Interior designer vs architect for a Batumi apartment or house

How an interior designer differs from an architect

An architect designs the building: its form, floor plans, facades, windows, roof and the way the house sits on the plot. An interior designer works inside an existing shell. The designer arranges the walls and furniture, chooses finishes and lighting, and draws the socket positions, water outlets and tile layouts. Both produce working drawings at the end, but different ones: the architect's are sections, facade drawings and building details, while the designer's are wall elevations and a furniture specification.

The line between the two professions is blurred. Some architects take an interior right down to the last light fitting, and some designers with an architecture degree take on small houses. So when choosing, look at the set of drawings the person has produced for a similar project: the title on a business card will tell you less.

There is also a third participant, the structural engineer. The engineer calculates the loads and is responsible for what holds the house up: the foundations, columns, slabs and load-bearing walls. Neither the designer nor the architect changes a load-bearing structure without the engineer's calculations.

Apartment renovation: a designer is enough

Under the rules in force in autumn 2026, no permit is needed to move or remove a partition in an apartment, as long as the load-bearing walls, slabs and columns stay as they are. Nor do you need an architect for this kind of renovation: the building has already been designed, and the job is inside the apartment. The interior designer decides where to move a wall, how to lay out the lighting and where to put the kitchen.

The designer also deals with the apartment's technical limits: the building's shared shafts, the electrical capacity allocated to the apartment, the space for outdoor air conditioning units. If all the wiring is being replaced, an electrician joins the project to calculate the loads, but this is part of the working drawings and does not need an architect.

Load-bearing walls: you need a structural engineer and a permit

Cutting an opening in a load-bearing wall, removing part of it or making a new hole in a floor slab changes how the whole building works. Such work is carried out only with a structural design and a permit, and the calculations have to follow the Georgian seismic building code.

The roles are divided like this. The designer shows what the apartment should become and why the opening is needed. The structural engineer checks whether it is possible and, if it is, issues a strengthening design. If the answer is no, the designer looks for another layout, for example with a wide opening in a neighbouring partition.

We don't start such work without a structural design and a permit, even if the neighbours "have already done it". The fact that the wall held up next door tells you nothing about yours.

Interior designer vs architect for a private house

With a house the order is reversed, and the architect goes first, starting with a sketch. Then the structural engineer and the building services engineers join the project. The permit is obtained on the basis of the finished design. A private house is usually a Class II structure, and within Batumi the permit is issued by Batumi City Hall, while outside the city it comes from the local municipality.

It is worth bringing in the interior designer as early as the sketch stage. The amount of wall space in the bedroom decides whether the bed will fit between the window and the wardrobe, and the height of the kitchen windowsill decides whether the worktop can run along the window. It is also easier to plan air conditioning routes and kitchen outlets before the structure is calculated than to drill through finished floor slabs later.

If the house is already built, the designer takes the architect's plans as a starting point but sizes made-to-measure furniture from their own measured survey. The drawings and the walls as built can differ, and a wardrobe won't forgive the difference.

How the designer and architect work together

When two people work on a house, you need one person who makes sure their decisions don't drift apart. Otherwise the architect moves a window, and the designer finds out when the kitchen has already been ordered to the old size. In our projects such changes go through a shared change log, and if a change affects the structure, the structural engineer checks it first.

For an owner abroad it is simpler when one team handles the house, the interiors and the construction. All questions go through one manager, and you won't have to forward emails between the architect and the designer. The weekly photo and video report shows that the build is following the agreed drawings.