SwatcheraSwatchera collects only what it needs to identify materials, run your projects and connect you with suppliers. We never sell your data, show you ads, or pass your projects to suppliers unless you choose to.
Who we are
Swatchera is run by James Riddell and Ma Jean Paulyn Plata, trading together as Swatchera (“Swatchera”, “we”). We have no postal address during the beta, so please contact us by email. We plan to move the business into a limited company. When we do, we will tell you, and this policy will then name the company. We are the controller of the personal data described here, except for your clients’ details, where we act for you (see below). Contact us about privacy at info@swatchera.com.
Swatchera is a professional tool for interior designers and material suppliers. This policy covers the designer app, the supplier portal, the swatchera.com website and its sign-up form, and our emails.
What we collect and why
| What | Whose | Why we use it | Legal basis (UK/EU GDPR) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email address, first and last name, region (UK, EU, UAE or USA), plan | Designers | Your account, sign-in codes, prices in your currency | Contract |
| What you type into the sign-up or contact form on swatchera.com, such as your name, email address, role, company or studio, website and message | People who ask about the beta or contact us | Replying to you and arranging beta access or a call | Legitimate interests (answering your request); consent for anything more |
| When you visit swatchera.com: your IP address and the country it comes from, the page you asked for and basic browser details | Website visitors | Keeping the website secure and working, and counting visits without cookies | Legitimate interests |
| Company name, work email, contact name, phone, address, country, opening hours, logo, website, product details and photos | Suppliers | Your listing, which designers see, and your portal | Contract |
| Scan photos and close-ups, what we detected, any tags you correct, the colour and a numeric fingerprint of the image | Designers | Finding matching materials and keeping your scan history | Contract |
| Corrections to scan results and whether a match was right | Designers | Measuring and improving matching accuracy | Legitimate interests |
| Library, favourites, projects, schedules, locations, notes, quantities, material boards and materials you add yourself | Designers | Running your projects and exports | Contract |
| Sample requests and contact requests: product, quantity, message, delivery address, region | Designers | Sending your request to the supplier you chose | Contract |
| Messages between a designer and a supplier about a request, and any report made about a thread | Designers and suppliers | Delivering the conversation, and looking into reports of abuse | Contract; legitimate interests (looking into reports) |
| Activity on supplier products: matched, saved, spec sheet downloaded, contact tapped, sample requested | Designers | Usage limits, and statistics for suppliers (see What suppliers see) | Legitimate interests |
| Support requests, messages and attachments | Everyone | Answering you | Contract and legitimate interests |
| Sign-in records, error logs, a short log of the emails we send, and a record of each AI check (see How long we keep it) | Everyone | Keeping accounts secure, fixing faults, answering “did my email arrive?” and enforcing AI limits and costs | Legitimate interests |
| Billing details, once paid plans start | Paying customers | Taking payment and keeping tax records | Contract and legal obligation |
We don’t ask for your date of birth, phone number (designers), or payment card numbers (our payment provider handles cards).
Scan photos
When we save a scan photo we re-encode it, which removes location (GPS) and camera data. Your scan photos are private to you. They are not shown to other designers or to suppliers. We use your scans and corrections in aggregate to test and improve matching. Please avoid photographing people, and ask your client before scanning inside their home.
Materials you add yourself and choose to share appear in the shared library for every designer, labelled “User uploaded”. Before sharing, you confirm you have the right to share the photos. Materials you keep private stay in your own library. Our team checks each shared material before it appears to other designers, and may decline or remove it.
AI features
Image matching itself runs on our own server. Two features also send data to an AI service run by Anthropic, which acts for us and may use the data only to provide the service to us. They are on from the start of the beta. We tell you about them in your invitation, and in the app where they appear. You can switch them off yourself in your account settings, or email info@swatchera.com and we will do it for you. While they are off, nothing is sent to the AI service.
- AI second opinion on scans (designers). When you scan a material, we send your scan photo (upright, reduced in size and re-encoded, with its location and camera data removed) plus the catalogue photos of the closest matches, so the AI can check whether the match looks right and describe the material. We send nothing about you: no name, email, project or account. Our own image matching always gives the first answer; the AI can only add a note, and it is skipped when you have reached the daily limit or the service is busy.
- AI help for suppliers. When a supplier uploads a catalogue spreadsheet with a zip of product photos, the first photo of each product is sent to the AI service to suggest a category, material, colour and finish. Cells the supplier left empty may be filled in when the AI is sure, and they are marked as AI-filled so the supplier can check and change them; a supplier’s own entries are never overwritten. If a supplier chooses to have a spec sheet PDF read, it is sent to the AI service to suggest sizes and technical values, which are saved only when the supplier accepts them. We do not keep the PDF.
