The appeal of a fixed-price interior package is completely reasonable: one number, decided early, that does not move. Anyone who has watched a project drift wants exactly that. The difficulty is that a package delivers the first half of the promise and not the second — it fixes what you pay per square foot while leaving open what a square foot contains. This page explains what a package rate quietly assumes, why the assumption breaks on almost every real home, where packages genuinely are the right product, and how to get a number that actually holds without taking one.
A package is a rate multiplied by an area. Both halves carry assumptions, and the assumptions are the actual product being sold — not the rate.
Published interior costs in Hyderabad run roughly ₹1,200 to ₹2,200 per sq ft, and that spread is not sloppiness. It is the honest range across board grades, hardware series and finish tiers. A package picks one point inside that spread, fixes the specification that goes with it, and then applies it to every home that signs up. Which means a package is not a discount. It is a specification decision made on your behalf, before anyone has seen your flat.
Three assumptions do most of the damage.
A rate is meaningless until you know what area it multiplies. Carpet, built-up and shutter area are all in use, and they are not close to each other. The same rate applied to built-up rather than carpet area turns a ₹15 lakh expectation on a 1,500 sq ft flat into ₹22 to ₹25 lakh — no dishonesty required, just a different denominator. This single variable moves the total more than any material choice you will agonise over.
Painting, false ceiling, electrical changes, plumbing shifts, countertops, appliance cut-outs, loose furniture, society deposits. Some packages include some of these. Almost none include all. Each excluded item is legitimate to exclude — provided it is written down — and each one arrives later as an addition to a number you had understood to be final.
A wardrobe quoted at a flat rate per square foot is priced for shelves, because drawers cost more to build than shelves. Ask for drawers inside that same square footage and either the price moves or the drawers do not appear. A rate that absorbs the internal configuration has to assume the cheaper configuration to survive; that is arithmetic, not malice.
This is the part that gets dismissed as a sales line, so it is worth being concrete. The differences that matter are not taste. They are physical, and they change cost.
Board grade is allocated by exposure, not by room name. A wardrobe backing onto a bathroom wall needs BWP to IS 710 where a wardrobe on a dry internal wall does not — and in a good many Hyderabad builder layouts around Gachibowli, Tellapur and Nallagandla, one bedroom wardrobe shares a wall with a bathroom and the others do not. Two flats of identical area therefore need different quantities of the more expensive board, in different places.
Corners, returns and end panels cost more per square foot than straight runs, because they add cutting, edge banding and fitting time to the same area. An L-shaped kitchen and a straight-run kitchen of equal area are not equal work. A single rate has to average them, which means one of the two is being mispriced.
Height determines whether a wardrobe gets a loft and whether a false ceiling can take a cove at all. Beams decide where a ceiling has to step. Window and door positions decide how much usable wall is left for storage. None of this is visible in a carpet-area figure, and all of it changes quantities.
Existing electrical routing, plumbing points, flooring condition and whether the flat is new or occupied change the sequence and the protection required. A fit-out in an occupied home is a different job from the same fit-out in an empty one, at the same area.
Drawers against shelves, a pooja unit that must face a particular direction, a cook who wants the hob away from the window, a home that hosts often and needs the crockery unit near the dining table rather than in the kitchen. These are the decisions that make a home usable, and they are precisely the decisions a package has already made for you.
None of these differences is exotic. That is the point: they turn up on ordinary projects, which is why a package priced for the average home fits almost nobody exactly. The average home is a statistical object. Nobody lives in one.
It would be easy, and dishonest, to end this page with "therefore never take a package". Packages are a real product with real advantages, and there are projects where they are the better answer.
They work when the scope is genuinely repetitive — several identical units in the same building, where the specification really can be decided once. They work for small flats being fitted out for rental, where the owner reasonably cares more about a predictable number and a quick handover than about hardware series. They work for show units, and for buyers who would rather not make forty material decisions and are content to accept someone else's defaults. And they work when the buyer has read the exclusions list and priced the additions themselves, going in with clear eyes.
What they do not do is remove risk. They relocate it: from the contractor, who now has a fixed rate to protect, onto the specification, which is where the adjustment has to happen. If the rate is fixed and the site turns out to be harder than average, something has to give, and it will be a board grade, a hardware series or a coat of finish — none of which you will see at handover.
The thing you actually wanted from a package was predictability. You can have that from an itemised quotation, and keep control of the specification as well.
| What you want | A package gives you | A BOQ gives you |
|---|---|---|
| One number, early | Yes — a rate, before anyone has seen the flat | Yes — a total, after a site visit and a written scope |
| The number not moving | The rate holds; the scope moves | The total holds unless you request a change |
| Knowing what the number bought | A tier name, and a specification you did not choose | Grade, brand, series and quantity against every line |
| Comparing firms fairly | Hard — each package assumes differently | Directly, line by line, on one basis |
| An enforceable warranty | Weak — an unnamed grade has nothing to attach to | The signed grade is the grade the cover runs against |
Four things make a BOQ behave like a fixed price in the way that matters:
The measurement basis, stated once and used everywhere. Settle carpet, built-up or shutter area at the top of the document, and the largest source of drift is gone before it starts.
GST shown separately. Subtotal, tax, total. An inclusive and an exclusive number differ by 18% and look identical in a message.
An explicit exclusions list. Not an implication — a list. Everything outside the number, named, so nothing can arrive later as a discovery.
A written variation rule. How a change is priced, and that you approve it before the work happens. This is the clause that turns a total into a commitment, and its absence is what lets any quotation drift regardless of what it is called.
That is how AlcorOne quotes: an itemised BOQ, and the total on it is what you pay unless you ask for something different. It is a fixed price in the only sense worth having — the number does not move on its own — while the specification is still written for your home instead of assumed across everyone's.
To see what that level of detail looks like before you talk to anyone, the free BOQ template and specification sheet is an Excel workbook you can hand to any contractor, us included. If you are holding a package quote and an itemised quote and trying to compare them, the nine variables that have to be normalised first is the page to read. And if you have not asked anyone for a number yet, settle these seven things first — an unclear brief produces an unclear quotation whatever pricing model sits on top of it.
No. We quote against an itemised Bill of Quantities instead, and the total on that BOQ is what you pay unless you ask for a change. That is a fixed price in the sense that matters — the number does not move on its own — but it is not a package, because the specification is written for your home rather than assumed across every home.
No, and it would be unfair to say so. A package is a genuine product with a genuine use: repetitive scope, small flats being fitted for rental, show units, or any project where the buyer values speed and a simple number over control of the specification. The problem is not dishonesty. It is that a package prices an average home, and the gap between the average home and yours is charged as variations later.
Usually one of three reasons. The area basis was built-up rather than carpet, so the same rate covers more square feet than you counted. Items you assumed were included sat outside the package. Or the internal configuration differed — drawers cost more to build than open shelves, and a rate that absorbs both is priced for shelves.
Ask for an itemised BOQ with the measurement basis stated once, GST shown separately, an explicit exclusions list, and a written rule for how variations are priced and approved before work on them starts. That gives you a total that does not drift, and unlike a package it also tells you what the total bought.
Because the site is not standard. Two flats with the same carpet area differ in where the wet walls are, how many corners the kitchen turns, ceiling height, beam positions, window and door placement, existing electrical routing, and what the association permits. Those differences change the grade of board required in specific places and the quantity of joinery, which is the bulk of the cost.
At the headline, often yes. Compared line by line at the same specification, usually not. The comparison is only meaningful once both are on the same area basis, the same side of GST, and every line excluded from the package has been added back — which is the exercise our quote-comparison guide walks through.