The home we design together will likely be the last one you ever build. It needs to carry your family through stages of life you can see clearly, stages you can almost see, and stages you can barely imagine. The more clearly you've thought about all of them before our first deep conversation, the better the result will be.
This page will walk you through the thinking I'd like you to do before we sit down together. You don't need finished answers — you need to have sat with the questions.
Every home you've occupied has taught you something — most of it through friction. The awkward kitchen that made cooking feel like a battle. The bedroom that was always too cold. The living room that somehow never felt right no matter how you arranged it. The front door that everyone ignored in favor of the back. These aren't trivial inconveniences. They are design failures, and they are data.
The homes that worked well have taught you something too — even if it's harder to articulate. The morning light in a particular room. The way the kitchen opened to the backyard. The hallway wide enough for two people to pass without apologizing. Pay attention to those memories as well.
Before our conversation, I'd like you to mentally walk through every home you've lived in as an adult and ask yourself honestly: what worked, what didn't, and why. The goal isn't to catalogue complaints — it's to build a clear picture of what your life actually requires from a house, as opposed to what you think you want when you're browsing floor plans online.
"The best client insight I've ever received started with: 'In every house I've ever lived in, the laundry room was in exactly the wrong place.'"
Think about your current home especially carefully. You've adapted to it so thoroughly that you may not notice its failures anymore. Walk through it with fresh eyes and try to notice the workarounds you've built into your daily routine — the counter you set things on because there's no logical place for them, the path you take around the furniture, the room you almost never use.
Questions to sit with
What has frustrated you most?
In each home, what did you work around, complain about, or wish daily was different? Consider rooms, flow, storage, light, noise, and temperature.
What room did everyone actually use?
And what room sat empty? Why did one space draw people in while another was avoided? What made the difference?
What have you never had enough of?
Storage. Counter space. Natural light. Quiet. Privacy. A place to put things down when you walk in the door. Identify your chronic shortages.
What do you never want to repeat?
If there is one thing — one room, one layout decision, one feature — that you would eliminate from every future home, what is it?
What felt genuinely right?
If you've lived in a home — or visited one — where something felt exactly correct, try to identify what it was. The proportions of a room, a view, a flow, a quality of light. These are worth preserving.
Unlike software, where you can release a new version, you can't release a new version of a house. This may be the last one you ever build — and it will almost certainly be the one you live in longest. That means the decisions you make in the design phase will shape your daily life not just for the first decade, but potentially for three or four of them.
Most people design for their life as it is right now, or perhaps as it will be in two or three years. That's understandable — the near future is vivid and the distant future is abstract. But a well-designed home should serve you through the full arc of life you'll live in it. The goal of this exercise is to stretch your thinking forward and give the design a longer time horizon to work with.
This horizon should be relatively clear. Children will be older — perhaps in school, perhaps starting to leave. Careers may shift. If you're working from home now, will you still be? If you're raising young children, what happens when they become teenagers who need their own space and privacy? Think concretely about this version of your household.
How many people will be living here? What are their ages?
Will children still be at home — or will some rooms become available for new purposes?
Will your work situation look the same? Do you need a home office, or might you need two?
Are there hobbies or activities you expect to take on more seriously as you have more time?
This horizon gets harder — and more important. Children may be fully grown and gone. You and your spouse may be looking at an empty nest for the first time. Aging parents might enter the picture. Retirement may be approaching or underway. Your physical needs and limitations may be different. Design decisions made now — step-free thresholds, wider hallways, ground-floor bedroom access, a guest suite that could become an in-law suite — will feel either prescient or painful from this vantage point.
Will adult children or grandchildren visit frequently? Do they need comfortable guest space?
Might aging parents need to live with you, or nearby? What would that require?
Could this be a retirement home? What does that version of daily life look like?
Are stairs a potential problem for you or your spouse at this age?
This is the hardest horizon to think about clearly — and for that reason it is worth attempting even if you can't see it fully. Many families have stayed in a custom home for three and four decades. At thirty years out, you may be in your seventies or eighties. The question is not whether you can imagine that version of yourself in detail, but whether the house you're designing today would still be serving you well — or whether it would have become a burden. A thoughtful designer asks you to consider this now, when the cost of the answer is measured in decisions rather than dollars.
