A small number of genuinely different ideas. Seeing one you don't want is how you find the one you do.
How many concept options should you get? It's a fair question, and the honest answer is that the number matters less than whether they're genuinely different. Three drawings of the same house with the kitchen in different corners, or three different ideas about how you'd live here — both get called options, and the difference between them is most of the value of this stage.
Nobody sets a rule about the number. More isn't better — five usually means the thinking hasn't been done yet.
The useful ones test a decision rather than a preference. Extend at the rear, or raise and build underneath. Keep the kitchen where it is, or move the whole living end towards the north. Those choices set the cost of everything after them, and they're far easier to weigh up while they're still only drawings.
Seeing an option you don't want is very often how you work out the one you do.
Two or three distinct schemes, drawn far enough to compare properly, each with an order of cost against it. Options are how a design gets tested rather than defended, and comparing them surfaces your real priorities while changes still cost nothing.
The pleasure of being shown something you'd never have thought of. This is the stage you'll tell your friends about, and the one where you can finally see what you're paying for.
With a single scheme presented as the answer, there's nothing to compare it against — so feedback becomes cosmetic, a preference about a window rather than a question about the plan.
I promise you genuinely different approaches, not one idea with three window variations. That's a real commitment, and it's the reason concept design carries a meaningful share of the fee — three schemes is three times the thinking. An explorer shows you the territory. A designer shows you the answer. I'd rather show you the territory, because seeing an option you don't want is very often how you work out the one you do.
There's no standard. Two or three genuinely different approaches is a reasonable expectation for a house. What matters more than the number is what's agreed in advance — how many options are included, how many rounds of revision come with them, and what a further round would cost. Ask before you become attached to the idea of a fourth.
Schematic design is the international term for what we usually call concept design here. Concept settles the big moves: the plan, the massing, where things sit, roughly how it works. Design development takes the approved concept, resolves it to the level the approvals need, brings your engineer and consultants in, and locks it down.
Some include them, many don't, so ask rather than assume — it usually sits as an additional service rather than inside the base fee. Worth knowing too: a polished render is a persuasion tool, and it can flatter a plan that doesn't work. A model you can turn around, or a section showing how the light gets in, tells you more about living there.
Yes, and this is the stage for it. Just be clear which of two things you're asking for. A change to an existing option — move the stair, flip the plan, drop the roof — is usually part of the stage. A fourth distinct scheme is additional work, and I'll tell you what it costs before I draw it.
Yes — an order of cost, which is a range rather than a price. A concept you can't afford wastes your time, and the best moment to find that out is while there are still three on the table. I bring a cost opinion to the presentation, and if an option needs a quantity surveyor's eye, I'll organise it.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.
