A revision is a change to something I've already built from your brief: a different floor finish, a warmer light, a sofa swapped for the one you actually ordered, the camera nudged 20 cm to the left. A new brief is anything that means building something I haven't built yet: a new room, a new camera angle, a moved wall, a whole different design scheme. Every project on my architectural rendering prices page includes two consolidated revision rounds, and that line between "change" and "new" is what decides whether a request sits inside them.
Most people never hit the line. Some hit it without noticing, and that's where the awkward emails come from.
What one revision round actually means
"Consolidated" is the word that matters. One round is one list of comments, sent together, covering everything you want changed on that image or set of images. I read the whole list, make the changes, re-render, and send you the updated views.
It isn't one comment per round.
If you send "make the floor lighter" on Monday, "actually, can the curtains be linen" on Tuesday and "one more thing about the lamp" on Wednesday, that's three trips through the scene, three re-renders and three rounds of waiting for you. I'd much rather you sit with the preview for a day, walk it past whoever else gets a vote (partner, architect, the developer's sales lead), and send me one list. You'll get a better result too, because changes interact: a lighter floor bounces more light, which can make the walls you were happy with look washed out, and I want to see all of that together.
Things that count as a revision
Roughly, anything that changes what's already in the scene without changing the room itself. In my experience, almost every comment I get falls in here:
- Materials and colours: floor, worktop, wall paint, tiles, fabrics, metal finishes.
- Furniture and decor swaps within the same layout: a different dining chair, a bigger rug, fewer cushions, removing the plant everyone hates.
- Lighting mood: warmer or cooler, daytime to dusk on an exterior, lamps on or off, stronger sun.
- Small camera adjustments: a little higher, a touch wider, a slight turn so the window isn't cut off.
- Post-production: contrast, white balance, a softer sky, cleaning up a reflection.
Thirty swatch changes on one kitchen still count as one round.
Things that are a new brief
These are the requests that need me to model, light and set up something new. The common ones are an extra camera angle ("can we also have one from the hallway?"), a layout change that moves walls, doors or windows, an extra room, swapping the design direction from, say, Scandinavian oak to dark Japandi with plaster walls, or a change of daylight direction that means the plans were wrong about which way the house faces.
An extra camera angle is the one people underestimate most. It feels small, because the room is "already done". But a new view shows corners nobody looked at before: the back of the kitchen island, the ceiling junction above the wardrobe, the bit of corridor that was just a grey box. Each new angle is priced like any other view, from EUR 250 for an interior and from EUR 450 for an exterior, and the 10% discount applies once three or more renders are combined.
Layout changes are the other trap. Moving a wall 40 cm sounds like a small edit. In the scene, it shifts the floor, the skirting, the ceiling lights, the furniture placement and the camera framing, and sometimes it means the old camera position doesn't work at all. I'll always tell you before starting if a request has crossed into new-brief territory. Nothing gets added to the invoice without you agreeing to it in writing first.
Why I draw the line there
Because it's where the work actually changes. A material swap is often ten minutes of setup and a re-render. A new angle, even in a finished room, can be most of a day: dressing the areas that weren't in shot, setting the camera, lighting tests at low resolution, then a final 4000 px render and post-production.
There's a second reason, and it's the counter-intuitive one. Strict revision limits protect the client more than the studio. When rounds are unlimited, projects drift. Every preview invites another small comment, the decision keeps getting deferred, and three weeks later the developer still has no images for the listing. Two well-used rounds force a decision at the right moments: once at the first preview, once on the near-final.
Last year I worked on a small apartment set where the owner and the interior designer were sending comments separately, sometimes contradicting each other. After the second partial list I suggested they merge their notes into one document before sending. The next round closed everything in one go, and the images were done three days later.
How to get the most out of two rounds
Use the first preview to settle the big things. Is the camera right? Are the materials in the right family? Does the mood feel like the place you want to sell or present? Don't spend the first round on the cushion colour.
Use the second round for refinement: the exact tone of the oak, the brightness of the sky, a stray reflection on the oven door.
Mark up the image itself if you can. A screenshot with a red circle and "lighter, more like the sample photo" beats a paragraph of description every time, and it saves us both a round trip of "do you mean this bit?". Reference photos help even more. If you've seen a kitchen on a supplier's site with exactly the worktop you want, send the link.
And get everyone's opinion before you send. The single biggest cause of a third round isn't me getting something wrong. It's a person who hadn't seen the preview yet.
What I'd actually do before the project starts
If you're not sure about the design yet, say so in the brief. Is the layout still moving? Then hold off on renders until it's fixed, or start with one view and add the rest once it's settled. That way the layout risk sits on a single EUR 250 image instead of a full set.
If you already know you'll want options (two kitchen colours, say, or day and dusk versions of an exterior), ask for them upfront as part of the brief. Planned variants are cheaper and faster to produce than variants discovered in round two, because I set the scene up for them from the start.
And keep the brief honest about what's fixed and what's open. A complete brief is also what lets me hit the first preview in about three business days. My interior rendering services page lists what that brief usually contains, and the portfolio shows the kind of final images two rounds get you to.
If you have drawings and want to know how a project would split into views and rounds, send them through the quote form. I'll come back with a fixed, non-binding quote and a note on anything that's likely to count as new work.