For general contractors
The Design Department You Never Had to Hire
You run subs, schedules, inspectors, and cash flow. What you don't run — and what quietly throttles your pipeline — is design. Between the handshake and the permit set sits a no-man's-land of undecided finishes, unpriced scopes, and homeowners waiting on drawings, and every week a project sits there is a week your best crews have nothing queued behind the current job.
+Design is a plug-in design department for GCs. Send photos, field measurements, and scope for any residential project — kitchen, bath, basement, addition, whole-house — and get back client-ready deliverables under your brand: moodboards, photoreal renderings, and a full material take-off priced against your own cost structure. No designer salary, no software seats, no managing a creative.
The result is a pipeline that moves. Projects clear the design gap in weeks, contracts get signed on visuals, and your backlog stops evaporating in the space between yes and start.
Sound familiar?
Where design bleeds general contractors dry.
Design is the bottleneck between close and permit
You can win the job in a week and then lose two months waiting on decisions and drawings. Compressing the design phase is worth more to a GC's annual revenue than any sales trick, because it's the phase you currently control least.
You're a builder quoting from someone else's vague scope
Bidding a project with unresolved finishes means padding for the unknown or eating the difference later. A resolved design with a quantified take-off lets you commit to a number you can actually build to.
Architects and independent designers run on their own clock
Farming design out to a third party who has their own client relationship and their own timeline puts your schedule in someone else's hands — and their name on the work. White-label means the deliverable, the timeline, and the credit are yours.
Every project type needs different design chops
A basement this month, a kitchen next, an addition after that. No single hire covers that range well. A studio bench does — same submission process, whatever the room.
Every package
What general contractors get in every design.
3D renderings for whatever you're building this month
Kitchens, baths, basements, additions, full-floor renovations — photoreal renderings in the client's actual structure. One consistent presentation standard across your whole project mix, so every proposal looks like it came from a bigger company.
Selections handled before your subs need answers
Moodboards and a signed finish schedule mean your tile setter, electrician, and cabinet supplier get specs instead of shrugs. Fewer RFIs from your own subs, fewer supervision hours burned relaying homeowner indecision.
Take-offs that make your bids defensible
Quantities for every trade in the scope, priced on your unit costs and markups. When a homeowner questions the number, you walk them through the line items. When a sub questions the scope, you hand them the sheet.
The money play
How the retainer math works in your world.
GCs are the last trade still giving away estimates on jobs they haven't designed. Flip the sequence: charge a $1,000 design retainer at the first meeting, credited to the contract when they build with you. The homeowner gets a real deliverable — renderings, selections, a line-item budget — instead of a free number, and you get paid to scope the job properly.
The retainer does something subtler, too: it converts you from bidder to advisor. Three GCs give the homeowner competing guesses; you give them a design and a budget grounded in a take-off. You're no longer one of three numbers on a spreadsheet — you're the company that already designed their project. Retained clients almost never take that package and shop it, because psychologically the project is already yours.
At subscription pricing your cost per package is about $600 against $1,000 collected — the design phase runs profitable, and every package it produces is a project pre-sold before you've scheduled a sub.
Questions
General Contractors ask us.
My projects range from powder rooms to additions. Can one service cover that?
That range is exactly what we're built for. Every project follows the same submission format — photos, measurements, scope — whether it's a $15k bath or a $200k addition. Larger scopes may count as more than one package, which we flag before we start, never after.
Do you produce permit drawings?
We produce design intent: renderings, selections, dimensioned layouts, and priced take-offs. For structural and permit sets you'll still use your architect or engineer — but they'll work faster and cheaper from a resolved design than from a blank page, and your client will have already signed off on the look.
How does pricing on my numbers work when I use different subs per trade?
Your price list can carry sub rates by trade, unit costs, and your markup structure. We price take-offs against whatever you load — and when a sub's rates change, you update the list once and every future estimate follows.
What stops my client from finding out I outsource design?
Structurally, nothing connects us to your client. Deliverables are branded to you, files are delivered to you, and any time we email, call, or meet your homeowner it's as your design team under your name — never as +Design. White-label isn't a feature we offer; it's the only way we operate.
What's the actual turnaround from submission to client-ready package?
Concepts in about a week, complete package — renderings, selections, take-off, estimate — typically within two. Complex multi-room scopes run longer and we tell you the date up front, so you can book the client presentation before we start.
Subscription or a-la-carte — which makes sense for a GC?
If design-eligible jobs cross your desk four or more times a month, the $6,000 subscription wins — per-package cost drops to about $600 versus $1,500 a-la-carte. Many GCs start with two or three a-la-carte packages to test the fit, then switch. There's no contract trap either way.
Start here
Put a design department behind your general contractor business.
Book a 20-minute call — we'll price your first project against your own price list.