Office Fit Out Companies London.
One firm designs it, builds it and furnishes it.
District Four are based in Doncaster and work in London, most recently the Mallet pop up store in Mayfair for the premium footwear brand. We are not going to tell you we are a London firm, because we are not, and you can check every one of the twenty seven projects published on this site before you speak to us.
What we are is one company for the whole job. We plan the space, draw it, contract every trade, build it and furnish it, and you get one invoice and one number to ring. That matters more the further away your fit out company is, not less, because there is nobody to hand the gap to when the drawing and the finished room disagree.
The three kinds of firm you are choosing between.
Search for office fit out companies in London and you get three different businesses using the same words. A design practice draws the space beautifully and then introduces you to a contractor, so the drawings and the build sit under two contracts and the gap between them is yours. A main contractor builds to a drawing somebody else produced, prices the variations, and is not the person to ask why the layout is the way it is. A design and build firm does both under one contract, which is what we are.
None of the three is wrong and the third is not automatically cheapest. What changes is where the risk sits when something on site does not match the drawing. Under two contracts that argument is between your designer and your contractor with you in the middle paying for it. Under one it is ours. Ask any firm you shortlist which of the three they are, because most will not volunteer it and it is the single most useful question you can ask on a first call.
Four things a London office project needs.
We do all four rather than handing you between three firms, which is why the finished room looks like the visual you signed off.
We measure what you have, ask how your teams actually use it, and plan around that rather than around the shape of the floor plate. Desk counts, meeting rooms, quiet space, storage and how people move between them. On a London floor this is where the money is won or lost, because you are paying more per square foot than anywhere else in the country and a layout that wastes ten per cent of it wastes that every month for the length of the lease.
Measured survey · Space planning · Desk and headcount planning · Options
Visuals you can actually judge, then the drawings and the specification the build runs from. Partitions, glazing, acoustics, lighting, power and data, finishes and the details that decide whether a room feels finished or nearly finished. We specify what we are going to build, which is a different exercise to specifying what looks good in a render.
Concept · 3D visuals · Technical drawings · Specification
We contract the trades, hold the programme and run the site. Partitions, ceilings, flooring, joinery, tea points and breakout, electrical and data, decoration and making good. One invoice from us rather than six from people you have never met, and one firm answerable when a date moves.
Principal contractor · Trades procured by us · Programme · One invoice
The part most fit out companies stop short of. Bespoke joinery, reception and signage, wall graphics and the furniture, specified, supplied and installed by us so it arrives with the building rather than six weeks after everyone has moved in and is sitting on the wrong chairs.
Joinery · Signage and graphics · Furniture supply · Install
The distinction that decides your London budget.
More space is let as a shell in London than anywhere else in the country, so this comes up here more than it does anywhere we work. Category A is what the landlord hands over: raised floors, a suspended ceiling, basic lighting, and the mechanical and electrical services brought to the floor. It is a finished empty box and none of it makes the space yours. Category B is everything that does. Partitions and meeting rooms, the tea point, joinery, branding, finishes, furniture, and the power and data brought to where people actually sit.
Two things follow from that and both cost money. First, work out which one your landlord has actually agreed to before you budget anything, because a quote against a Cat A floor and a quote against a stripped shell are not comparable and neither is a like for like against each other. Second, ask what happens at the end. A Cat B fit out is usually yours to strip out again when the lease ends, and dilapidations at the end of a London lease surprise more tenants than any other line in this whole process.
The drawings and the build are the same team.
The gap between what was drawn and what got built is where the money goes on a fit out, and it is also where the blame goes: the designer says it was specified, the contractor says it was not on the drawing, and you are in the middle paying for the argument. Because we design it, build it and furnish it, there is nobody to hand that gap to. On a project 170 miles from our office that is not a nice to have, it is the whole reason it works.
Four things worth settling before anything is drawn.
If you lease the space you will normally need a licence to alter before work starts, and in a multi let London building that is rarely a formality. Your lease will also say whether you have to put the space back as you found it at the end of the term, which changes what is worth spending as much as any material choice you will make. Get the lease in front of us early. It occasionally changes whether the job is worth doing at all, and that is far cheaper to discover now than after the drawings.
Then there is the building itself. In a managed London building the landlord decides the working hours, the delivery slots, the goods lift booking and often which contractors are allowed on site at all. A floor that can only take deliveries before eight in the morning through one lift is a different programme to a unit with its own door, and it is a difference nobody prices until they have asked. We ask before we quote, because a programme built on a lift you cannot book is not a programme.
The honest version, because you will check anyway.
We are in Doncaster. If what you want is somebody who can be at your building in twenty minutes because a socket is in the wrong place, appoint a London firm, and we would tell you the same on the phone. What we would put against that is this: you are not paying for a central London office to be run alongside your own, the people who draw your space are the people who then build it, and every trade on your job is contracted by us rather than introduced to you. Ask us for the Mallet client and ask them how it went.
A London project, and an office at scale.
Office fit out in London: your questions.
Are you a London firm?+
No. We are based at 1 Water Vole Way in Doncaster and we have one published London project, the Mallet pop up concept store in Mayfair. We would rather say that than take a serviced address in the City and let you assume otherwise. What we do have is one contract covering design, build and furniture, which is worth more on a job at distance than a postcode is.
What is the difference between Category A and Category B?+
Category A is what the landlord hands over: raised floor, ceiling, basic lighting and services to the floor. It is a finished empty box. Category B is everything that makes it yours, so partitions, meeting rooms, tea point, joinery, branding, finishes, furniture, and power and data where people sit. Check which one your landlord has agreed to before you budget, because two quotes written against different assumptions are not comparable.
What is the difference between a fit out and a refurbishment?+
A fit out takes a shell or a stripped floor to a finished office, so everything in it is new. A refurbishment reworks a space you already occupy: walls move, rooms change use, services get altered, but the shell stays. Most enquiries that arrive asking for a fit out turn out to be refurbishments, and knowing which one you are buying changes the budget more than any material choice afterwards.
What will my project cost?+
It turns on the size of the floor, the specification and how much of it changes, so any single figure on a page would be a guess at your building. Our estimator asks a few questions about yours and gives you a working range in about two minutes, and it shows you the number before it asks you for anything.
Do we need a licence to alter?+
If you lease the space, almost certainly, and in a multi let London building it is rarely a formality. Your lease will also say whether the alterations have to come out again at the end of the term. Both are worth settling before anything is drawn, because they change what is worth spending and occasionally whether the job is worth doing.
Can we stay in the building while you work?+
Often, and it is the first thing worth raising when we survey. Whether the work runs in phases around your team or in one go with the floor empty changes the programme and the price, so it belongs in the first conversation rather than the fourth. In a managed building the landlord's rules on working hours and the goods lift usually decide it for everyone.
A City floor and a converted warehouse are not the same job.
A Category A floor in a managed City or Canary Wharf building, a converted warehouse in Shoreditch or Clerkenwell, a period upper floor off a West End street, a business park unit out towards the M25. They are handed over differently, they are accessed differently and their landlords ask for different things, which is why we survey the building you have rather than reach for a layout that worked in another one.
Planning an office fit out in London?
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