Stock or custom design — when paying more pays off

A catalogue design costs two to four thousand złoty, plus five thousand and up for the adaptation. A custom design starts at nine. The gap is real, but it has to be weighed against the whole investment, not against the price of the drawings alone.

A stock design is enough when

The plot is rectangular, flat, conventionally oriented and over twenty metres wide, and your needs fit the standard pattern: four rooms, an open-plan living and kitchen space, two bathrooms.

A custom design earns its keep when

The plot is narrow, sloping, oddly shaped, or has a view worth exploiting. Or when the way you live departs from the average — you work from home, you live multi-generationally, you need a studio.

A simple heuristic: if, browsing a catalogue, you find yourself listing changes for every single design and the list runs past five items, the premium for a custom design will come out cheaper than the sum of those changes made during adaptation.