Nearly every problem we are asked to fix was decided in the brief — long before a waterjet cut its first piece of stone. A marble inlay floor is not a finish you choose at the end of a project. It is a drawing you commit to, a substrate you plan for, and a set of joints you live with for fifty years.
Get the brief right and the floor fits first time. Get it wrong and no amount of craftsmanship will hide it. This is the brief we wish every architect and designer would send us — it is short, but every line has a cost when it is missing.
1. Start with the floor, not the pattern
Send the room, not just a motif. The pattern only works when it answers the architecture: where the light falls, where people walk, where the chandelier hangs, where the staircase lands. A medallion centred on a window wall is misread the moment the ceiling plan changes. Send a plan with the room’s axes, the furniture layout, the ceiling detail and the main sightlines from the doorway. We design against those — not against a blank rectangle.
2. Draw it full size — 1:1
Marble inlay is a drawing problem before it is a stone problem. We draw every commission as a full-size cartoon on the atelier floor, so proportions are settled at the scale you will actually walk on. If you send CAD, we redraw it at 1:1 and check every joint against the stone that exists. This is where veins are chosen and borders are calculated — not on a render.
The cut plan then drives the waterjet directly, so what you approve is what arrives. There is no interpretive drift between the drawing and the finished floor.
3. Tell us the substrate, not only the design
The drawing decides the look; the substrate decides whether it survives. We need to know the screed or slab type, whether there is underfloor heating, where movement joints will fall, and the build-up height you can afford. We work in 18 mm structural stone as standard and 20 mm for heavy traffic — but the right thickness depends on what sits beneath it.
- Underfloor heating? Movement joints move where the drawing allows — tell us early.
- Overlay or new build? It changes the setting bed and the tolerance we cut to.
- Wet room or spa? We hone the walking line for grip and cut the falls into the pattern itself.
4. Decide the joints before the stone
A good marble inlay floor reads as one surface, with joints that close to a hairline — not grout lines. We cut every piece to ±0.1 mm and lap the whole field as one plane, so the pattern reads as a drawing rather than a mosaic. If you want a visible joint — a brass fillet, a contrast line — that is a deliberate decision, and it belongs in the brief.
5. Approve the stone, not a render
A rendering will flatter you. Natural stone varies, and a screen shows an average. We dry-assemble every commission on the factory floor and photograph it in full and in detail, so you approve the actual assembled stone — veins, colour and joints — before anything is crated. Nothing leaves the atelier until you have signed off the photographs.
For larger commissions we also send a sample panel of the most figured part of the pattern, so you can hold the material and judge it in your own light.
6. The seven-line brief that saves a project
- Dimensioned plan with the room’s axes (PDF, DWG or DXF).
- Design reference — or a request for us to design it.
- Stone palette, or leave it to our material study.
- Substrate type, and whether underfloor heating is present.
- Build-up height available.
- Site location, for crating and freight.
- Deadline — so we can tell you honestly whether it holds.
If all you have is a room size and a photograph of a floor you admire, that is enough to start. We will develop the drawing with you.
What this looks like when it works
Our smoothest projects are rarely the grandest — they are the ones specified early. A classical residence in Beijing, a palace-scale commission in Dhaka and a single entrance medallion for a private home all run on the same brief. The scale changes; the discipline does not. When the drawings, substrate and tolerances are settled before cutting, the install is quiet, fast and uneventful — which is exactly what a luxury floor should be.
Send your drawings. We will return a material study, a full-size cut plan and a fixed, itemised quote within three working days — stone, cutting and crating priced separately, with no obligation. Start here →