Selecting an Architect/Designer for our custom home design
I want to keep it really real here. This stage was tough. And it was tough for reasons I wouldn’t expect it to be, but the user experience problem solver in me really wants to figure out why this is a problem and solve it. That’ll be for another day, though.
Why was it hard?
Searching in our local area for designers really didn’t yield as many results as I thought it would. One thing I knew is that it is incredibly helpful/important to work with a designer that is familiar with designing homes for the area you plan to build because there are so many things that change from one area’s building code to the next. I know there have to be a lot of designers in the area, but I struggled to find them. The same few kept showing up, and those few definitely didn’t showcase the style we knew we wanted by this point.
Wading through all the portfolios was overwhelming and was made worse when some of them wouldn’t show even general ballpark pricing on their website. We had no way of knowing if they were just way out of our range to even make it worth our time to meet with them.
Our solution was to start asking people we knew if they knew any architects/designers. That easily got us the most success. It helped that I have a pretty connected network of people, and I’m grateful for it.
We knew it would be smart to meet with more than one, so we settled on three. That felt like enough that we would have a feel but not too many that we were just wasting everyone’s time. We selected those three from recommendations we got from our network.
There were a few main things we wanted to accomplish in each of the three consultations we had:
Determine if they were a fit for our style goal
Decide if we could talk to them easily and if we felt like they were on the same page as us
Get an idea of the type of plans they produce and if they would accomplish what we needed - we asked if they could send us a sample of a plan set to look at
Learn how their process works
Get an estimate or a general idea of how much they would charge
Comparing Architects
This is tricky because it’s not always apples to apples.
The things we compared were the quality and completeness of their plan sets. This might be tricky if you don’t have much knowledge of what should be included in a plan set, but our general rule was that it would have to include the basics:
Site Plan
Foundation and Footing Plan
Roof/Truss Plan
Relevant Cross Sections
Floor Plan
All Exterior Elevations
Electrical Plan
Plumbing Plan
HVAC Plan
From our own experience, some of these plans are combined, and some are excluded.
Some designers take it a step further and include:
Door and Window Schedules
Millwork/Cabinetry Plans
3D Sketches
Photo-realistic Renderings
VR Walkthroughs/Flythroughs
And even further, some designers even include landscape design in your site plan.
We also learned that some designers include engineering costs and others don’t, and we knew we wouldn’t want to be surprised by those in the end. The bottom line is that you need to know what things are important to you and what you actually need to build your home. If you don’t feel like it’s important for you to see photo-realistic renderings, don’t use a designer that charges extra for them.
What should you have ready for your consultations?
We found that we came very prepared for our consultations and that most people aren’t as prepared as us. We also got feedback from all three of the architects that we met with that they really appreciated our preparedness and that we started this process very early.
Before our consultations we:
Made a complete wish list of what our perfect house would include - room by room
Put together inspiration for the style of home we wanted
Found a number of floorplans that we really liked and made notes of what we loved or didn’t love about them
Most designers don’t want to just copy someone else’s floor plan exactly, but they will draw inspiration and ideas from it and put it with their own experience and design expertise to create something that is unique to you.
