Choosing furniture is only one part of equipping or remodeling a home. Before that, there is a decision that defines practically everything else: the construction materials — floors, coatings, bathrooms, hardware.
Unlike furniture, building materials are not organized so much by price range, but by type of product — each category has its own reference stores in Portugal.
In this article we have organized the main options by type of material, and explained why an architecture office can go much further than a visit to large supermarkets.
Generalist Building Materials
For the essentials of a work — from cement to plasterboard, from tools to base materials — there are large surfaces with great variety and good availability in Portugal:
- Leroy Merlin: the largest DIY and building materials chain in Portugal.
- Obramat: large-scale warehouse dedicated to professionals and larger works.
- Bigmat: chain of professional construction stores, with a strong presence throughout the country.
- Maxmat: Portuguese chain of construction, DIY and garden materials.
- Bricomarché: a chain of DIY and construction stores, with an extensive presence in Portugal.
- Casa Peixoto: Portuguese chain with large stores, construction materials, bathrooms, decoration and garden.
They are great options to solve the essentials of a work — but, as with furniture, buying everything here, without any other criteria, tends to result in a generic finish, just like any other work that has passed through the same shelf.
Coatings, Floors, Hardware and Accessories for Kitchens and Bathrooms
For floors, tiles and coverings, there are specialized stores with their own showroom, where it is easier to see and compare samples before deciding:
- Decorpita: store specialized in construction materials and decoration, with a strong offer in flooring and coatings, stores in Lisbon and surroundings.
- Bath Tones: store specialized in bathroom materials and solutions.
- Sanimaia: store specialized in accessories and coatings for bath, kitchen and decorative objects, largest presence in the North of Portugal.
These stores usually have a more personalized service when compared to large platform stores, but the same care is needed in choosing the right piece for your project. It is still necessary to look at the whole — in the relationship between flooring, coating, paint color and furniture.
Exclusive Vendors: What an Architecture Firm Has Access to and Big Stores Doesn’t
There is a type of supplier that rarely appears in large stores and platforms: exclusive manufacturers and distributors, many of them outside Portugal, with whom architecture and interior offices work directly.
This applies to practically all sectors of a construction site — taps, floors, sockets and switches, and even synthetic turf, when applicable. These suppliers work mainly with professionals, and are therefore invisible to those who only look at the large platforms.
It is this network of contacts, built over years, that allows an architectural project to look for pieces and finishes that are simply not available to those who buy alone.
What Can Go Wrong Without a Project Tying It All Together
Choosing materials store by store, without a basic design, is one of the most common mistakes — and most expensive to correct once applied.
A beautiful floor, chosen in isolation, may not match the tone of the kitchen countertop. A bathroom cladding may not have the right friction for a shower area. Joints between tiles from different suppliers can be slightly different shades from room to room.
None of these errors are visible in an isolated sample, in the store. It only becomes evident after everything is applied — when correcting it already means redoing work.
What Hardware Stores Don’t Do for You
As with furniture stores, a home improvement store is responsible for selling the material — not the work.
It does not check if that floor is technically suitable for the room where it will be applied, does not coordinate the delivery with the work schedule, does not calculate the exact amount to avoid waste or lack of material in the middle of the application, and does not generate exchanges when a box arrives with a slightly different color batch.
How CW helps you choose each item
At CW, every material choice is made with the project as a whole in mind – not item by item, in isolation. The right tap depends on the countertop. The right floor depends on the light, space and circulation. The right handle depends on the style of the entire piece of furniture.
That is why small decisions, which seem to be detailed, end up defining a large part of the final result: the difference between a work that seems “made of loose pieces” and a work that seems to have been thought out from start to finish.
We coordinate purchases between general stores, specialized stores and exclusive suppliers, calculate the right quantities to avoid waste, and align the delivery with the construction schedule. And the customer approves everything before the purchase: from the material to the price of each item.
Learn more about what we do at CW Arquitetura.
CTA: Are you going to build or remodel and don’t know where to start with the materials? Contact us and we will help you choose, buy and coordinate everything for you.