What to Expect When Working With A Building Designer - Phase 1: Gathering Ideas
Have you been dreaming of building a custom home?
The process of designing the perfect home—the one you’ve been imagining for years—will be one of the most exciting undertakings of your life. But in too many cases it can be completely overwhelming as well.
You may be wondering how to even get started and mystified at what the design process will entail.
How do you find the right designer for you?
How do you communicate what you want in a way that makes sense?
How does your designer take that spark of your vision and craft it into a structurally sound reality?
We’ve broken the process down into the five most common phases you’ll go through with a designer to take your home from an idea to ready for construction, and we’ll be going through each phase over the next five days.
We hope this blog series can give you some sense of what to expect when working with a building designer to create the custom home of your dreams!
Psst! Want to jump ahead?
There’s a lot of information to process and questions to reflect on here, so we’ve compiled this entire blog series into a PDF guide, What to Expect When Working With A Building Designer. You can download your own guide free and refer back to it forever by signing up for our mailing list.
Phase 1: Gathering Ideas
Before your initial consultation with a building designer, you’ll want to pull together your own thoughts and ideas, particularly when it comes to the specifics of what you need in a floor plan.
This phase can take as long as you’d like, stretching out over years of daydreaming and research while you budget and save, or taking place in a brief flurry of brainstorming and napkin sketching after purchasing a site on a whim. It’s up to you.
Really try to get clear about your optimal lifestyle. Your custom home should support you in living your fullest, most joy-filled life, whatever that looks like for you.
Below are a few questions to consider during this phase so that you can go into your meeting with your designer prepared.
Have you already purchased a site?
If so, what is the width and depth of the land?
How many bedrooms will you need for your family?
Consider the dynamics of your family, both now and in the future. Bedrooms on the lower and upper levels are great for older children, but an extra bedroom on the main level can be a godsend for small children, aging parents, or guests.
Spend some time fantasizing about your master suite here too. Anything special you’ve been envisioning to make this a truly spectacular retreat? A cozy nook with a fireplace where you can curl up with a book in the evening? A private patio for enjoying a glass of wine? A bathroom that reminds you of your favorite spa or hotel? A closet lit and arranged like an upscale boutique?
Are you thinking about a ranch home or a two story?
This is where it may help to consider what you want for yourself in the future. Do you plan to stay in this home as you age? Ranch plans have long been favored for enabling a stair-free daily routine, meaning that everything you need—garage access, your master suite, the laundry room, the kitchen—are all accessible without extra help.
But even if you’ve purchased a hillside lot—which is fairly common in the Rocky Mountains where we design—or if you want a multi-story home to fit a narrower infill lot, a good building designer can come up with clever ideas and spatial arrangements that will allow you to install an elevator at a future date if you ever needed to. A bit of clever forethought now can make a world of difference later in allowing you to stay in your home and live independently in the decades to come.
How many bathrooms do you need?
Would you like each bedroom to have its own private bathroom, or would a Jack-and-Jill make more sense? What about powder rooms for guests?
How many cars need space in the garage?
What about extra storage space?
How do you like to entertain?
Do you envision a formal dining room for holiday meals? A media room for watching movies in surround sound? A rec room where you can host the ultimate game night?
What about outdoor living space? A courtyard or covered deck is the ultimate way to double your party space when you need it and allow you to enjoy the seasons and plenty of natural light when you don’t.
Will you need space for a home office or studio?
What about exercise space?
Have you considered an ADU (accessory dwelling unit)?
Also known as granny flats, guest houses, or backyard cottages, ADUs can be a fun consideration if you have space on your property. These freestanding units can be used as spaces for your work or hobbies—maybe you’d love a peaceful yoga studio for your practice, or a quiet place for you to write your novel—or they can be a home for parents, in-laws, and family, or you can always rent them out for extra income.
ADUs can be built in conjunction with the construction of your new home, or anytime in the future, it just may be worth considering now so your building designer can allot for the space on your site.
PLEASE NOTE that not all sites are zoned for ADUs. Consult your local building department for legality and compliance.
BONUS TIP:
It doesn’t have to just be about the floor plan basics here. The little details are where you can really customize a home so that it becomes a true partner to you living your best life.
Keep a notebook handy while you become an observer of your own daily routine for a week or more:
Do you and your spouse find yourselves bumping into each other every morning while you make breakfast? Maybe by adding extra outlets on either side of your kitchen island, adding a second sink, or reconfiguring your appliances and cabinets to map out more efficient zones, you can guarantee a bump-free AM (and ensure less holiday meal prep stress too), giving you a better start to every single day.
Have you struggled with large deliveries or moving in the past? Consider adding an extra wide door from your garage to your home and never have to take the hinges off your door again.
Keep track of your ideas and of the problems you encounter frequently in your current home. By giving the solutions a bit of personalized thought now, you’ll be thanking yourself for decades to come.
Too much to think about right now? No worries, our free PDF guide includes all of these same questions for you to reflect on and answer at your own pace. Sign up here for your free download.
After getting those specifics out of the way, now comes the fun part—aesthetics!
Maybe you grew up admiring that Tudor house on the hill. Or you’ve always been drawn to the warmth of a Craftsman. Maybe you find yourself up all night scrolling through images of Contemporary homes with their expansive windows and bold angularity.
It could be that terracotta tile floors and arched doorways make your heart take flight, like those found in Spanish Colonial architecture. Perhaps you’ve always dreamt of a home that feels like it belongs in the French countryside or amidst rolling Tuscan hills, or maybe you’ve always wanted a cottage right out of a fairytale, complete with shutters and sweeping roofs.
Whatever it is—and it’s okay if it’s a blend of styles and ideas at this point, your designer will be able to help you hone in on what you truly want and can even show you different options—start saving images. LGA Studios was established in 1982, and at that time, clients would come in with binders and files filled with decades worth of magazine clippings and notes.
Today, we have digital tools like Pinterest and Houzz where savvy dreamers can store and curate images. We love how these sites have given our clients more freedom to explore architectural details and styles and to express the story of what they want in a home through images.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with ideas at this phase, but take your time and trust yourself here.
We’ve had clients reference trips they’ve taken down tiny alleyways in Barcelona when describing the style they love the most, a soaring lobby from a ski lodge remembered from childhood, or even the modern home owned by the Incredible’s from the Disney film as touchstones for what they were dreaming of.
Let your imagination and your heart lead you, the right designer will be able to capture the soul of your idea and evoke this for you in your home.
BONUS TIP:
Maybe it’s just us, but we love looking at house plans, and during this phase is a great time to do just that.
There are plenty of plans on the internet to peruse for ideas, but if you’re looking for something more tangible, we’ve published a collection of house plan concepts through our sister company, Rocky Mountain Plan Company.
The Complete Collection is available on Amazon and features 138 house plans (68 ranch plans and 70 two story plans) that range from 440 to 7,910 square feet. Many of our clients have found it to be an excellent starting point when gathering ideas that can then be customized.
Tune in tomorrow for Phase 2: Initial Consultation!
For your convenience, we’ve linked every phase and post from this blog series below.
Phase 5: Construction Documents
If you’d like to access all the information from this five-part blog series in one easy to read document, sign up for our mailing list by clicking here and receive our free PDF guide to help you on your home design journey!