How long does it take to survey a hotel room?

Less than feared for the first room, much less for the ones after it, because hotel rooms are repetitive by construction. The real time goes into recording the exceptions: corner rooms, rooms under the roof pitch, rooms with a column.

Talk to us All the guides

The figures and indications on this page are orders of magnitude and should be read as such: every site has its own conditions, and the dimensions that count are the ones taken on site. The allocation of responsibility described here reflects current contract practice and does not replace what is set out in the contract between the parties.