Planning a Renovation for Next Year? Why Autumn Is the Time to Start
As the evenings draw in, something shifts. You're at home more, the house is quieter, and the conversation turns to next year. The extension you keep talking about. The kitchen that's never quite worked. The house you bought knowing it would need a proper plan.
If that sounds familiar, here's our honest advice. If you'd like work to start in 2027, the time to start planning is now.
Why autumn, not January
It's tempting to leave it until after Christmas. New year, fresh start. But by the time January comes round, good builders and architects are often booked well into spring. The people who get the start date they want are usually the ones who began the conversation in the autumn.
There's also a gap most people don't expect between "we should do something" and "work starts on site". Design, drawings, planning permission where it's needed, pricing, and all the decisions in between take time.
Done calmly over autumn and winter, that time feels like part of the fun. Squashed into a few weeks, it's where stress and expensive mistakes creep in.
The decisions you can't undo
Some decisions in a renovation are easy to change later. Paint, cushions, even most furniture can evolve with you. Others are fixed the moment the builder starts.
- Where the kitchen sits, and where the sink and island go in relation to the drainage
- Where the steels and supporting walls end up
- The size and position of windows and doors
- How your lighting is wired, and where every socket and switch sits
Once the plaster's on and the floor's down, those decisions are made. Changing them means undoing work and paying for it twice. They deserve the most thought, and they need it early.
What to sort before you call a builder
A builder prices what's in front of them. The clearer the plan, the more accurate the quotes, and the easier they are to compare. Before you ask anyone to price your project, it's worth having:
1. A clear sense of how you want to live. Start with how you use the house day to day, not the finishes.
2. The layout. How you move through the ground floor, where the kitchen goes, where the light lands.
3. The fixed things. Walls, steels, windows, drainage and bathroom positions.
4. A lighting and power plan. Circuits, sockets and switches are decided before plastering, not after.
5. A realistic budget. With a contingency for the surprises every older house holds.
6. A timeline. When you'd like to start, and what needs to happen before then.
Arrive with those in place and you'll get quotes you can compare like for like, and a project that starts with far fewer unknowns.
Why bring a designer in first
"We wish we'd spoken to you before we got the builder in." It's one of the things we hear most often, and it's why we always encourage people to involve a designer at the very start.
At the beginning, the layout, the light and the flow are still decisions rather than fixed facts. That's when design adds the most value. We can look at the whole house together, test different options, and make sure every room connects, rather than styling around problems that could have been solved on paper.
It makes life easier for everyone else too. We work alongside architects and builders all the time, so the drawings, the specification and the brief all tell the same story. Fewer surprises, fewer changes on site, and a lot less stress for you.
A calm winter makes for a better spring
The best projects we work on have one thing in common. The thinking was done before anyone picked up a tool.
Autumn gives you time to do that properly. To talk things through, look at options, change your mind, and make the big decisions without pressure. Then, when spring comes, the work can simply get going.
If you're planning something for next year, we'd love to help you start. Pop into the studio on Cold Bath Road in Harrogate, call us on (01423) 408 759, or get in touch through our website. And if you've already started a Pinterest board or a folder of ideas, bring it along. It's a lovely place to begin.