The most common regret in this conversation is the staircase. A home designed around two stories is efficient today and potentially inaccessible in thirty years. This doesn't mean your home must be single-story — but it means the decision deserves a direct answer, not an assumption.
A home that works beautifully for four people can feel wrong for two, and vice versa. Occupancy is not just about bedroom count — it's about how many people are moving through the kitchen at once, how many people need quiet at the same time, how shared or private the daily rhythms of your household are.
Consider both the people who will live here full time and those who will visit regularly. Extended family, adult children returning for summers or holidays, long-term guests, parents who stay for weeks at a time — these visitors have real space requirements, and a home that doesn't account for them forces awkward compromises every time they arrive.
Map this out across all three time horizons, and map it honestly. The goal is not to build a hotel. It's to build a home that doesn't put your family in an impossible situation when life changes.
For each time horizon, consider:
Full-time residents
How many people live here every day? What are their ages, schedules, and daily rhythms? Do they need privacy from each other, or is shared space the norm?
Regular visitors
Who visits most often, and for how long? Overnight guests, extended family, adult children home from school, grandchildren? How many beds does this require?
Life stage transitions
Children leaving home, parents moving in, grandchildren visiting for weeks at a time. Which transitions do you anticipate, and what space do they require when they happen?
Gatherings and events
Do you host holidays, family reunions, or large dinners? How many people need to sit at a table, gather in a living space, or find a place to sleep?
Most people approach a room list as a count of bedrooms and bathrooms. That's a starting point, not a design brief. I want to understand not just what rooms your home should have, but what life happens inside each one.
For every room on your list, I'd like you to think through three things before our conversation. The more concretely you can answer these, the better the room will be designed around your actual life rather than a generic version of it.
What actually happens in this room? Be specific and honest — not what you aspire to do there, but what you will actually do. List every activity, including the mundane ones.
Examples for a kitchen: cooking dinner, morning coffee ritual, kids doing homework at the island, video calls at the counter, meal prep for the week, informal family meals, guest gathering while cooking…
List every piece of furniture the room needs to contain. Include sizes if you know them, and note any pieces you already own that must fit. A room can't be the right size if we don't know what has to live in it.
Examples for a primary bedroom: king bed with nightstands, two dressers, upholstered chair and floor lamp, TV console, bench at foot of bed, exercise bike in corner…
What does this room need to store — and how much of it? Dedicated storage is one of the most commonly under-designed elements in residential homes. Think about what belongs in this room versus what ends up there by default.
Examples for a mudroom: shoes for 7 people, backpacks, coats, outdoor gear, dog leashes, sports equipment, seasonal items, cleaning supplies…
"The most common mistake is designing rooms for how you hope to live rather than how you actually live. A formal dining room that hosts dinner parties twice a year is a beautiful storage closet the other 363 days."
— Tyler Rencher
Use these lists as a prompt, not a checklist. Your home will not contain all of these rooms, and it may contain rooms that aren't listed. The goal is to make sure you've considered possibilities you might not have thought of on your own — and made a conscious decision about each one rather than simply omitting it by default.
These are the rooms that appear in most residential designs. Treat each as a decision, not an assumption — even the obvious ones benefit from deliberate thought.
Living & Gathering
Sleeping & Bathing
Utility & Transition
Work & Study
These rooms don't appear in most homes. Some may be exactly right for your family's life. Others you can comfortably dismiss. The point is to consider them on purpose.
Extended Living
Guests & Extended Family
Children & Family Activities
Hobbies & Wellness
Rural & Homestead
Safety & Special Purpose
The purpose of this exercise is not to arrive at our conversation with a finished room list and a fully formed design vision. It's to arrive having thought seriously about your life — past, present, and future — so that when I ask you questions, you've already been sitting with them.
The best discovery conversations I have are with clients who came in uncertain but prepared. They've thought about what frustrated them. They've considered what life might look like in twenty years. They've argued with their spouse about whether the formal dining room is worth it. They've made a rough list of rooms and wondered whether they've missed something.
That's the conversation I want to have with you. Bring your rough list, your hard questions, your conflicting priorities, and the things you disagree on. Those are the things worth working through together — and they're far cheaper to resolve on paper than they are mid-construction.
The first conversation is free and carries no obligation. If we're a good fit, we'll move into paid discovery together. If we're not, I'll tell you honestly — and point you toward someone who might serve you better.
Begin Your Project