- Cold/gray shell — a bare building: structure, exterior, roof, maybe stubbed utilities. No interior.
- Vanilla shell / vanilla box — a shell with basic interior: finished walls, basic HVAC, lighting, restrooms, ready for a tenant's finish-out.
- Tenant improvement / tenant finish-out (TI) — building out the interior of a leased space for a specific tenant (the bulk of medical/dental/office/retail interior work).
- Ground-up — building the entire structure new from the dirt.
Ask Pereff AI about this topic
Pereff AI can go deeper — giving you project-specific ranges, comparing delivery methods, and answering follow-up questions instantly. Every answer is cited.
Ask: “Tell me more about Shell vs. finish (critical vocabulary for tenant projects)”Want a project-specific take?
Articles give you the framework. Real numbers come from preconstruction — and Pereff charges nothing for that first conversation.
Start a Project
