Why Plan an Electrical Installation Before Asking for a Quote?
Electrics are the trade people think about last and regret first. Kitchens get designed around worktops, extensions around glazing, garden offices around desks — and then, late in the project, someone asks where the sockets are going. By that point walls are boarded, budgets are committed, and every change costs more than it should have.
Planning the electrical layout early does three things. It surfaces the loads that drive the big decisions — an EV charger, electric heating, or an air-conditioning supply can change what your consumer unit needs to be. It catches the small things that are cheap now and expensive later — a spare way on the board, ducting to the garden, a switch drop on the right side of the bed. And it gives your electrician a complete picture, which is what turns a vague estimate into an accurate, itemised quote.
That is exactly what the DS Electrical 3D planner was built for. It is a free electrical layout planner that runs in your browser — nothing to download, no account to create — and it works on a phone, tablet, or laptop.
What the 3D Planner Actually Does
Open the planner and you are looking at a 3D model of a property that you can drag round, zoom, and explore. From there:
- Orbit your home in 3D. Drag the model round, tap the gold markers on each part of the property, and step inside the front door to walk the rooms.
- Add the spaces a real home has. Extra rooms, a loft, a garden office, an outbuilding, an outdoor kitchen, a driveway EV point — build the property you actually live in (or are about to build), not a generic template.
- Spec real products, down to the socket finish. Choose the systems you want — EV charging, consumer unit upgrades, lighting and bespoke LED, ventilation, media walls and multimedia/AV, WiFi, office fit-outs, air-con supplies, electric heating, CCTV, smart home, rewires, EICR — and pick the accessory finish that suits your home.
- Watch it land on a real consumer-unit board. Every system you add appears as a breaker on the board below the model. Flick breakers on and off to build the spec and watch the whole property energise.
- Generate a design pack. One click produces a printable document — circuit schedule, wiring schematic, symbol layout, and spec sheet — that you can save as a PDF. It is indicative, for quotation, but it captures your whole intent on paper.
- Save it, share it, send it to DS Electrical. Copy a link that restores your exact design on any device, or send the spec straight through by email, WhatsApp, or phone — it attaches to your quote request automatically.
The planner is fully keyboard-accessible too: arrow keys orbit the model, Tab cycles the markers, and every system and space is also available from the palettes and circuit schedule below the model, so nothing depends on dragging a 3D view.
Try it now — it takes about two minutes to rough out a room
Free, in your browser, on any device. No download, no account, no obligation.
Open the 3D planner →How Many Sockets Do I Need?
This is the question that brings most people to an electrical planning tool, so let’s answer it honestly: BS 7671 does not set a fixed number of sockets per room. The regulations require the installation to be adequate and safe for its intended use — how many outlets that means depends entirely on how you live.
What we can say from hundreds of domestic jobs across Mid Somerset and Bath is that almost everyone underestimates. The pattern looks like this:
| Room | What people forget to power |
|---|---|
| Kitchen | Worktop appliances, under-cabinet lighting, boiling-water taps, island sockets, extractor, appliance isolation |
| Living room | Media wall, soundbar and AV kit, lamps on switched circuits, network point behind the TV |
| Bedrooms | Both sides of the bed, a desk that becomes a home office, USB charging where phones actually live |
| Home office | Monitors, docks, printers, a wired network point — WiFi alone rarely cuts it for video calls |
| Outdoors | Garden sockets, outdoor kitchen supplies, security lighting, CCTV, gate or pond power, the EV charger |
| Everywhere | Vacuum sockets on landings, loft power, spare capacity on the consumer unit for whatever comes next |
The most reliable way to get the count right is not a rule of thumb — it is walking every room and listing what needs power. That is precisely the exercise the 3D planner turns into a ten-minute job: step inside each room, add what you want, and the circuit schedule builds itself as you go. Your final layout is then checked and designed to BS 7671 at survey.
Who the Planner Helps Most
Renovators and extenders
If you are opening up walls anyway, the marginal cost of getting the electrics right is at its lowest. Plan the kitchen circuits, the media wall, and the lighting design before first fix, and you avoid the classic renovation regret: a beautiful room with sockets in the wrong places. If the property is older, pair the plan with our guide on whether you need a rewire — a renovation is often the sensible moment to do rewiring work at the same time.
