Every furniture and building-materials package begins with words on paper. The drawings come later; the sample comes later still. What decides whether a project lands cleanly is the procurement brief, and most teams treat that brief as an email with two attachments. A README - the short instruction sheet that travels with a set of drawings, schedules and finish boards - is where the buying team states what it actually needs. Written properly, it stops the argument before it starts. Written vaguely, it guarantees the argument arrives during production, when changes cost money.
At SANTERSON we receive hundreds of enquiries a year, and the pattern repeats: the projects that run smoothly are the ones whose brief could be read by a factory foreman without a phone call. Below is how to write one, section by section, using the same fields our own production and design teams work from.
Why the README Matters More Than the Drawing
A drawing shows what the client wants to see. A README explains what has already been decided and what is still open. When a workshop receives a set of elevations with no note about substrate, edge treatment or hardware brand, the manufacturer fills the gap with their own default. That default is rarely wrong, but it is rarely what the designer pictured either. The README is the place where you write down the assumptions you did not know you were making.
For an international order this matters more, not less. A furniture and building materials manufacturer producing to your brief is working across a time zone, a language and a freight boundary. Once production starts, changes stop being edits and become rework. The hour you spend writing the README is the hour you do not spend on a video call at midnight arguing about a door reveal.
The Six Fields Every Project README Should Contain
Structure the brief so a reader can scan it. These are the fields our own project teams ask for before they price a package.
1. Scope of supply, stated as a list, not a paragraph
Write exactly what is in the order and what is not. Guest-room loose furniture, yes. Mattresses, no. Wardrobe carcasses, yes. Doors and ironmongery, no. A short list of included and excluded items removes more ambiguity than a page of prose. If you are working with an one-stop project furnishing supplier, this list is also how you confirm which trades the supplier is handling and which stay with your local contractor.
2. Quantities and unit of measure
State quantities as pieces, sets, linear metres or square metres, and be consistent. "Approximately 40 rooms" invites a question. "40 guest rooms, 2 wardrobes per room, 80 pieces" does not. Quantities drive the price and, on a custom order, drive the production slot you are given.
3. Materials and finishes, with the tolerance spelled out
Name the material family, the specific reference where one exists, and how much natural variation you will accept. For timber and veneer this is where projects go wrong: two shipments can both be correct and still look different. A line such as "oak veneer, grain figure may vary; colour to match approved board No. 3 within a ΔE of the sample" gives the workshop something to test against. Where an exact reference is not fixed, ask for a sample range and say who is signing it off.
4. Dimensional limits and site constraints
Give maximum panel sizes and explain why they are maximum. Lift car dimensions, stair widths, door openings and turning radii all decide whether a piece arrives in one module or three. A single line about the tightest access route on site changes how the item is designed, not merely how it is delivered.
5. Documentation and approval sequence
Say what you will review and in what order: shop drawings, material boards, a first-article sample, then sign-off. Naming the approver and the turnaround you will give them is as useful as naming the deliverable. An approval sitting on a desk for three weeks is a delay nobody billed for.
6. Delivery terms and unpacking responsibility
State the delivery address, the delivery method, who unloads, and where the packing material goes. Door-to-door terms exist, and customs paperwork such as commercial invoices and packing lists can be handled by the supplier, but the last hundred metres is where damage is most often assigned to nobody at all.
A Worked Example: Custom Cabinetry for a Whole-House Fit-Out
Consider a villa fit-out where the brief covers entry storage, a living-room sideboard, bedroom wardrobes and a bathroom vanity. A weak README says "custom cabinetry to match design intent." A usable one says the sideboard is to be produced as a floating unit with a closed base and open shelves above; the countertop is stone, thickness to be confirmed against the approved sample; the wardrobe fronts are to be flush with the wall finish and operated by a push mechanism, so no handle is called out anywhere on the elevation; and the vanity top is to be fabricated from the same slab lot as the bathroom wall cladding.
Those four sentences cost the writer ten minutes. They remove four decisions the factory would otherwise have made for you. On projects we have delivered - from villa cabinetry and joinery packages in New South Wales and Western Australia to hotel and office fit-outs - the briefs with this level of detail are the ones that did not need a late change order. That is not because the design was better. It is because nobody had to guess.
Matching the Brief to the Right Kind of Supplier
A precise README also tells you who you should be talking to. A trading company will answer a vague brief with a catalogue. A custom furniture and interior products manufacturer will answer it with questions about tolerances, substrate and hardware, because those questions determine whether the piece can be made. If your brief is written well enough to attract that kind of response, you have already improved the outcome.
The same logic applies when your package spans several categories. A project buying furniture, wall panelling, flooring, lighting and bathroom ceramics from separate sources needs five READMEs and five approval tracks. Written as one brief, the same information coordinates a single sequence of shop drawings, one set of samples and one delivery window - the practical difference between a fit-out schedule and a fit-out crisis.
Before You Send It: A Five-Minute Check
- Read the brief as if you were the factory. Is there any sentence a workshop could interpret two ways?
- Is every open decision listed as open, with an owner and a date?
- Does each finish reference name a physical sample, not just an adjective?
- Are the largest pieces dimensioned against the tightest thing they must pass through?
- Is it clear who approves what, and how long each approval takes?
A README is not paperwork. It is the specification written early enough to be free. If your current brief would still work after the drawings disappeared, it is doing its job. If it would collapse, you now know exactly where to spend the next hour.
Planning a villa, hotel or office package and want the brief read by a production team rather than a sales desk? Send us your scope list and drawings and we will come back with the questions that matter before anything is cut.