The Furniture Specification Standard for Architects
This is the set of fields a bespoke furniture specification needs before it can be quoted or built — 34 of them across 6 sections, written by a manufacturer that receives specifications every week and can tell you exactly which field was missing. It is free to use with any maker, not only with Designatore.
Why it exists: most delays on a furniture package are not manufacturing delays. They are missing-information delays. A schedule line reading “sofa — 1 no.” cannot be priced, so it comes back as a question; the question waits for a client decision; the decision waits for a meeting. Nothing was being made that whole time, and nothing could have been. Fill in the fields below before the schedule leaves your office and the first thing you hear back is a drawing rather than a query list.
1. Identification
Every other field on this page depends on everybody agreeing which piece is being discussed. Identification is the cheapest section to fill in and the most expensive one to leave out.
| Field | Why it matters | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Project reference | A maker runs several projects at once and a drawing arrives as an attachment with a name a computer chose. Without a reference, your file is filed against your email address rather than your job. | One project name or number, written the same way on the drawing, the schedule and the email — not three variants of the same name. |
| Unit or room type | The same item code can mean two different pieces in two apartment types, and a floor plan cannot tell a factory which one the schedule line belongs to. | The room, floor or unit type against every line: Type B apartment, second floor, main bedroom. Repeated types named once and referenced after that. |
| Item code | The code is what ties a schedule line to a drawing sheet, a quote line, a shop drawing, a crate label and a snag. Break that chain anywhere and the rest of the project is spent rebuilding it by hand. | A short, stable code that never changes meaning — WD-01, TBL-04 — used on the drawing and the schedule identically, including its leading zero. |
| Quantity | Quantity changes the piece, not only the price. One of something is made; twelve of something is engineered, prototyped and jigged, and the two are drawn differently from the start. | A number against every line, with handed pairs stated as such — six left-hand and six right-hand, not twelve. |
| Revision number and date | This is the single field that stops the wrong drawing being built. Drawings are emailed, forwarded, printed and re-sent, and the newest file on the factory server is not always the newest drawing. A revision number and a date make the question answerable in two seconds instead of a phone call. | Rev A, Rev B, Rev C in the title block with a date and a one-line note of what changed. A superseded revision should be impossible to mistake for a current one. |
2. Dimensions and geometry
A shape is not a size, and a size is not a size until its units are stated. This section is where most quoting stalls, because a piece with no numbers on it cannot be costed at all.
| Field | Why it matters | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Overall size, W × D × H | It is the first thing a maker needs and the most frequently missing. Material consumption, machine time, crate size and freight all start here. | Three numbers in millimetres, in a stated order, on every line — including the loose pieces people assume are standard. Millimetres are the working unit in furniture manufacturing; if you send inches or centimetres, say so in writing. |
| Critical dimensions, marked as critical | Some numbers must be held exactly and some are nominal. A maker who does not know which is which either holds them all — expensively, and sometimes impossibly — or picks, and picks wrong. | The dimensions that cannot move flagged on the drawing: the clear opening a chair must pass under, the height that aligns with an adjacent worktop, the width between two fixed walls. Everything else read as nominal. |
| Tolerance where it matters | Timber moves, stone comes in slab sizes, and a wall is never straight. A drawing that shows no tolerance is asking for a tolerance of zero, which is a promise no material keeps. | A number, not an adjective: a 3mm shadow line, a 2mm reveal, a scribe allowance at each end of a fitted run. State where a gap is deliberate so it is not read as an error. |
| Seat heights, depths and angles for seating | Seating is the one category where the geometry is comfort. Seat height, seat depth, back angle and arm height decide whether the piece works, and none of them can be inferred from an elevation. | Finished seat height and seat depth in millimetres, back angle in degrees, arm height, and the foam or suspension intent — firm, medium or soft — stated rather than left to the upholsterer's judgement. |
| Site constraint dimensions | The plan dimension and the site dimension are both correct and they are rarely the same number. Plaster, skirting, cornice, floor fall and services each take millimetres off an opening before the piece arrives. | The opening measured at three heights with the smallest reading given, plus the finished ceiling height at the final position. Fitted work is built to the smallest reading with a scribe filler at each end. |
| Access route dimensions | Access is decided the day the piece is drawn, not the day it arrives. A one-piece top much over 2,400mm rarely fits a passenger lift, and a piece that will not turn a stair landing has to be designed to come apart before it is made. | Lift car internal size and clear door opening, the narrowest door leaf measured open, staircase width, headroom and the half-landing, corridor width and every corner turn. A break in a top decided in CAD is invisible; discovered on delivery day it is a cut through your veneer. |
3. Materials and finishes
This is the section where adjectives do the most damage. Every material has a name, a reference or a number, and the difference between the name and the adjective is the difference between a quote and a guess.
