Designing a bathroom in 3D with the customer beside you

The most expensive moment in a bathroom project is the one where the customer sees the finished room and says, “That’s not what I pictured.”

By then, everything’s been ordered, fitted and paid for. Put it right and the profit’s gone.

Design it together, in the room

In my showrooms, our designers draw the bathroom, show it in 3D and build the quote in the same tool, while the customer is sitting beside them.

• Draw the room — walls, doors, windows and boxing — and see it in 3D straight away.
• Try a different tile, panel or grout colour on any wall and see it instantly.
• Switch every fitting from chrome to brass across the whole room.
• Check whether the door clears the WC before anyone orders anything.
• Give the customer a link to spin round their own bathroom in 3D before they sign.

And because the design and the quote come from the same place, the room the customer saw and the goods that get ordered match.

Why we built it ourselves

Traditional design software was built for draughtsmen, not for a designer sitting with a customer. So I built a tool shaped by 30 years of selling and fitting bathrooms, where the fitting logic comes from the trade.

That’s now becoming KBB Go: browser-based bathroom design software for independent fitters, designers and showrooms. It runs on a suitable laptop or desktop with no installation or dongle, and it’s the tool we use every day across our four showrooms. Bathrooms first — kitchens are coming later.

The lesson for any K&B business

Whatever tool you use, the principle is the same: the closer your design, your quote and your order are to each other, the fewer surprises there are on site.

If your design, quoting and ordering live in different places, that’s often the first system worth fixing. If you’d like help, apply to work with me.