Self-builders and new builds
A self-build is the one chance to design the electrical installation from a blank sheet. The planner lets you spec the whole property — every room, the garden office, the driveway EV point, structured WiFi — and hand over a complete, coherent design rather than a stack of sticky notes. The design pack’s circuit schedule and symbol layout give your architect and builder something concrete to coordinate against.
Landlords
For rental property, the planner is a fast way to scope upgrade work alongside compliance: spec the consumer unit, smoke detection, and any additional circuits in one pass, then book the EICR against a clear picture of the installation. Remedials, where needed, are quoted separately and itemised.
Somerset and Bath homeowners planning ahead
Even if the work is months away, a saved design link costs nothing and holds your thinking. Add the EV charger you are considering, the smart home systems you would like — we install Philips Hue lighting, Hive and Nest heating controls — and the CCTV (we fit Hikvision), and the design is ready whenever you are.
From 3D Design to Accurate Quote
Here is the part that matters: the planner is not a gimmick bolted onto the website — it is the front end of how DS Electrical quotes work.
- You build the design. Rooms, spaces, systems, products, finishes — as much or as little detail as you have. You can come back to it any time via your design link.
- Your spec travels with your quote request. Send it by email or WhatsApp, or call — the full multi-space spec attaches automatically. No re-explaining your project from scratch.
- Dan surveys the property. The 3D design says what you want; the survey confirms what the building needs — cable routes, board capacity, earthing arrangements, and the details that only show up on site. EV charger circuits, for example, are dedicated circuits protected by a Type A RCBO, and the right setup depends on your supply.
- You get an itemised quote, priced to your exact spec. No guess-figures and no fixed menu prices, because every home is different — your product choices change the quote, and you see the full breakdown before any work starts.
The person who quotes the job is the person who turns up and does it: Dan Stevens, a NAPIT-registered electrician covering Mid Somerset and Bath. Notifiable work is self-certified under Part P, and installations are certified to BS 7671 on completion.
Why no instant price?
Online “instant quote” calculators have to assume your walls, your board, and your cable runs are average. They never are — and the gap between the calculator number and the real number becomes an argument later. The planner deliberately captures your specification instead of guessing a price, so the quote you receive is the quote you pay. Survey first, itemised quote after; you always see it before we start.
A Worked Example: Planning a Kitchen Renovation
Say you are renovating a kitchen in Wells. In the planner you step into the kitchen, add the systems you want — lighting with under-cabinet LED, the socket layout along the worktops and the island, appliance circuits, an extractor — and pick the accessory finish that matches the design. While you are in there, you remember the garden: you add an outdoor kitchen space and a couple of external sockets. Then the driveway EV point, because the next car will probably be electric.
On the consumer-unit board below the model, you can now see what that actually means: this is no longer “a few sockets in the kitchen”, it is several new circuits — and possibly a board upgrade. That is exactly the kind of scope discovery that is cheap on a screen and expensive on site. You generate the design pack, send the link over, and the quote that comes back covers the real project, not the first third of it.
What the Design Pack Includes
- Circuit schedule — every circuit in your design, room by room
- Wiring schematic — an indicative single-view schematic of the installation
- Symbol layout — your sockets, switches, and fittings laid out with standard symbols
- Spec sheet — the systems, products, and finishes you chose
The pack opens as a printable document you can save as a PDF and share with a builder, architect, or kitchen designer. It is indicative and intended for quotation — final circuit design, cable sizing, and protective device selection are confirmed at survey and certified to BS 7671 — but it gets everyone working from the same picture.
Covering Mid Somerset and Bath
DS Electrical Installations (SW) Ltd works across Mid Somerset and Bath — Wells, Shepton Mallet, Frome, Radstock, Midsomer Norton, Street, Bruton, Castle Cary, Cheddar, and the surrounding villages. Whatever you design in the planner, it is quoted and installed by the same NAPIT-registered electrician, with certification issued on completion.
Start with the design — it is free, it takes minutes, and it makes everything that follows more accurate. Open the 3D planner → or call 07889 334849 to talk the project through first.