| Field | Why it matters | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Timber and veneer, by species and cut | "Walnut" describes a family, a price range and half a dozen appearances. The cut changes the figure completely, and the matching decides whether four doors read as one panel or four. | Species by name, cut named — crown, quarter, rift — and the matching stated: book match, slip match or sequence-matched across a run. Add a grain direction arrow on every panel, including the ones nobody sees. |
| Stone, by name and finish | Stone is a natural material bought by the slab, and two slabs of the same name are not the same stone. The finish changes the colour as much as the surface does. | The stone named, the finish named — polished, honed, leathered — the edge profile drawn, and whether you want to approve the actual slab rather than a lookalike sample. Say if veining must run continuously across a joint. |
| Metal, by alloy and plating | "Brass" can be solid brass, brass-plated steel or a lacquered finish over either, and the three behave differently in the hand, over time and on the invoice. | The base metal, the plating or coating, the finish — brushed, polished, antiqued — and whether it is lacquered. If the metal must match another element in the room, say which one. |
| Fabric and leather, in full | An upholstery line with no reference cannot be priced, cannot be ordered and cannot be repeated in year three when a client wants a matching pair. | Mill or brand, pattern reference, colourway, width, repeat, and the Martindale or abrasion rating the use demands. State railroaded or not, the nap direction, and who supplies the material — you as a client-supplied roll, or the maker. |
| Finish and sheen level | Two pieces in the same room, finished by two people to the same written description, will not match unless the sheen is a number. Sheen is also the field most often left out entirely. | The finish system named — PU, lacquer, oil or hand polish — with the sheen given as a gloss level rather than as "matt". Colour by RAL, NCS or Pantone reference, because a photograph is a direction and a reference is an instruction. |
| What to specify when matching an existing piece | Matching is the request most likely to fail, because the thing being matched is not on any drawing and has usually aged. A written description of an existing finish is almost never enough to reproduce it. | Send a physical sample — an offcut, a drawer front, a spare tile — not a photograph, and say what must match: the colour, the sheen, the grain, or all three. Ask for a sample panel back and approve it against the original in daylight before the run starts. |
4. Construction and hardware
A design drawing shows what a piece looks like; this section is where you say how much of how it is built you intend to control. Anything you leave open here, a good maker will resolve and tell you about — but only if it knows you left it open on purpose.
| Field | Why it matters | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Carcass material and panel thickness | The carcass decides the weight, the cost, the fixing method and how the piece behaves in a humid room. It is invisible in the finished piece and decisive in it. | The board or timber named, with thicknesses against each element: 18mm carcass, 25mm top, 6mm back rebated in. State the edge treatment on exposed board and how the back is finished. |
| Joint type where it matters | Most joints can be left to the maker. A few cannot — a mitre on a veneered panel, a cantilever, an unsupported span — and those are the ones that fail if nobody named them. | The joint named at the junctions you care about — mitre, dowel, dado, mortise and tenon — and a note that the rest are the maker's standard, so the drawing office knows the difference. |
| Hardware, by make and model | "Soft-close" is a behaviour, not a product. Hinges, runners and mechanisms need real clearances — a side-mount runner takes 12.5mm each side, push-to-open needs travel behind the front — and those clearances change the carcass. | Manufacturer and model number for hinges, runners, lifts, locks and any mechanism, with the finish. If a project is standardised on one hardware brand, say so once at the top of the schedule. |
| Edge detail and profile | The edge is what a hand touches and an eye reads first, and it is drawn at 1:50 as a line, which conveys nothing. | A detail at a readable scale for every edge condition that is not square: chamfer, bullnose, shadow gap, applied lipping. Say how thick the lipping is, because it decides whether the veneer can be sanded. |
| Load and use requirements | A shelf drawn 1,200mm long is a different shelf if it holds books rather than a photograph. Load, span and the way a piece will actually be used decide thickness, support and joint. | The intended load on shelves and long spans, whether a top is sat on or stood on, and any weight limit that matters. Say if a piece will be moved, dismantled or reconfigured after installation. |
| Backs, unseen faces and breakdown | An unbalanced panel cups. A piece that will not come apart cannot get up a stair. Both are settled in the drawing office and neither is visible in a rendering. | Whether backs and unseen faces are finished, painted or carry a balancer veneer, and where a large piece breaks down — with a note on how the split is hidden and pulled back together. |
5. Services and integration
Furniture that holds equipment is a coordination problem before it is a joinery problem. Everything in this section is cut into a panel, which means it has to be known before the panel is cut.