We keep a simple record of each AI check (when it ran, for which account, and what it cost) to enforce the daily limits and watch costs. It holds no photos and none of the AI’s text. Anthropic does not use this data to train its models. It keeps it only briefly to run and secure the service, and longer only if its safety systems flag it. Deleting a scan in Swatchera does not remove that short-lived copy. Please don’t scan people, documents, or anything that shows a client’s name or address.
Recently deleted
When you delete a scan, a project (with its boards), a material board, or a material from a project, it moves to a Recently deleted area for 7 days. You can restore it during that time. It disappears from your lists, search, exports and supplier statistics straight away, and suppliers never see it. After 7 days it is permanently deleted, with its uploaded files. Something still used by an item you haven’t deleted (for example a scan used in a project) stays until that goes too. You can empty Recently deleted yourself to delete everything in it now. Deleted data can remain in our backups for up to 30 days until they are overwritten. Deleting your whole account is different: it has its own 30-day wait, described next.
Deleting your account
Designers. When you delete your account from the Account page, it is switched off straight away and you are signed out. For 30 days you can change your mind: sign in again and everything is as you left it. We email you when you ask and when it is cancelled. After 30 days everything is permanently deleted: your projects, boards, scans, materials, uploads, sign-in details and your messages with suppliers. Requests you already sent stay with the supplier without your name, delivery address or message.
Suppliers. When you delete your account, your listing disappears from the library and everyone at your company is signed out. You have the same 30 days to change your mind by signing in again. After that, the company’s login, contact details, website and logo are permanently deleted and the company name is replaced by “(closed)”. Your products stay hidden from designers but are kept unless you ask us to remove them, and requests designers already sent stay on record (see How long we keep it).
Everyone. If you want your data erased at once, email info@swatchera.com and we will do it without the wait. Deleted data can remain in our backups for up to 30 days until they are overwritten.
If you move to a plan with lower limits
Items above the new plan’s limits (for example extra projects with their boards and specs, extra material boards, and favourites beyond the limit) are locked as read-only for 90 days. You can still open them and export or download them, but not edit them. They don’t show to suppliers and don’t count in supplier statistics. We email you within a day of the lock, 30 days after it, 7 days before deletion and the day before deletion, and once more after the deletion. If you upgrade within the 90 days, everything comes back. After 90 days the locked items and their uploaded files are permanently deleted. Scans and materials you added yourself are not affected by a plan change. For suppliers, your products, enquiries and statistics history are never deleted when you move to a lower plan.
Your clients’ details
Projects can hold a client name, a project address and notes. For this information, you are the controller and we process it only to provide Swatchera to you, under the data processing terms in our Terms of service. Only add what you need.
What suppliers see
Nothing from your projects goes to a supplier automatically, on any plan. A supplier sees:
- what you send them in a sample or contact request, including the delivery address you type;
- counts of how often their products were matched, saved, downloaded or requested, with your region but not your name;
- your name and studio only if you turn on sharing your details with suppliers. This is off by default and you can turn it off at any time.
Messages with suppliers
A supplier can reply to your sample or contact request, and you can reply in the same thread. These messages are stored with the request. You can switch replies off, mark a request done, or report a thread. If you report a thread, it goes to our support team together with the whole conversation, and Swatchera staff with support access (our support team and owners) may read it. Staff cannot read a thread that nobody has reported: they see only how many messages it has and when they were sent. The supplier keeps their own copy of what you send them, so don’t put anything in a message that you wouldn’t want them to have.
Who else handles your data
We use a small number of service providers, who may only use the data to provide their service to us:
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner Online GmbH | Runs our servers and database, and holds our backups in the EU | Germany (EU) |
| Cloudflare | Hosts and protects swatchera.com and manages its domain name. It handles each visit to the website, so it sees visitors’ IP addresses and countries, stores sign-up form entries in a database in Europe, and keeps technical request logs and cookie-free visit counts | USA, global network |
| Resend | Sends our emails (sign-in codes, support replies, invitations and plan notices) from notify.swatchera.com. It sees each recipient’s email address and the message, including sign-in codes. | Ireland (EU), on Amazon Web Services |
| Microsoft 365 | Our company email and support mailbox, so it holds messages you send us | UK |
| Anthropic (only for the AI features described above) | Runs the AI service described above. It receives only the photos or PDFs described there, never your name, email or account details | USA |
| Stripe (once paid plans start) | Takes payments | UK, EU and USA |
Image matching runs on our own server. The only things that leave it for an AI service are the AI features described above. Our fonts are served from our own server too. Tapping Directions opens Apple Maps or Google Maps, which then handle your request under their own policies.
We may disclose data if the law requires it, or to a buyer of the business, who would have to keep this policy’s promises.
