There has been a growing trend among to-be homeowners that are interested in creating custom luxury mansions to celebrate their financial arrival-many are choosing historical estates designs that emulate the grand and majestic homes found in Europe or from American gentry of the mid 19th and 20th centuries. The homes of American entrepreneurs and like Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and Randall Hurst are being recreated across the country, and many buyers are including the architectural elements of Tuscan, Italian, and Spanish style homes into their home design.
As a buyer, how to you ensure that your luxury home, whether it is modeled after the homes of American aristocracy or designed to reflect exotic luxury, matches up to your expectations? It all comes down to the architectural firm you work with.
Here are 3 tips to help ensure you are working with the right architectural firm to create your dream home:
1. Architects need to be great listeners. It is their job to make your dream home a reality and a custom luxury home design should incorporate every design detail you have asked for. These are your home plans, not the architects!
2. A great architectural firm will remember that no matter how large or ornate your home design may be, it is still your home and needs to feel like one. Scale and space planning are important elements of luxury home design and a good architect will remember to add architectural details and focal points to rooms in order to warm up individual spaces. A homeowner should always feel at home in the space, no matter how grand the design.
3. Buyers should look to work with an architectural firm that has a thorough understanding and appreciation of historical architecture, allowing them to design new houses that replicate historical estates while still easily incorporating your modern-day lifestyle. It should be a firm’s goal to maintain a balance between history and modern-day life in order to reinterpret the architectural styles you want your home to emulate. You don’t have to live in a museum in order to live in a European home!
The most important thing to remember when choosing in architectural firm is that they have to be able to make your dream become a reality. It doesn’t matter what they have done for other buyers in the past, it only matters what they can deliver for you! The beauty of custom home design is that you have the power to add, edit or completely remove any elements of the design you don’t absolutely love. The right architectural firm should be able to seamlessly mesh various influence and requirements to create your own, custom architectural masterpiece.
