When it comes to luxury residential projects, it is essential to find an architectural firm that is familiar with high end residential architecture. When your design process is overseen from start to finish by an expert in the field, the whole project will fit together seamlessly into a true work of art, from the blueprints and foundation to interior design and finishing touches.
There are many architects in America, but choosing just any architect for your home could be a mistake. Residential architecture has different requirements and preferences than commercial or industrial architecture, and even among residential architects there is a wide array of architectural styles and parameters.
Are you building your dream home? Your family estate to pass to your children? Or a residence that you intend to live in for a time and then sell at a profit later on?
In any of these circumstances it will pay to hire an architect who specializes in bespoke designs for luxury custom homes. Their design team will be primed to exceed expectations, as they are able to juggle all the important considerations: from premium materials to environmental impact and all the aesthetic preferences that will make your home your own.
New construction makes no sense if, when it’s finished, you still realize that parts of your house were poorly thought out or badly designed. Experienced architects have years of learning from their own mistakes and those of others, and have elegant solutions to design problems that you’ve never even thought of. Your custom home deserves a truly personal design process, where award winning architects dedicate their attention to detail and vision to creating your dream home.
If you intend to build your new home, hire a luxury residential architect to ensure that the design is of the highest quality.
Cementing your Vision: Explore Luxury Residential Projects
Before you begin planning your build, it is important to know exactly what you are looking for in a luxury residence. Whether you want to echo the grandeur of historical architectural styles, or embrace more recent idioms such as the prairie style and open floor plans that modern materials enable, only exploring a space can tell you whether you will actually enjoy living with that style.
To do that, you will need to start by exploring different styles and the galleries of different architects online, via pictures and virtual tours. But once you have narrowed down your favorite styles, there is nothing quite like exploring a great example of high end residential architecture.
Narrow Your Search: Ruling Out the Architectural Styles that Don’t Speak Your Language
Everyone has certain styles that they think they would enjoy living in. Maybe your first dream home was in a magazine, or maybe it was a friend’s house or a bed and breakfast where you stayed years ago. For many of us, most of our dreaming and scheming is done over pictures online, whether on social media or real estate listings.
These media are very helpful for finding out what styles to rule out in our search for the characteristics of the perfect home. Maybe you think whole walls of windows sound like heaven, or maybe they are too modern and you want a more traditional look.
You might love the look and feel of a colonial era home, except upgraded with state of the art materials and amenities… or you might envision yourself in something clean and spacious like a prairie style home or a zen, oriental space.
Browse through pictures of different homes, study how they fit together, and you’ll be able to formulate the beginnings of your wish for your true dream home.
Real Estate Open Houses: An Invaluable Resource for the Astute Home Designer
When it comes to an architectural style, no amount of browsing pictures will tell you more about it than actually inhabiting the space. Even half an hour in a home can tell you a lot about how comfortably you could live there.
When a high end home comes on the market, it’s a prime opportunity to go scope out the advantages and disadvantages of its style.
Make Sure you Really Love the Type of Home you are Planning to Build
Let’s say you have been looking at post modern homes, with whimsical components and large glass walls. Their light and airy aesthetic is really pleasant to your eye in pictures. One comes on the market and you eagerly attend an open house, wanting to explore an example of the sort of home you want to build…
And you don’t like it at all. The glass walls do let in abundant natural light, but they make you feel like you need to hide, like the airplanes flying over can see you doing yoga in the den. You’re just not comfortable in the space.
Or maybe you have a five coffee table books of arts and crafts style homes, but when you actually start exploring an example of one, you find the space too dark and the ceilings too oppressive.
In either of these cases you have now gathered very valuable information.
Explore Homes Outside Your Chosen Style, Too
It can really pay off to visit homes that don’t fit your desired aesthetic. Whatever you want your home’s style to be, you can find aspects of other styles that fit your preferences.
The beauty of hiring a high end residential architect is that you can pick and choose components from different styles.
Maybe you really do enjoy post modern spaces, but you don’t appreciate the acoustics. You may find that incorporating elements of prairie style can help control the echoes that can result from large vertical spaces, while not losing the free and open feel that you crave.
Using Your Favorite Properties to Inform Your Search for an Architect
Once you have explored some homes, both in and outside of your preferred style, it’s time to start applying what you’ve learned to your hunt for an architecture firm. This process can begin simply, by finding out who was behind your favorite homes and seeing if they are available for hire.
However, a good local architect will know the styles of others who work in the area, and will find it useful for you to be able to tell them that you enjoy the work of one while finding another to be wanting.
Property Records: Who Designed Your Favorite Examples of High End Residential Architecture?
Once you have a list of properties that inspire you, you will have a really good resource to help you find the right architectural firm for your project.
Most architects have websites where you can look at their other projects and any awards or feature articles; digging through their socials can give you a good indication of how clients have enjoyed working with them.
Idea Board: Collecting Images that Express your Architectural Vision
When you begin meeting with architects, you and they will both benefit from your having a clear vision of how the final result should look. While it is wise to give a truly great architect a lot of leeway to bring their considerable creative talents to bear, they will also thrive within the boundaries that your preferences impose.
Bringing the Outside In
If you want your living space to blend with outdoor spaces, or your interior architecture to frame your coveted mountain views, populate your board with images of homes whose windows seamlessly integrate the natural surroundings with the home’s interior design.
Decorating Ideas
If you have favorite interior design elements, like drapes and upholstered furniture or sleek, clean lines in natural materials, add some pictures that showcase these elements. Your architect will know exactly how to create a space that meets your requirements and will fit well with the decorating style of your choice.
Facilitating a relationship between your architect and your chosen interior designers is another great way to make sure the home you want is the home you build. These collaborations can turn out a beautifully integrated home.
Basic Floor Plans: What Would Work Best for Your Lifestyle
When putting together an idea board, add some floor plans that you think would serve your functional needs. Maybe your home site has a view that you want to be able to enjoy from the kitchen and dining spaces, while keeping the bedrooms and living area a bit more enclosed. Basic floor plans are available all over the internet for free, and finding one that seems to line up with your vision for the flow of your home can be a great way to start a productive conversation.
Also keep in mind that there are lots of home floor plan tools where you can create your own unique design to include on your board.
The Value of An Architect: Don’t Sell Your Home Short
Today there are thousands of home plans available ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, all stamped and ready to build. Why would you hire an architect rather than going with this simpler, less expensive option?
Building a home is an amazing experience. It allows you to put your personal touch on the surroundings that you will be inhabiting for years to come. You don’t have to live with the silly place where someone else chose to put a light switch, or be annoyed by the way windows don’t quite line up with the surrounding landscape.
A luxury architect will take your preferences and turn them into a bespoke specimen of residential architecture. They will take all of your preferences and needs under consideration, from functionality to favorite colors, and then they will add their education and experience to find the very best way to integrate all of these elements into one magnificent home.
They will also know who to network with among interior design professionals and landscape architects in order to create a cohesive whole, ensuring that your interior living spaces, your outdoor spaces, and every aspect fits together into one beautiful work of art.
High end residential architecture is a demanding and competitive field. Hundreds of luxury houses are built every year, in dozens of styles.
Find an architect who knows the sort of home you love, and you can spend the rest of your life in a home that makes you happy and peaceful and proud.
