If you’re a developer, architect or real estate team in the US, commissioning renderings from a studio in London probably raises a few practical questions. How do reviews work across time zones? Will the studio understand your drawings and your market? What does the process look like when you can’t drop by the office?
In practice, most rendering projects run remotely anyway, wherever the studio is based. Here’s what working with a UK studio on a US project actually involves.
The time difference can work in your favor
London is five hours ahead of New York and eight hours ahead of Los Angeles. That sounds like a drawback, but on a rendering project it often helps.
Comments sent at the end of your working day arrive at the start of ours. The studio can work on them while you’re offline, so smaller amendments are often ready, or well underway, by the time your team is back at their desks. East Coast mornings overlap with the London afternoon, which leaves time for a call when one is needed.
Instead of each side waiting for the other, the project keeps moving overnight.
Drawings, units and local context
Renderings are built from your project information: plans, elevations, sections, site plans and material specifications. The model is built to the dimensions on the drawings, so feet and inches work just as well as metric.
What matters more is context. In our experience, the details that make an image feel local are rarely the architecture itself. They’re the planting, the cars on the street, the quality of light, and the fixtures and finishes inside. A pre-war condo on the Upper East Side, a waterfront home on Long Island and a new community in Texas each need a different approach.
Site photos, views from neighboring buildings and references for the fixtures and finishes you’re specifying all help get those details right. For an example of an interior that had to sit comfortably in a classic New York building, see our Philip House interior renderings.
How reviews work remotely
Each image goes through three stages: a grey draft to agree the camera angle, layout and architecture; a materials stage for finishes, furniture, lighting and styling; and the final high-resolution rendering. Each review stage includes up to two rounds of amendments. Our CGI process page explains this in more detail.
When the client team is spread across offices and time zones, two things make the biggest difference:
- One person consolidating feedback. Separate comments from the architect, developer and broker arriving overnight can contradict each other and slow everything down.
- Marked-up images rather than long emails. An annotated screenshot or PDF is quicker to act on and leaves less room for misunderstanding.
What to send when you get in touch
To give an accurate quote, a studio needs to see the project. That usually means:
- architectural drawings (plans, elevations, sections)
- a site plan
- photos of the site and any reference images
- an idea of budget
- how the images will be used, for example a website, brochure, signage or approvals
- your deadline
The information doesn’t need to be final. It’s common to start with drawings that are still developing, as long as everyone knows which details are fixed and which are still changing.
It’s also why pricing is hard to give without seeing drawings. The cost depends on the number of views, the complexity of the building and its setting, and whether animation is involved. A quote based on drawings is a quote you can rely on.
Working with Charles Roberts Studios
We’ve been producing architectural visualization since 1995, for clients in the UK and internationally. Our US work includes interiors for Philip House in New York and exteriors for private homes, and we’ve written about why renderings are becoming essential for US real estate marketing.
If you have a US project coming up, send over the drawings and we’ll talk through scope, timing and cost.
