What is the difference between HMR and MDF?

They are different boards. HMR resists moisture and is used for cabinet carcasses in kitchens and bathrooms, though it is not waterproof. MDF is dense and smooth, good for grooved or spray-painted doors, but it does not take water.

What is the difference between lumens and lux?

Lumens are all the light a bulb gives out. Lux is the light that reaches a surface, per square metre. Choose a bulb by its lumens; check whether a room is bright enough by its lux.

What is the difference between an elevation and a section?

An elevation looks straight at a wall or a cabinet and shows only its outside. A section cuts through the cabinet or room and looks in, showing the frame, the board thickness and what is inside.

Glossary

Interior design glossary

Words you meet when doing up a home, building built-ins and talking to a contractor, with what each one means and when it is used. The figures come from the same data the RAYA app uses, and the sources are listed at the end of the page.

Cabinets and boards

Built-ins, and the boards they are made of

Built-in: A built-in is furniture fixed to the house, measured and made to fit one wall, recess or corner, such as a wardrobe, kitchen cabinets or a cupboard under the stairs. Free-standing furniture, by contrast, is bought ready-made and can be moved. Thai spells the word several ways. Built-in design
Laminate: Laminate is a thin surface sheet pressed onto a board such as HMR, MDF or plywood to give it the colour or woodgrain you choose. It is smooth and easy to wipe clean, which is why built-ins are so often faced with it. In the RAYA app, the laminate list is every panel of a cabinet with its size, taken off the cabinet you designed. See the laminate list of a real cabinet
HMR: HMR (high moisture resistance) is a moisture-resistant board, used for cabinet carcasses where humidity is high, such as kitchen cabinets, under-sink units and bathroom cabinets. Moisture-resistant is not waterproof: its edges must be fully sealed and it should not be left standing in water. Thai building-material shops sell HMR as a board of its own, separate from MDF and plywood. Built-ins in the RAYA app start as an HMR carcass faced with laminate.
MDF: MDF (medium-density fibreboard) is a board of wood fibres pressed to a medium density. It is dense and even all the way through, so it takes grooves, curved edges and spray paint cleanly, and is often used for cabinet doors. Plain MDF does not take water: left wet, it swells.
Plywood: Plywood is a board of thin wood layers laid with the grain crossing and pressed together. It is strong and holds screws firmly, so it is used for cabinet carcasses and shelves that carry weight. Plywood, MDF and particleboard are sold in 1220 × 2440 mm sheets.

Cabinet hardware

Hinges, drawer runners and push to open

Concealed hinge

A concealed hinge sits inside the cabinet: its cup is set into a hole bored in the back of the door, so it cannot be seen from outside when the door is shut. A model with a built-in damper is called soft close: the door slows down and closes gently by itself. How many hinges a door needs depends on its height and weight; the RAYA app counts them from the maker's chart.

Hinges per door, from the Blum CLIP top BLUMOTION chart, for doors up to 60 cm wide. A door wider than 60 cm, up to 65 cm, takes one more.
Door height up to	Weight up to	Hinges
75 cm	6 kg	2
150 cm	12 kg	3
210 cm	17 kg	4
250 cm	22 kg	5

Undermount runner

An undermount runner is hidden under the drawer, so no runner shows at the sides when it is open. A full-extension runner lets the whole drawer come out. The runner length has to suit the cabinet depth: a 50 cm Häfele EPC-Plus runner, for example, needs at least 51.8 cm of clear depth inside the cabinet.

Push to open

Push to open is a mechanism that pops a door or drawer out when you press its front, so no handle is needed and the cabinet front stays one flat surface. Doors like this use hinges without a damper, paired with a push latch.

Ceilings

Ceiling types, and the light hidden in them

Flush plasterboard ceiling: A flush plasterboard ceiling is gypsum board fixed to a frame with its joints plastered over into one surface, so no board joints show. A T-bar ceiling, by contrast, lays panels on an exposed grid.
Dropped perimeter ceiling: A dropped perimeter ceiling brings the edge of the room lower than the middle. The lowered edge hides air-con ducts, wiring or curtain tracks, and often hides an uplight that washes the middle of the ceiling.
Tray ceiling: A tray ceiling raises the middle of the room above the edges around it, like an upturned tray. The room looks taller, and lights are often hidden in the rim of the recess, shining up onto the ceiling for a soft light all over.
Cove light: A cove light is a strip light hidden in a ceiling recess or a groove in furniture. You do not see the lamp, only the light bouncing off the ceiling or wall, which gives the room a soft, even light. It is usually paired with downlights.

Lighting

Lumens, lux and the colour of light

Lumen (lm): A lumen is a measure of all the light a bulb gives out: the higher the number, the brighter the bulb. It is printed on the box. Two bulbs that draw the same power can give different amounts of light, so compare bulbs by lumens, not watts.
Lux: Lux is how bright the light falling on a surface is: 1 lux is 1 lumen spread over 1 square metre, so the same bulbs give more lux in a small room than in a large one. The targets the RAYA app uses, from GB 50034-2013, are 75 lux for a bedroom, 100 lux for a living room, 100 lux for a kitchen, 150 lux for a dining room and 50 lux for a corridor. A desk, a reading corner and a food preparation area take 500 lux, following the TIEA guide. Lighting calculator
Colour temperature: Colour temperature is the tone of a light, measured in kelvin (K). A low number gives a warm yellow light, a high number a cool bluish white. Bulbs sold in Thailand are usually labelled warm white (about 3000K), cool white (about 4000K) and daylight (about 6500K). Colour temperature does not make a room brighter or darker; brightness is a matter of lumens and lux.
Downlight: A downlight is a light that shines downwards. Most are set into the ceiling with the face flush, though surface-mounted ones exist too. It is a common choice for a room's main light. The number you need is the lumens the room needs divided by the lumens of one downlight. See how many a room of each size takes