| Field | Why it matters | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Cable management | Cables are the most common reason a beautiful desk looks wrong in a photograph six months later. The route has to exist inside the piece, not be found afterwards. | Where cables enter, where they run, where they leave, and what carries them — a tray, a spine, a grommet. Give the grommet position and diameter on the drawing rather than "as required". |
| Power and data cut-outs | A cut-out is a hole in a finished surface. Its position is permanent, and moving it after veneering means a new top. | The make and model of every power or data module, its cut-out size, and its position dimensioned from a fixed edge. State whether the maker supplies the module or cuts for one you supply. |
| Lighting integration | Integrated lighting brings a driver, a heat allowance, a switching route and a maintenance access requirement with it, and none of those fit in a piece that was drawn without them. | The fitting or strip by make and model, the channel or rebate it sits in, where the driver lives and how it is reached, and where the cable leaves the piece. Lighting fixtures themselves are usually outside a furniture maker's scope — say who supplies them. |
| Appliance and AV apertures | An appliance aperture is dimensioned from the appliance, not from the drawing. Manufacturers publish those dimensions and they differ between models that look identical. | Make and model of every appliance, screen or AV component, with the manufacturer's aperture, ventilation and service-access dimensions attached. "A 65-inch screen" is not a dimension; a model number is. |
| Plumbing, where relevant | A vanity, a bar unit or a pantry piece is cut around pipework that is already in the wall or the floor, and that pipework rarely lands where the drawing assumed. | Waste and supply positions dimensioned from a fixed datum, the basin or sink by make and model, the tap hole positions and centres, and a note on which surfaces need to be water-resistant. |
6. Delivery and site
The specification is not finished at the piece. Where it goes, how it gets in, who signs for it and what happens to the small faults afterwards all belong on the same document as the joint detail.
| Field | Why it matters | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery address and site contact | A crate needs a street address and a person, not a project name. This is where a package quietly loses a week, and it costs nothing to prevent. | The full delivery address with pincode, a named site contact with a working phone number, and the days and hours the site actually accepts deliveries. |
| Access route and constraints | The route decides the crate as much as the piece does, and a route with finished floors on it decides where the crate can be opened. | The route from the truck to the final position, with the lift, stair and door dimensions from section two, plus any loading restriction, permit or time window. Note finished floors and finishes already installed on the route. |
| Site readiness | Furniture delivered into an unfinished room is furniture stored on a building site, and stored furniture is damaged furniture. | The condition the room will be in on the agreed date — floors laid, walls painted, services live, wet trades finished — and who confirms it. Say what happens if the room is not ready. |
| Who receives and who signs | A delivery signed for by whoever was standing nearest is a delivery nobody inspected. The signature is the moment responsibility moves. | A named person, or a stated role, authorised to receive and sign, and a stated process for recording any transit damage at the moment of unpacking rather than a week later. |
| Snagging process | Small faults surface after installation on every project, on every piece, from every maker. What separates good jobs from bad ones is whether the process was agreed before anyone needed it. | One walk-round producing one written snag list, a route for submitting it, and a sign-off at the end. Agree in advance who attends, and separate maker snags from site damage caused by other trades. |
| Phasing for repeated units | A package that arrives all at once into a fit-out running floor by floor becomes a storage problem instead of a delivery. And a repeated piece delivered in full before anyone has approved one is a mistake made many times. | Delivery split by floor, room or phase, with crates labelled to match, and a control unit approved first where a piece repeats — the rest built to match the approved one. |
The 10 Things Most Often Missing
Across the drawing sets and schedules that reach a furniture factory, the same fields go missing again and again. These 10 account for most of the query lists that go back to an architect before a price can be given. Check them last, before you send.
