A general contractor hands you the punch list, and it includes every outlet, switch, dimmer, floor receptacle, and thermostat in the house. Not the finish. Not where it sits relative to the furniture. The actual spec: brand, load rating, box type, gang configuration. He isn’t asking you to weigh in. He’s asking you to write it.
If you haven’t hit this moment yet, you will. A member of the Interior Design Community recently posed a version of this exact question: Are GCs now expecting designers to specify every standard electrical component, not just the visible, decorative ones? Historically, the GC or electrical contractor proposed the standard items and the designer reviewed and approved. In this case, nobody proposed anything. The designer was expected to generate the spec from scratch.
The honest answer is that it depends on the GC, the market, and how clearly your contract defines “design scope.” But the real issue isn’t electrical devices. It’s how easily technical work becomes your unpaid job when nobody drew the line before the project started.
Why the request feels new even though it isn’t
Standard electrical, outlets, switches, dimmers, floor pop-ups, thermostats, has traditionally lived in a gray zone. It’s not decorative like a sconce or a pendant, but it’s also not purely structural like framing or HVAC ductwork. For years, most GCs and electricians defaulted to proposing the standard components themselves, because they were the ones pulling permits and running the circuits. The designer’s job was to flag anything that needed to look a certain way, and to approve what the trades proposed.
What’s shifted, at least for some designers, is that GCs are increasingly asking the designer to generate that first draft rather than react to one. That’s a meaningful workload change, not a cosmetic one. Writing a spec is slower and more exposed than approving someone else’s spec. You’re now responsible for catching errors before they’re installed, not as a second set of eyes.
Some of this is genuinely industry drift toward more design-build coordination, where designers are pulled deeper into technical decisions because they’re already in the room. Some of it is GCs and subcontractors who are stretched thin, passing work downstream to whoever will absorb it without pushing back. Both are plausible, and you often can’t tell which one you’re dealing with until you ask directly.
It also depends on the kind of project you’re on. A ground-up build with an architect of record usually has electrical drawings baked into the construction documents before a designer ever touches a switch plate. A renovation with no architect, a GC running the job, and a designer brought in for finishes is a much looser structure, and looser structures are exactly where undefined scope tends to migrate toward whoever shows up most prepared. If you’re consistently the most organized person in the room, you’re also the most likely person to get handed work nobody wants to own.
The dividing line most designers actually use
The most useful boundary isn’t “electrical versus decorative.” It’s visible-and-specific versus purely technical. If a decision affects what a client sees, touches, or notices, it belongs in your scope. If it’s about circuit sizing, code compliance, or where wiring physically runs, it belongs to the GC or electrician, full stop.
One designer working in design-build described how she draws that line in practice:
“We have this conversation a lot internally being design build, personally I do think there’s a time (like complex hinges!) to let the GC or installer lead the spec, but I always want to have input/approval. Theres also a lot of things like electrical devices or exact recessed light models that make a huge difference a lot of others skip that I think are key to having our projects turn out like they do.”
@acuratedlifevt
The takeaway is that letting a GC lead on a technical spec doesn’t mean stepping out of the decision entirely. You can hand off the drafting while retaining approval rights, and you should write that split into your contract language rather than negotiating it project by project.
Think of it as two separate questions layered on top of each other. Question one is who drafts the spec. Question two is who approves it before it’s ordered. A GC or electrician can reasonably own the first question for anything purely functional, load calculations, circuit assignments, box depth. You should own the second question for anything a client will see or touch, regardless of who wrote the first draft. Collapsing those two questions into one, and assuming that “not decorative” means “not my problem at all,” is where designers get burned. A GC who drafts a spec without your sign-off can still put a plastic outlet cover in a room where every other finish was chosen down to the screw color.
What it costs you when nobody drew that line
Writing a full electrical spec, every outlet, every switch, every gang plate, is real hours. If those hours aren’t accounted for anywhere in your fee structure, you’re doing paid design work and unpaid technical drafting on the same invoice.
Educational content, not legal advice. How you handle this contractually is worth a conversation with whoever reviews your contracts, but the operating principle is straightforward: if you’re the one generating the spec, that work should be named somewhere in your agreement, either folded into a defined interior-architectural scope or billed as an additional service when it falls outside the original agreement.
One designer separates it cleanly by who’s leading the project:
“We usually let the architect lead on the electrical/switching/outlet interior architectural details -but expect to be invited to the conversations. If there’s no architect, we lead the conversation but bring appropriate parties (client, AV, GC, Electrician) to the table for their inputs and we charge for it all. It’s either “additional services” or, when it’s clear from the get-go, we have a flat fee or charge hourly for interior architectural services, separate from design and decor.”