Air-con

Air-con BTU

BTU: BTU (British thermal unit), for air-con, means BTU per hour: the cooling capacity of the unit. The size a room needs depends on its floor area, ceiling height and use. The BTU calculator of Mitsubishi Electric Kang Yong Watana uses 800 BTU per square metre for a bedroom, 900 for a living room and 1,000 for a home office, at a 3.00 m ceiling. Air-con BTU calculator

Tiles

Grout, and tile waste

Grout: Grout is the material that fills the joints between tiles, giving a continuous surface and keeping dirt out of the gaps. Ordinary cement grout is not waterproof: waterproofing is a separate layer under the tiles. The width of the joint changes how many tiles you need, because the joints take up area too.
Tile waste: Tile waste is what you buy beyond the area actually tiled: offcuts trimmed at the edges and tiles left over in the box. Many people add a fixed percentage, but the real waste depends on how evenly the tile size divides the room. Tile calculator

Drawings

Construction drawings, sheet by sheet

Construction drawings: Construction drawings are the set builders work from, with plans, elevations, sections and details, all with sizes and materials. Presentation drawings, by contrast, show the client what the room will look like.
Presentation drawings: Presentation drawings are made for the client to look at before deciding, with views of the room and the chosen materials and colours. They are meant to be easy to read and do not carry enough detail for a builder to work from. See sample construction and presentation drawings
Floor plan: A floor plan is the room seen from above, showing walls, doors, windows and furniture with their sizes. It shows where things go and how much walking space is left.
Elevation: An elevation is a view looking straight at a wall or a cabinet, showing its outside face, its height and where the doors, drawers or sockets are.
Section: A section is the view you get by cutting through a room or cabinet along a set line and looking in, showing the frame inside, the board thickness and the dimensions you cannot see from outside.
Detail drawing: A detail drawing enlarges a small part until you can see how it is made, such as a door edge, a board joint or how a hinge is fixed. It is drawn at a larger scale than the other drawings in the set.
Reflected ceiling plan: A reflected ceiling plan shows the ceiling as if reflected in a mirror on the floor, with the ceiling levels, the lights and the air-con grilles. It faces the same way as the floor plan, so the two can be laid side by side.

Job documents

BOQ, quotations and getting paid

BOQ: A BOQ (bill of quantities) lists the quantities of work and materials item by item, with the unit and amount of each. Add a unit price to each line and you have the price of the job. It is the basis of a quotation, and the way to compare prices between contractors. Make a BOQ from the room you drew
Quotation: A quotation is the document in which whoever takes the job tells the client the price and the scope of the work, with the items, prices and payment terms. Once the client agrees, a contract follows.
Instalments: Instalments split payment for the job into stages by progress, for example a deposit before work starts, a payment when production is done and the rest when installation is finished. Each instalment has its own invoice and receipt.
Variation order: A variation order changes the scope of the work after the contract is signed, for example when the client asks for an extra cabinet or a different material. It is a separate document listing what changes and how much the price goes up or down, approved by the client before the work is done.
Retention: Retention is a share of the job's price that the client holds back from each instalment and returns to the contractor when the defects liability period ends. If something goes wrong in that time, the client still has this money to put it right.

Clearance

The space you need to leave

Clearance: Clearance is the free space you leave around furniture or an appliance so it can be used, such as room to stand at a counter, a walkway beside a bed or space to pull a chair out from a table. A piece that fits but has no clearance is awkward to use. See furniture sizes and clearances
Work triangle: The work triangle is the line joining the sink, the hob and the fridge in a kitchen. With these three points the right distance apart, you can cook without walking far. The NKBA guidelines give each side 1.20–2.70 m and all three together no more than 7.90 m.

FAQ

Words people often mix up

What is the difference between HMR and MDF?: They are different boards. HMR resists moisture and is used for cabinet carcasses in kitchens and bathrooms, though it is not waterproof. MDF is dense and smooth, good for grooved or spray-painted doors, but it does not take water.
What is the difference between lumens and lux?: Lumens are all the light a bulb gives out. Lux is the light that reaches a surface, per square metre. Choose a bulb by its lumens; check whether a room is bright enough by its lux.
What is the difference between an elevation and a section?: An elevation looks straight at a wall or a cabinet and shows only its outside. A section cuts through the cabinet or room and looks in, showing the frame, the board thickness and what is inside.

Sources

Where the figures come from

GB 50034-2013 Standard for lighting design of buildings, table 5.2.1, illuminance for dwellings
Thai Illuminating Engineering Association (TIEA), Guidelines for Indoor Lighting Design, chapter 4
Mitsubishi Electric Kang Yong Watana BTU calculator
Blum Catalogue and technical manual 2024/2025 p. 718, number of hinges per door
Häfele Thailand Furniture Fittings 2023 page FF 7.66, EPC-Plus runners
NKBA Kitchen Planning Guidelines guideline 3, the work triangle

Design your first room, and see where each of these words turns up in real work

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