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Its time to start interiors for my villa and I am looking for branded interior designers at reasonable rate. I am planning to go for contemporary design. I have visited homelane yesterday and awaiting their quote. Capricost is another website that has offers from themselves and also from stylespa. If any one has done branded interiors recently, pls suggest a good company.

Perhaps, Branded ones and reasonable cost doesn't go in one line. If you are very keen for brand name, you need to shell out more. Each brands uses his own specs and costs according to that. Preferably, based on your specs(Material and finishing), you need to compare the costs of branded ones.

Alternately, if you have the concept, vision of what is your need and fair idea of raw material, you can get even a better one from some of the Modular designers at reasonable rates compared to branded ones. As they do all works with automated machines, you can expect similar finishing compared to branded ones. Also you will
have a choice of physically monitoring the work while its in progress.

Thanks msn for the input!

After receiving quotations from couple of branded as well as non branded vendors, I have decided to proceed with the below plan;

- Get the design from a good interior designer. Most of the branded ones provide couple of design options free. Even some of the experienced carpenters got great ideas.
- Get it executed with a reliable and reasonable non branded local company.

I'm particular about giving it to a company where they use machines for pressing, edge binding etc. I find the cost difference between a local carpenter and a non branded company (with machines) almost negligible.

I thought of giving labour contract but based on my calculations it will not make a huge difference in the cost.

Good Simran

you have made a wise decision, by doing a good home work.

Unless we know the basics of the materials, just looking for only a labour contract may end up with more spending or too much of efforts
which may not get any benefit.

Also nowadays, many of the carpenters doesn't do all works at the site. Instead they go for machine finishing and carry out only installation
at the site. Hence going for a branded ones or just only a labour contract may not be a good choice.

Though I prefer to use green ply, hettich accessories and century laminate, the question is "Do we really need to be brand conscious?"
There are other equivalent or better brands (in terms of quality) that are priced lesser. Do we really should pay for the brand name?

Hi Simran
There are no branded interior designers in the market ,they are branded vendors / decorators .Its like this a "person selling medicine is pharmacist not a doctor ". This not to offend some one .
To under stand a basic difference between decorators /vendors and an interior designer/architect
1.A decorator / vendor give you solutions with in the options they have in there stores and they never look at the design in a holistic way .Imagine you go to a kitchen vendor who doesn't have built in dishwasher options ,obviously he will be convincing you not to go for it .
2.Decorators are meant to be good at selecting the existing stuff and match them to get a concept , vendors are meant to supply what ever a designer / owner needs to fulfill his design.

I am not saying here that everyone should go to a interior designer/architect but understand the options available in the market before finalizing on one .You can be a designer for your flat but you need to do a proper market research rather than just accepting what ever the vendor say.


For some unknown reason my posting was sitting in draft ,hope its not too late to post it

Regards
Ar.Praveen.N
ardes architects and Interior designers
http://www.ardesarchitects.com
https://www.facebook.com/ardes.architects

Thanks Praveen, the post is really helpful for many.

btw, what is the optimum size of ply to be used in kitchen and wardrobes? 19mm or 16mm?

HI Simran
For kitchen or wardrobe you can use both 16 & 19 .Over a period i realized that 19mm is too heavy and some times over design in terms of strength.The issue in 16mm ply is about bending if the shutter sizes are bigger .since in the kitchen shutter sizes are small you can use 16mm .
The other benefit of using 16mm is that you get all variety of edge beading in the market are 22mm wide used on 16mm ply ,where as 19mm ply needs 30mm edge beading and the stocks are available in very limited colors sometimes no production at all.
Tough all the factory make kitchen suppliers say its 19mm ply but they actually use 16mm .In fact an MR grade ply is only 18mm thick not 19mm
So if you are planning for factory edge beading don't use 19mm ply, otherwise its your choice .

Regards
Ar.Praveen.N
ardes architects and Interior designers
http://www.ardesarchitects.com
https://www.facebook.com/ardes.architects

Hey Simran,
We got our 3BHK independent house done by a company called interazzo.com. Its a startup same as homelane but much cheaper. You can google them. They prices are also fixed. They even haven't charged for bit extra work. They used everything of Hettich in my house. They have option of Hafele and Blum as well. They have done nice work in my budget as i was running short of budget during the completion of my house.
See if this can help you.

hi, simran sir can u brief it like how many wardrobes/loft & what was the size, kitchen size what all included & total amount paid.