What Does the Process of Designing & Building a Custom Home Look Like?
At Springhouse Architects, we know how exciting it is to visualize your perfect house. But let’s face it: building a custom home can be a daunting, complex process. Our team has the experience to relieve your fears and simplify the process, so you can finally take the next step you’ve always wanted with confidence—a home that supports your best, most ideal life.
Before we dive into our process, let’s define what we mean by custom home.
Simply put, a custom home is any new-build home where you’re starting from scratch with design, material selection, and everything in-between. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, it gets tricky. There are a lot of labels thrown around in the home-building industry—custom home, production home, luxury home, you name it!
Specifically, there are four different tiers, levels or definitions for new-build homes:
Production Home: This process requires you to choose from a selection of four to six floor plans. From there, the company builds it on an empty lot of theirs and has complete control of the entire process—the land, appliances, materials, everything.
Semi-Production Home: Similar to a production home, you’ll choose from a selection of limited floor plans. The difference is, you may have the ability to change a couple of non-bearing walls, depending on the semi-production builder. You'll also have a few other selections to make, including materials/finishes from a limited palette.
Custom Home: This is any new-build where you’re starting from scratch. You’ll work with an architect by first presenting your vision. This could be in the form of photographs, internet scrapbooks or maybe even notebooks filled with inspiration. From there, the architects will help you select everything within budget—and we mean everything.
Luxury Home: The biggest difference between a custom home and a luxury home comes down to one thing: budget. Luxury homes are a blast to create, because there are zero parameters.
Springhouse is a team of architects who can design, build or simply guide you to a custom home that you love. Let’s break down our process…
First, we LISTEN.
We take the time to listen and understand your life, your family, and your goals. Finding out what you like and why you like it, how it will serve your family, and helping you decide what fits in your budget is our very first step. We invite you to bring all of your inspiration to us, including your style and your ideas—we’ll help you sort through it all.
Second, we PLAN.
We take your unique vision and create a buildable plan using our design expertise. Once we’ve pulled together all of your inspiration, the next step is to bring our own expertise and design innovation to the table. Through a series of design sessions and meetings with you, we develop a plan for your home together, one step at a time.
We strive to meet all of your requirements, and then some. Hitting your goals, budget, and timeline is our top priority—but your custom-built house is more than just a project to us. Now more than ever, your home needs to be your sanctuary. We bring guidance, clarity, and creativity to achieve your vision that’s built for your unique life, not someone else’s. Together, we’ll create a captivating, welcoming place you can truly call your own.
Finally, we BUILD.
We work with you to ensure all of the work we’ve done together gets translated exactly as we all imagined. With 25 years of experience guiding home owners from architectural concepts to a completed custom home, we know the many challenges that may arise. During construction is when many of the pitfalls happen. Our focus is to eliminate the headaches and create an achievable, painless process that ends with an exclusive home for your family.
Using us as your custom home builders means seamless consistency and continuity for your project. You’ve worked with us during the design process, and now we’re able to offer the same trust, quality and ease to fast-track your vision—without starting over with someone new. We ensure all of the work we’ve done together gets translated exactly as you imagined it.
We’re determined to answer any of your questions, alleviate your anxieties, and guide you to fulfill your vision. You’ll feel relief knowing you finally found someone who’s listening and has your back. No regrets. No compromises. Only a comfortable, welcoming space to call your own—to host and gather close friends and family for Sunday night dinners, holidays, or just an impromptu visit. To raise a family. To feel restored in every room of your home. To create, relax, and live the life you’ve always wanted for yourself and your family.
Start the process.
When it comes to designing and building a custom home, nothing beats having a trusted, experienced team of architects on your side. Let’s set up a call to meet, discuss your goals, answer your questions, and settle your fears. We can’t wait to meet you!