From the moment the room layout is frozen to opening day, eight to ten months pass, and furniture takes up the last part of that period: four or five months between the signed order and the lorry in the courtyard, two or three weeks of fitting, at least fifteen days between the last finished room and the first booking. Anyone who squeezes those fifteen days opens with crooked handles and staff learning the job in front of guests. The calendar gets built backwards from the opening date, and the first date to fix isn’t the furniture delivery, it’s the day the floors are finished and the rooms are locked shut.
Contents
Ten months out: the layout is frozen
The first block concerns the layout, not the colours. Where the bed goes, which way the bathroom door opens, where the wardrobe sits, how many centimetres are left between the foot of the bed and the desk. Once production has started these numbers don’t move, because a wardrobe designed for a 122-centimetre recess doesn’t fit into one that’s 118.
At this point you need a real survey, taken on the existing walls and not off the design drawings. On refurbishments, the gap between drawing and reality easily reaches three or four centimetres per wall, and on a recess with two walls involved that’s seven centimetres of error. The on-site measurement survey needs redoing after plastering and screeding, not before, and it needs to be signed off by someone. In rooms intended for guests with disabilities there’s no tolerance: manoeuvring space and grab point heights follow regulated measurements for accessible rooms, and a mistake there can only be fixed by demolishing.
The same month is when the final per-room budget gets fixed, which by this point stops being an estimate. If the figure is still shifting, the tier-by-tier and item-by-item sums within the per-room furnishing budget help you understand how much can still move without redoing the design.
Seven months out: the sample room and the order
The fully fitted sample room is the first thing a hotelier cuts when the calendar tightens, and it’s almost always a mistake worth thousands of euros. You fit out a complete room, switch on the lights, spend a night there, and three things surface: the bedside socket hidden behind the bed, the bathroom mirror reflecting the door, the drawer knocking against the heated towel rail. Fixing those on a single piece costs a week. Fixing them across forty already-produced rooms costs a month and an argument.
Once the room is approved, the order goes out with finishes locked by code and batch, not by trade name. “Natural oak” isn’t a data point: the panel code and batch number are. From this point on, the furniture production time is a physical constraint, and no amount of pressure shortens it below a certain threshold. The items that always take longest are the same: certified fabrics dyed to order, natural stone, special hardware, wall-hung sanitary ware in a non-standard finish.
The month-by-month countdown
| Months to opening | What needs to be closed | Who signs off |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | layout frozen, survey signed off, final per-room budget | owner and designer |
| 8 | complete specification, quotes compared, supplier chosen | owner |
| 7 | sample room fitted, tested and approved in writing | owner and management |
| 6 | order placed with finishes locked by code and batch, deposit paid | owner |
| 5 | working drawings countersigned, socket and drain positions frozen | site management |
| 4 | production check on the first pieces, verifying shade and hardware | supplier, with a visit from the owner |
| 3 | delivery date confirmed against the real state of the site | site management |
| 2 | floors handed over clean, flooring finished, lift in service | contractor |
| 1 | floor-by-floor fitting, progressive testing, snag list | supplier and management |
| 0.5 | second pass on defects, final cleaning, amenities and spares in store | management |
The row that slips most often is the two-month one. The lorry only leaves if the floors are genuinely ready, and that condition needs to be written into the contract so that delivery is tied to a formal handover record for the areas, not to a calendar date. Without that clause, eighty cubic metres of packaging arrive at a hotel where grouting is still underway, and from that point you’re paying for storage, double handling and damage.
How you fit out a whole hotel
A team of two experienced fitters closes out between two and three standard rooms a day if the floor is finished, the lift works and the furniture arrives already at that level. With made-to-measure furniture to assemble on site, panelling and wall-fixed headboards, that drops to one and a half or two rooms. Forty rooms with two teams is therefore eight to ten working days, which becomes fifteen if fitting proceeds on alternating floors because the contractor still needs to go back and finish something.
The sequence that works starts at the top and comes down, or starts at the far end of the corridor and reaches the exit. The rule is never to move new furniture through already-finished rooms. Packaging follows the same logic in reverse, with a collection point per floor and a daily pick-up: forty rooms produce between twenty-five and forty cubic metres of cardboard and polystyrene, and if it stays on site it blocks the corridors.
