Online interior design · Portland & remote · Est. 2019

Taking rooms for October

hello@alcovea.studio

The living room, drawn in fourteen days.

From $795

23 pieces typical

$4,180 median budget

Typical size

140 to 300 sq ft

Design fee

$795, fixed

Delivered in

14 days, 11 on average

Pieces on the list

20 to 30

Median furnishing spend

$4,180

Kept from the client

4 pieces on average

Five decisions

Everything else in the room follows from these.

01 — Which wall the sofa faces

Not the biggest wall. The one that puts your back to the door and your eyes on the window or the fire.

02 — How far the table sits

Eighteen inches from the sofa edge, and enough room to walk past it without turning sideways.

03 — Where the second seat goes

The chair nobody sits in is always the one facing nothing. It gets a lamp and a view, or it does not go in the plan.

04 — What the rug has to reach

Front legs on, at minimum. A rug that floats in the middle makes a large room feel like a waiting area.

05 — Light after dark

Three sources at different heights, on separate switches. This is the one people skip and the one they email about later.

Where the money goes

A $4,180 living room, split as it usually falls.

35%

18%

17%

30%

Seating

$1,480 · the one line worth the trade discount

Rug

$740 · where a cheap choice shows within a winter

Tables

$620 · usually the easiest place to save

Light, storage, the rest

$1,340 · twelve to eighteen smaller lines

Taken from the Alberta Street loft and typical of the twenty-three living rooms drawn last year. Every line on your own list carries a cheaper alternate, and the plan names the four pieces that hold the room together if the budget stops early.

Two we drew

The same package, two different rooms.

Alberta Street loft

$4,180 · 11 days · 4 pieces kept

Sellwood house

$2,960 · 13 days · 7 pieces kept

Both were drawn from four photographs and two measurements, by people who have never been inside either room.