Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Unless the place gets thrashed during a combat the details of the area-room-space aren't going to change due to an encounter. There will still be two curtained windows to the west, one open, one closed; there will still be a small plain door in the north wall and a larger more-decorative door in the east; there will still be a table and four chairs (amend if any were destroyed during the encounter); there will still be a pot of tea on the counter and closed cupboards beneath said counter; there's still a fine oil-painted head-and-shoulders portrait of some military figure on the south wall; etc., etc....and most of this won't matter when they first enter and two people get up from the table and come at them rapiers-first.
So, you can describe all this up-front in one box of text and then have to describe it all again because the players forgot it during the fight (this is my usual MO); or you can have a small box about the rapier wielders rising from their seats and drawing their swords and a second post-combat box with the rest of the details. A side-advantage of this is that if the rapier-wielders have already been met and dealt with elsewhere it's easy to ignore that little text box.
The "descriptive paragraph for the DM" should focus only on what the PCs can't easily see and-or don't know about: e.g. what's in the cupboards, that there's a concealed safe behind the portrait (and all relevant details about said safe and its contents), that sort of thing. It should also give some RP guides and other non-combat details about the rapier-wielders - including names! - in case things become peaceful.
