Design selection
Helpful considerations for designing your new home
Getting the design right is essential for the enjoyment and functionality of the home and site and clever home designs will help with this.
There are a number of options available, but your budget, site, expectations, lifestyle and time frames will have a big impact on what can be achieved.
The person that you entrust to design your new home, should respect and understand your requirements, bringing understanding to effectively reflect your lifestyle in an integrated and collaborative manner.
Standard display home design
A popular way to select a new home design is visiting a builder’s display home village and select an “off the self-design”
Generally, if you can find a home, on display, that suits you, it will be would appear to have a cost advantage to you as the consumer, this is because most builders will want to display a home that they perceive is good value, if you need a hand in defining what is included and what’s not as well as where the areas you may get caught, then Clever home designs can help.
Generally, the builder will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, in most instances, to make the display home look as good as it possibly can, the builder would display items like the landscaping, pool, interior decorating, finishes, and all of the options that are priced separately, they will then stage the home with expensive furniture and lived in lifestyle feel.
A lot of the time the home displayed will have a large number of “display options” which may not be reflected in the list price.
Sometimes the builder may structure the pricing, in such a way that the base home is good value and everything else is disproportionally expensive, sometimes to increase the overall margin of the home, at Clever home designs we can work through this with you.
If you can look past all of the emotional pulls and look carefully at the floor plan and how it suits your particular lifestyle, you will tend to make better decisions.
Generally, try to limit the number of changes done to a standard home to less than 15%, This is particularly relevant in the instance of not being able to visualize the finished product, sometimes the changes may end up compromising the design integrity of the author ending up with a “dog's breakfast” so to speak.
Generally, the sales representative will agree with everything you say to validate your opinion and secure the sale for themselves.
The best way to build a standard home is to do as little changes as possible to maximize the value and integrity of the project, again, Clever home designs will help you and demonstrate what effect the changes will have on the overall workability of the home along with giving you some ideas at to the cost implications.
“The right custom home builder with interiors and build all integrated under one roof to take out the bugs out of your new home.
Clever home designs understand that many of our clients are time poor and appreciate the collaborative team approach, which is reflected in the best possible value, in doing so it is rewarded in our long-term relationships with our clients.
Clever home designs will map out a clear hassle-free process will ensure your peace of mind.”
Individual custom home design
Whether you engage an architect, designer, or craftsperson, it comes down to their natural ability to be able to interpret your brief and to put it on paper.
Generally, our years of experience at Clever home designs have shown, that the more information and better communication, the better the result will be.
This process should be about working collaboratively to get the best result and starts with a board picture, being refined as the design matures, Clever home designs will work with you and your ideas.
The brief, that you provide Clever home designs, should take into account your lifestyle, expectation, accommodation, budget, along with the site, topography, location, orientation and value of the site.
Equally important is, who is living in the home, visitors, entertaining and how long you expect to live in the home.
A Clever home designs custom-designed home starts with orientation, room placements, sizes, room layouts, traffic flows, and cross ventilation, etc.
Having years of experience, having Clever home designs design your new home will end up generally be a better value when engaging us, particularly when, the person designing you new home, has a good idea as to the cost implications of what they are designing and can effectively get the best value based on this experience.
At Clever home designs, we normally give you a ballpark figure of what we envisage
the cost of the home will end up at.
Budget
We have designed thousands of custom homes, and the most common denominator is that they all had a budget, whether disclosed or not.
We would always recommend that you disclose your real budget to the person designing your new custom home, as not meeting the budget is one of the main stumbling points moving forward.
If you over state your budget or understate it will affect the result and the pricing.
Clever Home Design, design and specify the home for you and then present that to several builders to do the estimate, so things like size, complexity and specification have a direct result on the end price the builders will give us.
Orientation
Orientation and views are important to exploit in the design process, sometimes being creative to maximize both, is where the value lays, and this is one of the first things Cleve home designs take into account.
Generally, the North and Northeast is the nicest section of the site as it takes advantage of the morning sun and the winter light.
Clever Home Designs try to get the South West cross ventilation through the home, and we would try to protect and shelter from the harsh Western sun.
Size and proportion
Rooms need to be functional and proportionally correct, if the room is too big or too small it can be hard to furnish and dysfunctional.
Clever home designs will help you achieve that balance of size and function.
Same can be said with ceiling heights, whilst everyone likes high ceilings, sometimes they can be too high and look odd or out of scale, when getting the balance its important to consider the other features in the room like doors heights, window heights, the amount of light and architectural features.
Placement
Room placement, how rooms relate to each other, furnish ability, functionality is important factors to consider when designing your new home along with noise transfers, separation, zoning, and privacy, normally Clever Home Designs will show some ideas for furniture placement and demonstrate the traffic flow patterns throughout the home.
Presentation
In presenting your concept sketches, Clever home designs will be able to demonstrate how the home meets your brief and why certain decisions were made along with showing you how the home will function.
Our Actions
Clever home designs will help with the selection of builders and bring the total process together to make it as stress-free as possible for you.
Clever home designs understand that many of our clients are time-poor and appreciate the collaborative team approach, which is reflected in the best possible value, in doing so it is rewarded in our long-term relationships with our clients.
For more information contact me directly, also if you want information on how the builder will price your home, please contact me.
I look forward to being able to help.
