Questions we are asked most.

Pochē Aesthetics is an architecture and interior design practice based in Greater Kailash, New Delhi, founded and led by architect Niyati Satsangi. We specialise in luxury residential — farmhouses, villas, builder floors and apartments — and we handle architecture, interiors, materials, lighting and styling as a single commission rather than as separate appointments. You can see the work on our projects page.

We work across Delhi NCR and on projects elsewhere in India where the brief suits us. Our studio is in Greater Kailash, so a good share of our work is close by. We have written in detail about designing in South Delhi, Greater Kailash, Gurgaon, Noida and the farmhouse belt south of the city.

Yes, a select number. Our specialisation is luxury residential and that is the majority of our work, but we take on restaurant and commercial commissions where the brief interests us and we believe we would serve it well.

Both. We work on apartments and builder floors as well as villas and farmhouses. In an apartment the plan is largely fixed, so the work concentrates on layout within the shell, joinery, light and materials — which is where most of what you feel in a home actually comes from.

Tell us about the home — where it is, its size, what you want to change and roughly what you are comfortable committing. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right practice for it. If we are, we set out scope, fee and process in writing before any drawing begins. Start a conversation here.

We start from what you want the home to be and what you are comfortable committing, then shape the specification to fit — rather than quoting a rate and discovering the gap later. Specification, not floor area, is what drives a residential budget: the difference between a standard fit-out and bespoke joinery, stone and layered lighting is far larger than the difference between a small home and a big one. We have written about what actually moves an interiors budget in detail.

All three structures are used in India and we will discuss which suits your project once we understand its scope. What matters more than the structure is what triggers each payment: we tie instalments to deliverables — concept approved, drawings issued, site handed over — rather than to calendar dates, because that keeps everyone aligned.

We set this out in writing before starting. Typically separate from a design fee are loose furniture, curtains and soft furnishings, appliances, air conditioning, civil work, society NOC charges and GST. The most common source of friction on residential projects is a scope both sides interpreted differently, so we would rather over-specify it at the start. Our guide to reading a quotation line by line covers what to check in anyone's.

That the figure people quote each other is almost always the house alone. A farmhouse is a house plus an entire piece of infrastructure: boundary wall, approach road, borewell and water treatment, power and generator, sewage, landscape and irrigation, staff and utility accommodation. On a raw plot that package is a substantial share of the whole project, and it is the single most common reason a farmhouse budget doubles. We have set this out fully in our guide to what a farmhouse really involves.

Sometimes yes and sometimes no, and we will tell you which at the start rather than halfway through. A designer who tells you honestly what a budget cannot buy is more useful than one who agrees to everything and reveals the gap later.

From first meeting to moving in: roughly five to seven months for a 2–3 BHK apartment, seven to ten months for a larger apartment, ten to fourteen months for an independent house or villa, and two to two and a half years for a ground-up farmhouse including construction. Design is about a third of that; site work is the rest. We break the stages down in our guide to project timelines.

A full set: furniture layout, demolition and construction plan, flooring layout with setting-out, reflected ceiling plan, electrical and lighting layouts with switching, plumbing layout with heights, joinery drawings with internal sections and a hardware schedule, bathroom elevations, detail drawings for the junctions that matter, and a specification schedule naming every material. The drawing set is the deliverable, not a by-product of one — here is what each drawing does.

Yes. Design without supervision tends to become whatever the contractor finds easiest to build. We agree the frequency of site visits as part of the scope so it is explicit rather than assumed, and we report against a written programme — so a delay is known in week nine rather than discovered in week twenty-two.

Yes. We are happy to work with a contractor you trust, or to help you tender the work and compare quotes properly. Because we issue a full drawing set and a specification schedule before anything is priced, contractors quote the same scope — so the difference between their numbers is genuinely the difference between them.

You will change your mind about something; everyone does. We handle it with a written variation note setting out cost and time impact, agreed before the work is executed. Without that process changes get absorbed silently and resented, or billed at the end without warning.

You receive a handover file — final drawings, material specifications, paint codes, warranties and supplier contacts — which is worth a great deal three years later when you need to touch up a wall or replace a handle. We also agree a defect liability period in writing, including what it covers.

You need an architect for anything ground-up, anything structural, a difficult site, or anything requiring sanction. An interior designer works within an existing shell. What matters most for a house is that one party holds both, because the expensive pattern is sequential — a shell gets built, and the interior designer then works around fixed windows and set beam depths, so every decision becomes a workaround. We have compared the two roles here.

Where a client follows Vastu, we accommodate it wherever it can be done without damaging the plan — and we say so plainly where a particular requirement fights the house badly, so you can decide. It is your home and your belief, and our job is to tell you the architectural consequence of each option. Our notes on Vastu set out what we follow and what we would question.

Ask each one the same questions: who will actually run your project, what the drawing set contains, what is excluded, and how changes are priced. Then ask to speak to a client whose project finished two years ago rather than two months — problems with joinery, waterproofing and finishes surface in year two. We have written a longer list of questions worth asking any firm, including us.

Yes, on projects where the brief suits the practice. Distance affects supervision and logistics, so we are honest at the outset about how a project outside NCR would be run and what that means for the programme and the fee.