Notes on running an architecture practice.
Fees, planning rules and the business of winning work, across the United States, the UAE and India. Written from primary documents rather than repeated from other blogs, and honest about what could not be verified.
Competing with Livspace and HomeLane
India’s home interiors market was worth about Rs 1.27 lakh crore in 2024 according to Magicbricks research (page updated 11 December 2025), and Livspace and HomeLane together booked roughly Rs 2,200 crore of revenue in FY25 (Business Standard and Entrackr, FY25 results). By our arithmetic that is under 2% of the market. The platforms set price expectations far beyond their share, and an independent studio competes with the expectation more than with the companies.
Read it →Is AI saving your practice time?
Only 38% of A&E firms report a measurable impact from AI. A baseline, a four-week log and a rule for turning saved hours into capacity, not discounts.
Read →Selling energy and resilience work after the credits ended
The 25C and 25D homeowner credits ended for work finished after 31 December 2025. What clients still want, and how to sell energy work without them.
Read →How to raise your fees in 2027
Top firms bill $290 an hour against $112 at the bottom, and 56% of leaders say negotiating is harder. How to raise your fees without losing clients.
Read →Marketing a small architecture firm in 2027
How small architecture firms win work, on the evidence: referrals first, search and AI answers as confirmation, and what no current survey measures.
Read →Aging in place, the strongest residential demand signal
Aging-in-place design is the fastest-rising request on AIA’s residential panel. Who pays, what the scopes cost and how to package it as a service.
Read →More proposals, fewer wins
Deltek’s median win rate is 50% across A&E firms and 45% for architecture alone. Why sending more proposals makes it worse, and how to qualify harder.
Read →Hourly, fixed fee or percentage
Fixed fee is the most used and most profitable method overall; small firms most often name hourly. The AIA data, a hybrid structure and when each fits.
Read →AI for running an architecture practice
Where AI helps with enquiries, qualification, proposals, follow-up, invoicing and meeting notes in a small practice, what to measure and what goes wrong.
Read →How small architecture firms can make more money in 2027
Where the 2027 money is for a small practice: remodels and aging-in-place work, priced by rate rather than hours, with every figure sourced and dated.
Read →Why architects get paid late, and what the wait actually costs
Between seven and ten weeks of completed work sits unpaid at any moment. That is not an admin problem, it is a loan your practice is making to its clients at nought per cent.
Read →The discount nobody names: what scope creep costs a studio
Additional work absorbed without a fee is a discount you never agreed to, applied after the contract, on the work you least expected to do.
Read →Where an architecture firm’s margin actually leaks
Six places the fee disappears between the proposal and the bank, the published benchmark for each, and the uncomfortable finding that the two metrics everyone tracks barely predict profit at all.
Read →What a ten per cent discount actually costs your studio
A ten per cent fee cut does not reduce your profit by ten per cent. At a typical architecture margin it removes about half of it.
Read →What an architect costs in Dubai, and what the authorities cost on top
Design and supervision are two separate commissions in the UAE. Here are the observed ranges, the milestone structure and the permit fees that actually apply.
Read →The Council of Architecture Scale of Charges, explained properly
What the Council of Architecture's fee scale actually says, how the stages release, how far it is enforced, and the notation that trips everyone up.
Read →What to charge as an architect: fee benchmarks for the US, UAE and India
Observed fee ranges in three markets, what the percentage is calculated on, and why the answer is structurally different in each.
Read →Why architecture studios lose projects they have already won
Most practices do not have a demand problem. They have a response problem, and the industry data now says so out loud.
Read →Reading about it is one thing.
A free growth audit maps how work actually reaches your studio and where it is being lost, on your own numbers. You keep the findings either way.
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