How to brief a furniture maker

You do not need to know what a breadboard end is to commission furniture well. A maker needs 7 things from you, all of them plain: what the piece is, a size or a room size, what else is in the room, a budget range, a date, any hard constraint, and photos. The 8th thing, the one almost nobody sends, is the width of the narrowest doorway on the delivery route.

The 7 things a maker needs

| What to send | Why it decides the quote | Good example | | --- | --- | --- | | The piece | Sets the whole cost basis, from $900 for a bedhead to $3,500 and up for a joinery run | "A dining table" | | Rough size, or the room size | Timber volume drives price. Room size drives the size recommendation | "Room is 4,600mm by 3,200mm" | | The room and its contents | A buffet 500mm deep in a 900mm walkway is a mistake made on paper | "Open plan, sits against the north wall next to a buffet" | | A budget range | Lets the maker design to your number instead of guessing at it | "$3,000 to $5,000" | | A date | Decides whether the piece is even possible. 8 to 14 weeks on a table | "Needed by 20 December" | | Hard constraints | Matching existing joinery or a colour is a real cost driver | "Must match the oak kitchen doors" | | Photos | 3 plain shots of the room beat any description | Walls, floor, window, the neighbouring piece |

Write those into an email and you will get a real number back inside a week. Leave out the budget and the date and you will get 2 clarifying emails first, which is how a fortnight disappears out of a lead time. The full sequence is set out in how commissioning actually works.

Why a budget range helps you, not the maker

The most common worry is that naming a number means the quote comes back at exactly that number. In custom work the opposite is closer to true.

A quote is assembled from choices: species, top thickness, base design, drawer count, finish, hardware grade. Every one of those has a cheap end and an expensive end, and the gap between them on a dining table is roughly $2,800 to $9,000 for the same brief. A maker with no budget signal has to pick a point on that scale blind. A maker told "$3,000 to $5,000" builds the best table available inside it, usually by moving species down and keeping the joinery and the finish up, which is the right trade.

Give a range with a $2,000 spread on a mid-sized piece. If the honest answer is that you do not know what things cost, read the cost guide first and then set the range.

What you genuinely do not need to decide

These are the 4 things people delay their own enquiry over, and none of them belongs in a brief:

• Species. You need a budget band, not a board. Tasmanian oak is the baseline, blackwood sits 35% to 55% above it, and a maker will hand you half-oiled offcuts to compare in your own light. Choose after you see them.
• Finish. This is a genuine decision, but it is a stage 3 decision made against the drawing, not a stage 1 one.
• Joinery. How the legs meet the rails, how the top is fixed, how a drawer is built. This is the expertise you are buying. Specifying it in advance usually costs money.
• Hardware. Runner brands, hinge types, handle finishes. Say "soft close" and let the maker specify the grade.

Saying "I do not know yet, what do you recommend" is a completely normal answer to all 4, and it is a better answer than a guessed one.

The 1 detail everyone forgets

Access. It is the single most common cause of a delivery day going wrong in Adelaide, and it costs nothing to check.

A 2,400mm solid timber top weighs 60kg to 90kg. It cannot be tilted much, it cannot be folded, and 2 people carrying it need room to turn. Adelaide's older housing stock is full of routes that defeat it: 820mm doors, hallways that end in a right-angle turn, verandah steps with a post at the corner, and staircases in a converted villa that have a landing too tight to swing a long panel around.

Measure and send these 4 numbers:

| Access point | What to measure | The number that causes trouble | | --- | --- | --- | | Front or side door | Clear opening width with the door open | Under 820mm | | Hallway turn | Both hallway widths at the corner | Under 900mm on either leg | | Stairs | Width, plus the diagonal at any landing | Any landing under 1,100mm across | | Lift, if applicable | Internal depth, width and door width | Internal depth under 1,400mm |

If the route does not work, the piece can still be built. A top can be made in 2 halves with a draw-bolted joint, a base can be knock-down, and a fitted unit can be delivered flat and assembled in the room. All of those are decisions made at design stage for a small cost. Made on delivery day, they are a return trip and a rebuild.

A brief you can copy

Paste this, fill it in, send it. It is 5 minutes of work and it is the whole of your job at stage 1.

• Piece: what you want made
• Size: the size you have in mind, or "not sure, room is X by Y"
• Room: which room, what it does, what the piece sits next to
• Budget: a range, for example $3,000 to $5,000
• Timing: the date you want it by, and whether that date is hard or soft
• Constraints: anything it has to match, avoid, fit around or support
• Style: 2 or 3 reference images, with a line on what you like about each
• Access: narrowest doorway, hallway turn, stairs, in millimetres
• Photos: 3 or 4 plain shots of the actual room
• Anything you already know you do not want

That last line saves more time than any other. "Not a live edge" or "no visible steel" removes an entire design direction before it is drawn.

What happens after you send it

Expect a reply within 2 to 4 working days, then a drawing and a firm quote inside 1 to 3 weeks. If a dining table is the piece, work through the clearance rules before you approve anything, because the size you assume a room takes and the size it actually takes are frequently 300mm apart.

If the date matters, check it against real timeframes in our lead time guide before you commit to it. And if you want a sense of what different trades build, Wood Solutions is the reference the Australian industry itself uses on species and timber performance.

Ready to send a brief? Furniture makers in Adelaide covers how they quote and what we check first, and custom desks is a good example of a piece where a 15mm dimension change is the entire brief.