The units
A number with no unit is not a dimension. A 96 that meant inches and was read as millimetres is not a small mistake, and it is caught by one line in the covering email.
The revision number
Two versions of the same sheet in circulation and no way to tell which is current. The wrong drawing gets built by a factory that was following instructions.
The third dimension
Plan and elevation give width and height; depth is assumed. Many schedules carry two numbers where three are needed, and depth is usually the one that decides whether the piece fits.
Which dimensions are critical
Everything is drawn to the same weight, so nothing is. The maker cannot tell the alignment that must be exact from the one that can move five millimetres.
The finish sheen
A colour reference arrives without a gloss level, so two elements finished to the same specification do not match in the same light.
Hardware by make and model
"Soft-close" and "push-to-open" are behaviours. The clearances they need are real numbers that change the carcass, and they come from a model number.
The fabric reference in full
A mill name with no pattern reference, colourway or abrasion rating cannot be ordered, priced or matched later.
Services and cut-outs
Power, data, lighting and appliance apertures arrive after the panel has been drawn, sometimes after it has been cut. Each one is a hole in a finished surface.
The access route
Lift, stair and the narrowest door leaf. A piece designed to come apart is invisible; a piece cut apart on site is not.
Who approves, and in what order
A specification that does not say whether the architect, the client or both sign the shop drawing — and in which sequence — stalls at the approval it did not name.
This page checks your specification. Its sibling checks the manufacturer you are about to send it to.
Open the Furniture Factory Audit Checklist →How a Specification Becomes a Shop Drawing
A manufacturer does not build from your design drawing. It builds from a shop drawing engineered out of it — and the gap between the two is exactly the information this standard asks you to supply.
At Designatore the sequence runs the same way every time. The set arrives and is checked first for format, version, units and scale, against a known dimension on the sheet. Everything the drawing does not resolve comes back as one consolidated query list, not a drip of messages — and it comes back before a price, because the answers are what the price is made of. Our Design & Technical Development department, the first of the ten departments in the building the piece is cut in, then engineers your design intent into a shop drawing: panel thicknesses named, joints named at every junction, hardware given a make and a model and the clearance it needs to work, grain direction arrowed on every panel, backs and unseen faces stated, tolerances written as numbers, and the break-down that gets the piece through your door.
Sometimes a set carries an instruction that cannot be built exactly as drawn — a thin stone top over an open span, a push-to-open front with no gap drawn for it, a cantilever timber will not hold. That is not a failure of the design; it is what detailing is for. Each one comes back in writing with a reason while the drawing is still a drawing. You approve the shop drawing, and only then is anything cut. Where a piece is genuinely new or repeats across a run, a prototype or a control unit is built and signed off before the rest follows. See how we work from an architect's drawings for the full exchange, or how a whole package runs when the specification covers a floor rather than a piece.
File Formats and What Each Is Good For
Send the drawing itself, not a print of it. Designatore reads DWG, DXF, PDF, SKP, 3DM and STEP, and each one carries a different part of the answer. Whatever you send, state the units in writing: millimetres are the working unit in the factory.
| Format | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| DWG | The native drawing. Lines, layers, blocks and dimension entities a maker can measure directly rather than scale off a print. | Unitless files, exploded blocks, and forty layers with no names. State the units in the email even when the file carries them. |
| DXF | The interchange format when the drawing has to move between different CAD packages without losing its geometry. | Version differences and lost layer structure. Send a PDF of the same sheets alongside it so there is a reference for what the file should look like. |
| A flat sheet at one printed scale that anyone can open, and the safest way to fix what a drawing set is meant to say at a given revision. | A sheet scaled to fit A4 is no longer 1:50. Print the scale and the revision on the sheet, and include a dimensioned line that can be checked. | |
| SKP | Fast surface geometry, and the room around the piece — useful for showing intent, context and sightlines quickly. | Zero-thickness faces: a 20mm panel drawn with no depth at all. Say whether the model has real thicknesses or is a surface model. |
| 3DM | True solid and surface geometry for curved, faceted and sculpted parts that a 2D drawing cannot describe. | Heavy files and no layer names. Grain direction, material and finish still have to be written down — the model does not carry them. |
| STEP | True solid geometry that machines can read, for machined parts, mechanisms and metalwork where the shape has to be exact. | Large files, and geometry that arrives without any of the specification around it. STEP tells a maker the shape and nothing else. |
No format replaces the written specification. A model carries shape; it does not carry species, sheen, Martindale, hardware model numbers or who signs the drawing. Send both.
