What To Pack In A Survey Bag

Even though you most probably won’t be undertaking a survey during a consultation, you will often need quick dimensions here and there to work out if a piece of furniture might fit in the room or to work out a run of joinery units.

My survey bag remains the same whether I use it for architecture or interior design, so I try not to mess with it as that’s how things get lost, misplaced or not put back in the right bag. I try to avoid any chance of looking unprofessional during my visit, so I make sure that I am always organized.

So this is my essential list:

Quick Reference Guide

• 5m Measuring Tape | A small measuring tape is best. I often clip it to myself or hold it in my hand when talking, so it needs to be stylish and not very heavy or clunky.
• Laser Measure (with a spirit level) | You wouldn’t be expected to do a survey during an interior design consultation but if you need to quickly know the ceiling height or room width, it’s much less embarrassing to whip out your laser than fumbling around with your tape measure.
• Angle Measure | Sometimes your laser measure has the feature for measuring angles. Mine does, but I have to admit I don’t use it! I much prefer using my angle measure tool.
• Skirting Measuring Tool (aka a deep contour gauge) | This helps me measure simple obtuse angles as well as skirting and some cornice profiles.
• Camera | I used to take any old camera in the past as I’d only use the photos for the duration of the project. These days, I have a high-quality camera with at least 2 lenses (one wide-angle lens and one around 50mm) and try to take the best photos because I might need them for social media in the future.
• Spare Batteries | My camera battery life is actually really good and so is my laser’s. I always check how much battery life I have before I go, but I never want to be caught out, so I always take a spare, just in case.
• Pencil Case | I take a few different coloured pens and make sure I have some variation in terms of highlighters, pencils, coloured pencils and non-ballpoint pens. I will usually have a clutch pencil or two with different coloured leads too.
• Scale Ruler | I find that client’s who hire me for an interior design consultation are hoping to solve a quick problem that they have due to potential or current building work. For that reason, I often find that my client has a few sets of plans on-site waiting to talk them through with me, so in order to understand the size of things when sketching on plan, I just always make sure I have a scale with me.
• Printed Plans | I will often try to have a look online to see if I can find the general layout of the property I’m visiting. Sometimes client’s don’t explain things very well, so you can whip out the existing plans and ask them to sketch out what they mean.
• Clipboard | Call me old fashioned but I prefer to have a hard, flat surface to draw, sketch or communicate my ideas on. When I worked in an office, all we had were our diaries and I always felt this just wasn’t good enough because for one, my pens seemed to always go missing and my not so great hand sketching skills looked far worse when trying to sketch on a page that was soft and squishy.
• Diary | I use my diary for writing down the minutes of the meeting and any action steps required. These days I have a separate diary for each project. When I worked for someone else we only ever had the one and I found that referring back to a project and finding something I was looking for was unnecessarily time-consuming.