Only a few things ever stop a fit-out, and they’re always the same ones. Flooring not yet laid or not protected, which turns one room into a dumping ground for stacked furniture. The site lift dismantled too early, with the permanent lift not yet certified: that means stairs, and stairs double the timings and damage the handrails. Electrical sockets twenty centimetres from where the drawing wanted them, which on bedside tables with an integrated socket and on wired headboards makes the piece unusable. Room doors with a clear opening narrower than stated, because a fitted wardrobe measuring 120 centimetres doesn’t pass through a 78-centimetre opening. And the lack of a single person on site who can sign off records: without that signature the fit-out stops and restarts two days later.
Room-by-room testing
Testing happens on a finished, cleaned room, with a written list for each room number, not at the end of the whole site and not by sampling. You check door alignment, hinge friction, drawer runners, the stability of the luggage rack, the wall fixings on headboards, the working of sockets and USB ports, the safe closing properly, level worktops, and the condition of the edging. Every defect gets photographed and numbered.
Across forty rooms, a defect list under forty points is a good site; over a hundred, there’s been a production or fitting problem, and it needs to be said before the final payment. The second pass happens within ten days, and the retention held back, usually between 5 and 10%, is only released after that. The testing items, with accepted tolerances, are already written into the furniture specification if the specification was drawn up properly, and that avoids arguments about what counts as a defect.
The day-zero stockroom
On opening day, the storeroom needs to hold the pieces that will break in the first few months, because they will break. A reasonable amount is 2-3% of pieces for simple items, seating and accessories, and 5% for fabrics and finishes subject to wear, including headboard covers if they’re removable. You need at least ten hinges and feet of each type, drawer runners, luggage rack straps, impact guard profiles, knobs, one panel of every finish for repairs, and the paint colour codes for touch-ups.
The supplier needs to hand over the list of item codes and a written guarantee of availability: the availability of spare parts and finishes in the following years is the reason a piece of furniture gets repaired instead of replaced. Along with the spares, hand over the scheduled furniture maintenance plan, with checks to make at the third and sixth month, when the screws settle and all of them need retightening.
Last point, the one nobody puts on the calendar: staff need to walk into the finished rooms at least ten days before the property opens for business. Housekeepers need to try the trolleys in the corridors, work out where they get stuck, learn how that drawer opens. In properties that open and close every year, the same run-in repeats on a smaller scale at every reopening, and that’s why the seasonal opening checklist always starts two weeks earlier than it seems necessary.
Frequently asked questions
How far ahead of opening should furniture be ordered?
Between six and seven months ahead, with finishes already locked by code and batch. Contract production for a complete hotel supply generally needs between twelve and sixteen weeks, on top of which come the weeks needed to approve the sample room and the working drawings. Ordering four months from opening means accepting what’s available in stock instead of what was designed.
How many rooms get fitted out in a day?
A team of two fitters closes out between two and three standard rooms a day if the floor is finished, the lift is in service and the furniture is already at that level. With made-to-measure furniture, panelling and wall-fixed headboards, that drops to one and a half or two rooms. A forty-room hotel gets fitted out in eight to ten working days with two teams, provided nobody is still working on the same floors.
How many days are needed between the end of fitting and opening?
At least fifteen, and twenty if the property has a restaurant and communal areas. They’re needed for the second pass on defects, the final clean, loading the amenities, and above all for getting staff into the real rooms. Opening the day after the last piece is fitted means testing with guests inside and getting the first reviews about the building site.
What spares should be kept in store at opening?
Around 2-3% of pieces for seating and accessories, 5% on fabrics and finishes that wear, plus a stock of hardware: hinges, feet, drawer runners, luggage rack straps, impact guard profiles and one panel of every finish used. These should be requested from the supplier along with the list of item codes and a written guarantee of availability in the following years.
Who decides when furniture can enter the site?
Site management, with a formal handover record for the areas confirming finished floors, systems closed up, clean floors and a lift in service. The delivery date in the supply contract should be tied to that record rather than a fixed calendar date, otherwise the lorry arrives at a site that isn’t ready, and the costs of storage, double handling and any damage fall on the owner.