@kathleendwalsh
That’s the model worth copying even if your fee structure looks different: name the work, name who’s responsible for it, and decide in advance whether it’s included or billed separately. The decision matters less than the fact that you made it before the spec sheet landed on your desk. For a deeper framework on pricing this kind of add-on work, renegotiating fees when scope creeps mid-project walks through how to raise the conversation without losing the client.
If you’re not ready to build out a full interior-architectural fee tier, the simplest version is a single sentence in your proposal: standard electrical specification beyond decorative fixtures is billed as an additional service at your hourly rate, unless otherwise noted. That one line lets you say yes for goodwill on a small ask, and gives you the leverage to say, “let’s talk about a change order,” when the ask turns into forty devices across a full renovation.
Put the scope in writing before the first site visit
The designers handling this best aren’t relying on memory or a verbal understanding with the GC. They’re using a document.
“We have a matrix of every item that needs to be purchased, it excludes very rough materials, but includes everything visible and we sit down at the beginning of the project and decide who is specifying and who is buying. And we memorialize that in writing and then refer back to it when they inevitably try to get us to do work outside the agreed scope.”
@spearman_spaces
A scope matrix like this does two jobs at once. It forces the specify-versus-buy conversation to happen at kickoff, when everyone still has goodwill and nobody’s behind schedule. And it gives you something to point to later, calmly, when a GC tries to expand your role three months in. “Refer back to it” is doing real work in that quote. The document isn’t just a planning tool, it’s a boundary you can hold without an argument.
The matrix doesn’t need to be complicated to work. A simple spreadsheet with columns for item, who specifies, who purchases, and who installs, walked through room by room at the project kickoff meeting, covers most of what you need. The value isn’t in the format. It’s in doing it before the first electrical rough-in, with the GC and electrician in the room, so nobody can later claim they assumed something different. Verbal agreements about scope get remembered differently by everyone in the meeting. For a closer look at building that kind of document into a flat-fee agreement, see defining your flat fee scope so clients understand what it does and doesn’t include.
When it’s smart to hand it back to the GC or electrician
Not every electrical decision belongs on your desk, even the ones a GC hands you. Some designers draw a hard line at anything that requires knowledge they simply don’t have.
“I just had a contractor ask for this. I gave him the CAD drawings of the room and told him and the electrician they can draw them in. I don’t know where the electrical and pipes run through the walls & ceiling, they do!”
@lifestyle_organizer
That’s a reasonable and honest boundary. You can provide accurate room drawings and specify anything with a visible finish or placement that affects the design intent. You shouldn’t guess at load calculations, panel capacity, or where a wall cavity actually runs. If a GC pushes that kind of technical decision onto you, the correct response isn’t to absorb it quietly, it’s to hand it back with the drawings they need and let the trade with the licensed expertise make the call.
This is also where liability quietly enters the conversation. If you spec a device location that turns out to conflict with a stud, a duct run, or a panel clearance requirement, and you weren’t qualified to know that, you’ve taken on risk that was never yours to carry. Handing the technical layer back to the electrician isn’t a lack of confidence. It’s an accurate read of who actually holds the information, and the license, to make that call safely.
Reading the request as a signal, not an insult
When a GC asks a designer to spec every standard device, treat that ask as information about the rest of the project, not just a one-off task.
“I don’t think this is typical. The only time a GC doesn’t just handle these components (based off a lighting and switching plan I do) is when I specifically specify that I want a different finish or product for lighting components other than standard. When I have had inexperienced contractors ask for things from me that are more in their world, usually I just help them and then explain it typically is something they can just handle. It’s always been a positive exchange for me. But it’s probably a red flag if you have someone insisting you provide something like that, sounds like they might not know themselves and if it’s happening with switches, it could happen elsewhere on the job too.”
@briitb_interiordesign
This is a useful reframe. An inexperienced GC asking a genuine question is a coaching moment, and helping them is cheap goodwill. A GC insisting you take on work that’s normally theirs, without acknowledging that it’s outside the norm, is a different situation entirely. It’s worth naming directly at the next site meeting rather than letting it slide, because if scope creep shows up here, it’s likely to show up again somewhere less visible. Setting that expectation early is easier than resetting it later, and working with a new GC on who buys and who warrants what is a good place to start that conversation before the first site visit.
Your scope should never be someone else’s default
The specific answer to “who specifies standard electrical” will vary by market, by GC, and by whether an architect is involved. What shouldn’t vary is whether you decided the answer on purpose. A scope matrix drawn up at kickoff, a clear split between decorative and technical, and a billing line for work that falls outside your original agreement will get you further than any universal rule about outlets and switches.
One designer summed up the healthiest version of this relationship simply:
“I prefer a GC who asks over a GC who makes the decision any day.”
@top_rail_interiors
That’s the standard you should hold your projects to. A GC who asks is treating your scope as real. Your job is to have already decided, in writing, what the answer is.
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