Methodology and use
This standard was written by Designatore from its own drawing office practice — the 34 fields are the ones our Design & Technical Development department asks for when they are not on the sheet, drawn from how bespoke furniture is actually specified, engineered, built and delivered. It was published on 30 August 2026 and is reviewed yearly; the date above the schema is the last revision. It is free to use: any architect, interior designer, project manager, procurement team or publication may reference, quote or adapt this standard, in full or in part, with a link to this page as the source. It is written to be used with any manufacturer — put it in your own office template, hand it to whichever maker you appoint, and no permission is needed from us.
Specifying Furniture — Questions Architects Ask
What should a furniture specification include?
A bespoke furniture specification needs six groups of information before it can be quoted or built: identification (project reference, room or unit type, item code, quantity, revision number and date), dimensions and geometry in millimetres, materials and finishes named by reference rather than adjective, construction and hardware by make and model, services and cut-outs, and delivery and site information. This page sets out every field in those six groups, with what good looks like for each.
Why can't a manufacturer price "sofa — 1 no."?
Because every number in the price comes from information that line does not carry. Material and how much of it the piece consumes, the hours across each department it passes through, the hardware specified by make, the finish, the quantity and the delivery city all change the figure. A schedule line with a name and a quantity gets a query list back, not a number — and the query list is the price, arriving in the only order it can.
What is the difference between a design drawing and a shop drawing?
A design drawing shows what the piece looks like. A shop drawing shows how it is built. It adds panel thicknesses, joint types, hardware by make and model, edge profiles, grain direction, how the back is finished, every fixing position, and how the piece breaks down to get through your door. The design drawing is yours; the shop drawing is the manufacturer's engineering of it, and you approve it before anything is cut.
What units should furniture drawings use?
Millimetres. Millimetres are the working unit in furniture manufacturing, they avoid decimals on almost every dimension, and they leave no room for a reader to guess. If you work in inches or centimetres, that is fine — but state the unit in writing in the covering email as well as in the file, because a unitless number that is read wrongly is the most expensive small mistake in the whole process.
What file formats can I send a furniture manufacturer?
Designatore accepts DWG, DXF, PDF, SKP, 3DM and STEP. Send the drawing itself rather than a print of it, and include a PDF of the same sheets with the scale and revision printed on them. Photographs and reference images are welcome as direction, but no dimension can be trusted from an image.
Do I have to specify every joint and every hinge?
No. Specify what you care about and say that the rest is the maker's standard. That single sentence is worth more than a page of detail, because it tells the drawing office which decisions are yours and which are theirs. A good manufacturer will resolve the rest and put its resolutions in the shop drawing for you to approve.
Will a manufacturer sign an NDA before I send drawings?
Designatore will. Send your non-disclosure agreement and we sign it, or ask and we send ours; there is no charge and it does not slow the project. On a trade project the design is yours and the client is yours — we do not approach your client behind you, we do not put your project in our portfolio without your sign-off, and we do not reuse a detail you developed on another job. Our factory is near Vadodara, Gujarat, and architects are welcome to walk it before specifying into it.
Is this specification standard free to use with any manufacturer?
Yes. The Furniture Specification Standard is free for any architect, interior designer, project manager or procurement team to use, reference, quote or adapt, with a link back to this page as the source. It is deliberately written to work with any maker, not only with Designatore. It was published on 30 August 2026 from our own drawing office practice and is reviewed yearly.
Send Us One Filled In
A specification written to this standard is one we can engineer straight into a shop drawing. Send the set — or send a photograph and three sizes, which is a real start and where plenty of commissions begin.