How to Custom Design a Home to Meet Your Needs and Desires

How to Custom Design a Home to Meet Your Needs and Desires

At some point, in your journey to find the ideal home that’s right for you and your family, you’ll realize that even the most well-designed plan doesn’t have everything you want. The rooms may be too small, the kitchen without sufficient storage. There may be a bonus room, but the bonus room is set up as a den and you want a playroom and an office. All the pieces are there, but nothing is fitting the way you want it to.

There are thousands of home plans on the Internet to choose from and any one of them can be modified to fit your needs, but that’s not the only solution available. Custom designed homes are one-of-a-kind and designed from scratch, and allow for the greatest advantages in any type of lot or home size. For the homeowner, it’s the path to originality.

“It’s not just about big, expensive houses or hard and difficult lots,” said Rick McAlexander, CEO of Associated Designs, Inc. “It’s about getting what you want in your home.”

In fact, most prospective homeowners have goals and dreams that are unique to them – whether it’s vaulted ceilings or a guest suite above the garage or a home office space. These unique conditions or ideas may not be found in a typical pre-designed home. So the point of custom designed homes is that you are given greater control of the design. It’s your personality, your characteristics that are put down on paper – not someone else’s.

“Oftentimes,” said McAlexander, “people gravitate to custom designed homes because they have these unique objectives that don’t fit into what they’ve seen in their Internet browsing. That’s where a custom design comes into play.”

With a designer at your back, the first step to custom design is to analyze what your needs are and what your goals as a homeowner are. This might begin with a typical search online for home plans. These home plans provide ideas and concepts that give you a place to start. In many ways, the online search is a tool that can be used not only for ideas but also for your own education. The more you know about homes, the more likely you’ll be able to explain your dreams to the designer.

A lot of times, the goals are conflicting and designers can help turn a dream into reality. During the initial discussions, the designer will ask a lot of questions that will help pinpoint exactly what it is you desire – from number of rooms to bonus rooms, to master bathroom requirements, to office space essentials.

“Asking questions evolves into more questions and follow-up questions,” said McAlexander. “More often than not, the designer wants to know what you, the homeowner, aren’t telling him because you don’t see another option or alternative. This is a common question asked of clients because the ultimate goal of a custom designed home is to put all the options on the table and piece them together into your dream home.”

Since a custom design starts with a blank piece of paper, these questions help the designer highlight an essential design or concept that you want from which the rest of the house can be designed around such as a fireplace, a vaulted living room or a large country kitchen. Other times, the design discussion will center on space, layout and room purpose. For instance, if you desire a bonus room, the question may revolve around why you want the room and what it will be used for.

“The bonus room concept has evolved over the last 10 to 15 years, but everyone uses them a little differently,” said McAlexander. “Since the home is being customized, there is a greater ability to make the room work for you. And depending on what you use it for, there may be a better approach to the design. The designer essentially becomes the puzzle master. Your ideas are the pieces to the puzzle, and when all the pieces fit, the home comes together.”

Custom designed homes are therefore not just for the dreamer who wants the big ranch house on a huge plot of land with amazing views. It’s for everyone.  Your unique ideas for a small house or a big house, on a small lot or a big lot, can be tailored to fit exactly what you’ve been dreaming of since you first started thinking about a house of your own. 

As seen on Newswire

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