Where your data is stored
Our servers are with Hetzner in Germany, and our backups are kept in the EU. When data goes outside the UK or EU, for example to a US provider, we rely on an adequacy decision or on standard contractual clauses (with the UK addendum).
How long we keep it
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Account details | While your account is open. If you delete your account, it is switched off straight away and you can cancel it within 30 days by signing in again. After that your data is permanently deleted. If you ask us to erase it immediately, we skip the wait |
| Scans | Until you delete the scan or your account. A scan used in a project or board stays until you remove it from there |
| Projects, boards and library | Until you delete them or your account |
| Sample and contact requests, and the messages in their threads | 2 years from the request. If the designer deletes their account, their messages are deleted with it when the deletion completes |
| A supplier’s products and photos after the account is closed | Hidden from designers and kept until the supplier asks us to remove them by email, and then removed within 30 days |
| Activity used for supplier statistics | Linked to your account for 24 months, then kept only as anonymous totals |
| Support requests | 2 years after they are resolved |
| Sign-in codes | 2 days |
| Items in Recently deleted | 7 days, then permanently deleted |
| Locked items after a move to a plan with lower limits | 90 days, then permanently deleted |
| Website sign-up and contact form details | 12 months after our last contact with you, or sooner if you ask |
| Website request logs (Cloudflare) | Short-lived technical logs that Cloudflare keeps under its own settings. We do not copy them elsewhere |
| Error logs | 90 days |
| Records of AI checks (no photos or AI text) | Kept while the service runs to enforce limits and track cost. A designer’s records are deleted with their account |
| Email delivery log (the date, the type of email, the recipient’s address with the middle hidden and a coded version of it, and whether our mail service accepted it) | 30 days. It never holds the subject, text, sign-in code or link, and our support team uses it only to check whether an email was sent |
| Billing and tax records | 6 years, as UK tax law requires |
| Backups | Overwritten within 30 days |
Cookies and browser storage
We use only what the app needs to work. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, so we don’t show a cookie banner. If that changes, we will ask first. The swatchera.com website itself sets no cookies and uses no browser storage.
| Name | Type | Purpose | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| sw_designer (named __Secure-sw_designer on secure connections) | Cookie, essential | Keeps you signed in so your photos load | 30 days |
| Sign-in token (swatchera-designer-token, swatchera-supplier-session) | Browser storage, essential | Keeps you signed in | Until you sign out or it expires (30 days designers, 14 days suppliers) |
| swatchera_admin | Cookie, essential, staff only | Admin sign-in | 8 hours |
| sw_open_designer, sw_open_supplier | Cookie, essential | Tells a return visit from a reload, so “Welcome back” shows at the right time | Until you close the browser |
| swatchera-active-* | Browser storage, preference | When you were last active, for the same “Welcome back” note | Until you clear it |
| swatchera-theme | Browser storage, preference | Remembers light or dark mode | Until you clear it |
| swatchera-name | Browser storage, preference | Greets you by first name | Until you sign out |
| swatchera-board-* | Browser storage, preference | Remembers your last board view | Until you clear it |
| swatchera-sched-price, swatchera-sched-status | Browser storage, preference | Remembers which columns you show in a schedule | Until you clear it |
| swatchera-onboarded, swatchera-supplier-guide-v1, swatchera-import-seen | Browser storage, preference | Remembers that you have seen the welcome, the portal guide or the import tips | Until you clear it |
| swatchera-hint | Session storage | Shows a tip once | Until you close the tab |
| swatchera-welcome-back, swatchera-switched, swatchera-deleted | Session storage | Shows a one-time note after you return, switch account or ask to delete your account | Until you close the tab |
Your rights
Wherever you are, you can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete it. Email info@swatchera.com and we will reply within one month. You can delete scans, projects and materials yourself in the app, and delete your account from the Account page (you have 30 days to change your mind by signing in again, or you can ask us to erase it at once).
In the UK and EU you can also object to our use of legitimate interests, restrict use, and take your data to another service. In the UAE you have the rights in the Personal Data Protection Law. In US states with privacy laws, you have the rights those laws give, and we don’t sell or share personal data for targeted advertising.
If you’re unhappy with our answer, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk), your local EU data protection authority (in Spain, the AEPD), or the UAE Data Office.
Age
Swatchera is for professionals aged 18 or over. We don’t knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you think we have, tell us and we will delete it.
Security
Connections are encrypted, sign-in uses one-time codes, and staff access needs two-factor authentication and is logged. If a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the regulator as the law requires.
Changes
We will post changes here and email account holders about important ones at least 14 days before they apply. If we add a new service provider that will see your data, we will email account holders at least 14 days before it does.
Questions about this page: info@swatchera.com. See also our Terms of service.